Google Analytics Top 5 eCommerce Metrics

2. One : Percentage of New Visits Total traffic can be good, but really with any new e-commerce site you want to continuously attract new visitors to the site and have it seen by a wide audience. Whether this is organic driven, campaign driven or other this is your best bet for getting the site off the ground and to begin gaining traction in the market. With new e- commerce sites I shoot for new visits to make up 75% or more for the first few months.

3. Two: Pages Per Visit | Visit Duration | Bounce Rate All of these metrics track the same thing: Site Engagement. Users are visiting your site should be exploring it and they are probably there for the first or second time and are not yet familiar with what it holds. These Metrics can tell you whether or not this is occurring. Low pages per visit, low average visit duration or high bounce rate are all signals that something is wrong and that a glitch exists in the user flow. This glitch can be remedied by viewing exit pages, UI, heat maps to help target the reason for the low user engagement.

4. Three: Exit & Landing Pages Visitors are entering and exiting your site will not only give insight into the most relevant search queries associated with your site, but will inform you if there are specific pages within your site that people are leaving the site with or perhaps have left off to return at a later time. Users of new sites are not normally going to buy the first time there. This is just an indication that your site is user friendly and people are finding their way to the purchase stage. If your cart is not being utilized and conversions are low, it is time to dig into your visitor flow and find out what is happening.

5. Four: In-Page Analytics/Event Tracking In-Page Analytics and event tracking can give you insight into everything that occurs on your page. Everyday you should be setting aside time to look at the analytics of your site and draw conclusions. In-Page analytics is great at showing the percentage of clicks on any specific portion versus the rest of the page. Use this tool to see if they are making it below the fold, to see if your clicks are concentrated on any specific area, if the clicks are lacking in the places that you want them or just to get an idea of the normal use of your site.

6. Five: Multi-Channel Funnels Multi-channel funnel is setup pretty well to accommodate most e- commerce sites and to track what should be important to you as a new site. In order to take advantage of this, you have two options: A. Set up eCommerce tracking for your site. B. Set up conversion goals to monitor your visitor flow. Setting up a goal will allow you to track the user funnel. When setting up your goal include the goal URL for the "confirmation" page, also add a goal gunnel with the "checkout" page this will give you more information on abandoned carts. You will then be able to see the conversion path for your visitors.

7. Connect By: Errett Cord Email: ecord@ecord.us Twitter: @errettcord Website: www.cordstrategies.com