Google Analytics Hacks for Magento
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Discover the full potential of Google Analytics by customizing the standard reporting. Web analyst Jente De Ridder shares creative use cases of Google Analytics for ecommerce websites. Slide deck presented on Meet Magento Belgium 2017.
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Google Analytics Hacks for Magento
- 1. Google Analytics hacks for Magento
- 2. Let me introduce myself… Jente De Ridder Web Analytics Consultant Humix jente.deridder@humix.be Twitter: @Nihiel 22017 © Humix, all rights reserved
- 3. No introduction needed… Google Analytics The most used web analytics tool in the world. Over 30 Million websites use GA* Google processes over half a Trillion server calls per day. 32017 © Humix, all rights reserved *Source: https://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Google-Analytics **Source: Google spokesperson on GACP Summit 2017
- 4. Be creative with custom dimensions & metrics
- 5. 52017 © Humix, all rights reserved Be creative with custom dimensions & metrics How to set custom dimensions/metrics? 1. Create the custom dimension/metric in the Admin panel of Google Analytics 2. Add the custom dimension/metric to your tracking implementation.
- 6. 62017 © Humix, all rights reserved Be creative with custom dimensions & metrics Customer Life Time Value (CLTV) Custom Metric Increments every time a purchase happens Customer ID Custom dimension or User ID Can be pulled from Magento, everytime a customer logs in Screenshot: https://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2016/02/18/tracking-customer-lifetime-value-in-google-analytics
- 7. 72017 © Humix, all rights reserved Be creative with custom dimensions & metrics Product Stock Status Custom Dimension Captures the stock status on a product detail page Product Size / Color / … Custom Dimension Captures the size on add-to-cart Screenshot: https://codecanyon.net/item/actionable-google-analytics-for-magento/9899649
- 8. 82017 © Humix, all rights reserved Be creative with custom dimensions & metrics Weather & Temperature Custom Dimensions Uses public API services in combination with IP geolocation Captures the current weather and temperature at the location from where a user visits your website Screenshot: http://www.amazeemetrics.com/en/blog/third-party-data-google-analytics
- 9. Measure zero search results
- 10. 102017 © Humix, all rights reserved Measure zero search results There’s something missing in the Internal Site Search reports They do NOT tell you the amount of results shown Screenshot: https://megalytic.com/blog/tracking-internal-site-searches-in-google-analytics
- 11. 112017 © Humix, all rights reserved Measure zero search results Add an event to track “zero search results” Identify site search issues Identify new business opportunities
- 12. Google Analytics data within
- 13. 132017 © Humix, all rights reserved GA data within Magento Use a module to include GA data in the Magento Admin Panel Increase productivity Contribute to a data-driven culture Screenshot: https://www.h-o.nl/blog/free_magento_module_google_analytics_dashboard
- 14. Don’t trust GA’s transaction data
- 15. 152017 © Humix, all rights reserved Don’t trust GA’s transaction data Transaction tracking in GA sucks JavaScript can be disables in a browser Users can leave between the payment and the success page Non-online payment methods are not corrected in GA Erroneous tracking implementations Deviations of 10 – 15% are considered “normal”
- 16. 162017 © Humix, all rights reserved Don’t trust GA’s transaction data Centralize data in dashboards Make sure that you report accurate numbers Query the Magento database Connect to the Google Analytics API
- 17. 172017 © Humix, all rights reserved Don’t trust GA’s transaction data Use the Measurement Protocol to measure transactions Complex implementation Every transaction that is pushed to Magento, is pushed to GA Combine with Refund data to get the whole picture Screenshot: https://www.h-o.nl/blog/free_magento_module_google_analytics_dashboard
- 19. 192017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options How to switch to an alternative visualization? Every standard report combines a trend graph and a table The information in the table can be replaced by an alternative visualization that helps to analyze the data more intuitively These visualizations can be found on the top right of the table
- 20. 202017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Alternative visualization: the pie chart Usefull for dimensions with a limited amount of values How much contributes each value to the total?
