I’m amazed when I learn about a website owner that has neglected to add Google Analytics to their website. It’s literally one of the most simple but most value-adding things you can do to almost any website.
Ecommerce on Google Analytics – Good for you now, good for you if you sell your site
If you have ANY eCommerce on your website, you have to manually enable eCommerce on your Google Analytics account. It’s seriously just clicking a button.
Yep, just one button. Nothing to tweak or install.
Magic.
With that functionality, you’ll add so much value to your Ecommerce that it’s not even funny. From being able to quickly see which of your products are selling best, to conversion rates compared week over week, to seeing what states and cities you’re selling the most to (and what products). The amount of easy access (and usable) sales data is tremendously helpful in running your business. Heck, I’ve run a six-figure + business using just Google Analytics and Excel.
Also, if you ever go to sell your website/business, having years of hard sales data will go a very long ways to substantiating your revenue and supporting your selling price.
The key here is that YOU HAVE TO ENABLE ECOMMERCE ON YOUR GOOGLE ANALYTICS ACCOUNT! If you don’t do it right away, you can’t get that data back because Google only starts tracking and recording the info from the day you enable it.
Enabling Ecommerce on GA
Go to your Admin page
Know your visitor – DemographicsGoogle Analytics recently gave users the ability to see insanely in-depth demographic information about website visitors. Curious to see what hobbies your visitors tend to like? (hello targeted marketing) You can see that at a quick glance. One caveat here is that this information is anonymized. So while you won’t know that Bob Schilacky from Provo, UT is a Do-It-Yourselfer, you can know that 5% of your user base is.
This data isn’t super in depth, but it can help you paint a better idea of who your visitor is so that you can work to provide them with a better total experience.
Also like Ecommerce, you have to enable Demographics in order for GA to start recording the data for you (just click on Demographics and then click on Overview and you should see the option to enable the reporting).
One of the best possible ROI everSince Google Analytics is (amazingly) free, the only cost associated here is literally 5 mins of your time to create a Google Account, add the Analytics tracking code to your site, enable Ecommerce (if applicable) and Demographics. BAM! You now can be your own data analyst (or higher one if you want…).