- 21. 212017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Alternative visualization: the bar chart Usefull for dimensions with a limited amount of values Better than pie chart for showing minor differences between values
- 22. 222017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Alternative visualization: the comparison chart Usefull for all dimensions Compares the performance of a specific value to the site average
- 23. 232017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Alternative visualization: the term cloud Only available within acquisition and site search reports Useful for visualizing the relative importance for a keyword
- 24. 242017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Alternative visualization: the pivot table Compare up to 3 dimensions for 2 metrics Screenshot: https://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2012/08/30/5-features-google-analytics/
- 25. 252017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options How to switch to motion charts? Every standard report combines a trend graph and a table In most reports, the graph visualization can be switched for a motion chart.
- 26. 262017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Motion charts Animated visualization of the data Used to analyze outliers for a dimension Screenshot: https://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2012/08/30/5-features-google-analytics/
- 27. 272017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Plot rows Simply select the checkbox next to a row in the table and click the “plot rows” button. Compare the trend for a specific value to the overall trend
- 28. 282017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Compare metrics Next to the primary metric for the graph, you can add a second metric. Compare the trend for two metrics
- 29. 292017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Sort on Weighted Sorting a table on relative metrics is often useless
- 30. 302017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Sort on Weighted By setting sort type to “weighted”, the column is sorted by importance, instead of numerical order.
- 31. 312017 © Humix, all rights reserved Underused visualization options Turn on heat map for columns Add a meaningful color to each cell of a column by turning on the heat map functionality Grey bars Colored cells with up is good OR up is bad
- 32. Questions? Jente.deridder@humix.be | @Nihiel on Twitter
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone, Enjoyed the coffee? Enough caffeine and sugar to sit through a session on data? *Pause* WOW, based on the overwhelming energy in the room, I’m going to assume that is a yes. So, let me start by introducing myself:
- I’m Jente De Ridder, web analytics consultant at Humix. Yes, another vague job title… The digital, and specially the consultancy world, is full of them. So, I don’t blame you if you have no clue what I’m actually doing. In fact, I’m happy to explain it. As web analytics consultant, I’m hired by companies to help them gain insights from the digital data that they are gathering. More specific, my day-to-day tasks include: Audit existing tracking implementations to ensure data quality Ex: you see the confirmation page (onepage/success) show up in the landing pages report. This is unexpected behaviour and indicates a wrong GA configuration. Create briefings for development to implement new tracking requirements Ex: you want to start tracking the usage of your product configurator. Optimize recurring reports. Ex: Centralize different data sources in dashboards or custom reports. Identify optimization opportunities and provide strategic advice. Ex: Analysis learns us that traffic coming from Facebook, underperforms in the checkout funnel. This might be caused by UX issues within FB’s in-app browser. Educate internal employees to feel more confident in working with Google Analytics. Ex: give in-house trainings, or works closely with internal employees (on-the-job-training). Currently, I’ve been doing these things for over 5 years, during which I’ve worked for a wide variety of companies and with lot of different digital marketing tools. However, one constant is: Google Analytics.
- Almost every company uses GA to keep track of user behaviour on their website. Be it with the standard, free, version or the paid 360 Analytics. Some companies even have another premium Web Analytics package (like Adobe, Comscore, Webtrends, etc.), but also run Google Analytics on the side. Cause marketeers better know their way around GA. I was on the Google Analytics Partner Summit last month, and there Google shared that they are currently processing over half a Trillion server calls per day. Every day. That’s a shit load of data. That’s why, I assume that Google Analytics does not need an introduction. Specially not, for an audience of digital professionals. Therefore, I will not be talking about how to set up Google Analytics within Magento, nor about the well-known features of GA, such as Enhanced Ecommerce tracking. I assume that most of you are familiar with those reports and that you are here to go a step further within Google Analytics. What I will do, is share 10 tips and less-known features of Google Analytics, that I believe will come in handy for you. Some of them are basic and very easy to start applying. Others are a bit more advanced and may need some development. Note, that I strongly suggest to use Google Tag Manager, instead of letting Magento load the Google Analytics script. As this will limit you in the customizations that you can do. As my time, here on stage, is limited I will not be able to explain everything in detail. But don’t hesitate to reach out to me afterwards, if you’d like to discuss any of the tips.
- One of the biggest barriers to getting value from Google Analytics is creativity. Think freely about what information you need, to inform business actions. Don’t limit yourself to the metrics and dimensions available in the standard reports. And then, start figuring out how to get that information inside Google Analytics. Custom dimensions and metrics are a powerful way to send custom data to Google Analytics. Within GA Standard, you have 20 dimension and 20 metrics slot available.
- Adding custom dimensions is a two-step process: you need to activate the dimension slot in the Admin panel of Google Analytics. Activation happens on property level. This means that, once activated, you will be able to use this dimension in alle the views used within that property. Note that the custom dimensions and metrics are hiding under the Custom Definitions label, under the property settings. You need to populate the dimension within your tracking implementation. This can be done from within Google Tag Manager, or directly within the page code. As said earlier, you will not be able to do this, if you have implemented Google Analytics through the Google API section. Let’s go through some relevant applications of custom dimensions and metrics for ecommerce.
- Track the total revenue, generated by a customer. Every purchase increments the ongoing value, so you can see which of your customers are the big spenders and how they react differently. Do customers who have made over €1000 in purchases behave differently on the site than those that have spent less? To be able to use this metric in reporting, you’ll want it to be associated with a specific user. Therefore, you also need to set a custom dimension, that contains a unique ID for every customer.
- Capture the stock status on a product detail page as a custom dimension in order to get an idea of how many products are viewed that are out of stock and whether availability impacts overall conversion rates, exit rates, etc. Just as the stock status, you could also capture other product attributes in a custom dimension. Such as the specific size or color. Always take into account when you want to set this dimension. Will you create specific events for when a user changes one of the attributes? Or will you combine this info with one of the enhanced ecommerce events. If so, with which?
- It’s even possible to get weather data into your Google Analytics reports thanks to the combination of custom dimensions and public API’s with weather information. This enables you to combine product and transaction data with the weather at the current location of your visitor. This helps you to confirm that the weather influences the number of sales for certain product categories.
- Within Ecommerce, the search function is an essential part of a good user experience. If you fail to find what you are looking for in a store, you will turn to Google and get the product somewhere else. So, I hope that all of you have already configured the Internal Site Search functionality within Google Analytics. If not, put that on your list as first To Do for when you get back in the office tomorrow!
- The existing site search reports are already very useful. They will tell you what keywords users have been looking for. And how satisfying the shown search results were. For instance: you can see how many search results pages the user has been going through for that term. The amount of times that search was the last action in a visit, the amount of search refinements, etc. However, one thing is missing in these reports: it doesn’t tell you if the users was shown any result at all. It’s important to know whether a high search-exit rate is due to the lack of search results or due to bad search results.
- Therefore, I advise to include an event that captures the search terms that lead to zero search results. When you look at this report, you should ask yourself: is that term relevant for my business or not? If it is, the report might indicate issues with your site search. For example: we do have V-neck t-shirts in our assortment. However, the report shows us that they are not showing up in the search results, when a user types it like this. On the other hand, the report may also help us to spot new business opportunities. Imagine that we do not have sweat pants in our current assortment. But, as this search term shows up a lot, it may be interesting for us to start including that kind of product in our offering.
- Let me ask you guys something, how many times do you login to Google Analyitcs? Please raise your hands: Daily, multiple times per week, once a week, only when something weird is happening in the revenue numbers. This is an issue that I encounter often: people only log in to GA when they see something weird happening in their numbers and need to find an explanation. Or when the end-of-month reporting is due. Not many people, make it a habit to check their Google Anaytics data on a daily basis. However, most of you probably do login on the Magento back-end on a daily basis. As you need to take care of orders etc.
- Luckily, there are Magento modules, to integrate data from your Google Analytics account within your Magento Admin Panel. In this way, you will automatically be confronted with the GA stats. Thus, contributing to a data driven culture within your company.
- Propably the most asked question concerning Google Analytics and Ecommerce data is: Why isn’t the number of transactions in Google Analytics the same as the number of Transactions in the Order Sales Admin section? Well, let me be honest with you: because transaction tracking in Google Analytics sucks.
- It sucks for multiple reasons: - Google Analytics relies on JavaScript for tracking. It is possible that your customer’s browser does not support JavaScript. Or that it blocks tracking scripts from executing. Resulting in fewer transaction in GA than in the Admin Panel. - Google Analytics measures the “transaction” on the success page (onepage/success). However, before that his happens, the user is redirected from the checkout to a payment provider. Many payment providers, show their own “success” page, right after the transaction succeeded. And it can take a few seconds, before the user is sent back to the Magento success page. If a user navigates away from the site, or closes his browser before the onepage/success loaded, the transaction will not be measured by Google Analytics. Again, resulting in fewer transaction in GA than in the Admin Panel. - There is another case that corrupts the number of transactions in Google Analytics. If you are using a non online payment method (Money transfer, Invoice or Cash on delivery), all orders will finish on success page. So, whether the client pays or not, or receives the package and pays or not, the order will be tracked in Google Analytics anyway. Thus, resulting in more transaction in GA than in the Admin Panel. - And finally, erroneous tracking implementations often contribute to devations between the “real number of orders” and GA’s number. Syntax errors, not excluding payment providers as referral, double firing of tags, etc. Because of all these reasons, deviations for up to 10% are considered as normal within ecommerce tracking.
- What can you do about it? Fix your reporting by centralizing data in dashboards, that combine both Magento and Google Analytics data. And understand when to use which data source. All information on revenue and transactions, should come from Magento. And information on website behaviour and traffic channels, can be taken from Google Analytics. For example: we often use Klipfolio as a dashboarding solution for our clients. Klipfolio is very flexible in terms of connecting data sources to it. We connect the Google Analytics Core Reporting API to it and get data from Magento through an SQL query.
- Another option, is to stop with transaction tracking through the JavaScript library. But use the Measurement Protocol instead. The Measurement Protocol, can send data to Google Analytics from any place. So, also from within Magento. Although the implementation is complex and timely. However, it will provide you with accurate transaction data. That is, if you also correct for prodcuts that have been refunded.
- Google Analytics is a big tool, with lots of features. It’s possible, even for experienced users to not have discovered all of the features hidden in Google Analytics. Many people, even have never used any of the visualization alternatives that Google offers within standard reports. Therefore, I’d like to point them out to you.
- In every report, you can find some visualization alternatives on the right above the table. Click any of the icons to replace the table with another, often more intuitively visualisation of that data.
- Let’s start with the pie chart. This is usefull for dimensions with a limited amount of values. Otherwise, the pie chart quickly becomes unreadable. The pie chart gives you an idea of the contribution of each value to the whole.
- The bar chart is also only usefull if the amount of values for a dimension is limited. But it is better in showing minor differences between two values.
- The comparison chart can be used with all dimensions. It compares the performance of a specific value with the site average. The visualization makes it easy to spot high or low performers for specific metrics.
- Term clouds are a great way to visualize the relative importance of words. It can also spice up an ordinarily dry Analytics presentation. This option is especially useful for search terms people used to find your site. It is only available within the acquisition reports and the internal site search report. Note that you can easily enhance the number of words that should be included by changing the “show rows” on the bottom.
- The pivot table is a more complex visualisation, but can be extremely useful. It is the only way within Google Analytics to make comparisons that include up to 3 dimensions. For example: compare the keywords by search engine and landingpage. And you’ll quickly see how your pages are scoring in the different search engines for specific keywords.
- Just as the table, also the graph can be switched to another visualization. Just click on the icon with the bubbles to switch to “animated visualisations”. These visualisations are called motion charts.
- They visualize the data in an animated way, by graphing the data day-by-day. This helps you to find outliers for specific days in big piles of data.
- Compare the trend for a specific value to the overall trend
- Compare the trend for two metrics
- Weighted Sort sorts percentage columns of data in order of importance instead of simply numerical order. For example, if you sort by Bounce Rate in descending order, the rows with 100% bounce rate will appear first, even if these bounce rates are based on only one or two sessions.
- However, by applying Weighted, you bring those rows with the highest and statistically most significant bounce rates to the top of the list.
- And I’d like to end with a very recent feature. You can toggle on or off heatmapping for a specific column in a table. This gives you the ability to quickly see to worst and top performers. It particularly useful when you want to compare all the metrics in the table at a glance for the dimension values.
- So far, the Google Analytics hacks that I wanted to share with you today. Offcourse, there’s plenty more to discover with and within GA. The best way to discover them is by clicking around GA yourself and don’t be afraid to go into reports/visualizations that you’ve never used before. Also, it’s very useful to actively follow online blogs about GA. They often share the tips and tricks. I hope that you will be able to put some of the tips I gave you, to use in your own work in the coming weeks. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me, if you’re stuck with something or if you would like to discuss a particular issue that you’re encountering.