A selection of chapters from the book
Either select chapters below, or use the table of contents on the right hand side to read online. For best results, download the PDF version.
Adding Filtered Google Analytics Views Gives You Access to Better Marketing Data
The key to marketing is data. If you don't collect data, and then analyse that data efficiently, you're effectively operating in the dark. And this rarely results in positive outcomes! (Don't be a mushroom when it comes to your data). There are numerous features in...
read moreUsing Google Analytics Goals to Boost Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate
In Setting Ecommerce Goals in Google Analytics and Why This is So Important we discussed the fact that an increase in sales conversions is made up of an increase in lots of little micro-conversions. If you can improve your conversion rate across all the different...
read moreSetting up an “Include My Domain” Filter in Google Analytics
Your filtered view in Google Analytics should be your main view that you use for day-to-day analysis and reporting. And one of the first filters that you will want to configure in this key view is the "Include My Domain" filter. The reason for this filter is that you...
read moreBuilding Segments Using the Shopping Behavior Report
In an earlier chapter we went through the Shopping Behavior Report, which delivers an overview of your sales pipeline by seeing what percentage of visitors to your website get through each stage of the funnel, and where they abandon ship. In this article we'll have a...
read moreManually Adding Google Analytics Standard Ecommerce Transaction Tracking Code
The tracking codes used by Google Analytics can get a bit complicated, especially if you're not a developer. I'll do by best to explain in this article how it all works. There are two eCommerce frameworks that you can use in Google Analytics - Standard Ecommerce and...
read more10 Reasons why Your Ecommerce Store Needs to Have Google Analytics Set Up Correctly
Congratulations! You have decided to set up your Google Analytics according to best practice for eCommerce businesses. You are soon going to be able to achieve rich insights from your Google Analytics data. But before you can get the insights that can help you to earn...
read moreQuick Overview of Your Google Analytics Admin – Before You Set Up Your Ecommerce
Lets get started on looking at your configuration. General Admin Settings The setup for your ecommerce store will be done in the Admin area of Google Analytics. To get to Admin, click on the button on the left menu that looks like a gear. In Admin, you should already...
read moreHow to Turn on Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics
Having and using your eCommerce data in Google Analytics is super useful! However, before your Google Analytics account can read eCommerce data you need to turn on eCommerce tracking. You need to turn on Ecommerce Settings for each view that you want to include...
read moreUsing Google Analytics Filters to Rid Yourself of Rage-Inducing Referral Spam
Once upon a time, spam was just a particularly horrible type of tinned meat. Nowadays, when we hear the word spam, we instantly associate it with unwanted emails, and all kinds of other nonsense generally wasting our time. Spam is everywhere, and unfortunately the...
read moreFormulating Your IP Address Filter in Google Analytics
IP addresses identify groups of users, and this is something that can actually impact significantly on your eCommerce operation. The case for using IP address filters is that you want to filter out your own business' IP addresses, and the IP addresses of your...
read moreEnsuring that Your Google Analytics Data is Accurate by Applying Lowercase Filters
To a human being (at least one who isn't a computer programmer), the difference between a lowercase and uppercase letter is minimal. One may be more grammatically correct than the other, but one letter out of place doesn't change the meaning of a word or sentence....
read moreWhat is the Google Analytics Ecommerce Overview Report and What Should You Use It For?
In this article, we're going to be looking at the Ecommerce Overview report. The overview report shows you important metrics for your eCommerce Activity. In the image below, you can see how to access the Overview report. By default the graph shows you your Revenue and...
read moreSetting Up Your “All Web Site Data” View in Google Analytics
The purpose for this view is to have a backup of all the data, completely unfiltered, so that if you ever lose any data due to it being filtered out of another view you can still find the data you need. Definition - Filters: In Google Analytics, filters are used to...
read moreMaking the Most of the Demographics of Users When Looking at Ecommerce Data
Comparing different demographics with each other provides us with far more insight than just looking at Google Analytics users as a single pool. Google Analytics makes this process really easy with the use of segments, ensuring that you can identify and target the...
read moreManually Adding Transaction Tracking For Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce Framework
The tracking codes used by Google Analytics can get a bit complicated, especially if you're not a developer. I'll do by best to explain in this article how it all works. There are two eCommerce frameworks that you can use in Google Analytics - Standard Ecommerce and...
read moreUsing the Model Comparison Tool in Google Analytics
The Model Comparison tool is an aspect of Google Analytics that helps you to attribute completed transactions to specific marketing campaigns. This is really useful, because you need to know whether any specific marketing campaign was good Return on Investment or poor...
read moreHow Do You Use the Ecommerce Reports Built into Google Analytics?
Google Analytics makes it possible to gain access to a huge amount of valuable data, and this can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful eCommerce operation. To access that data, Google Analytics makes available a wide variety of reports, and so you...
read moreHow to Use the Segment Builder in Google Analytics
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, segmentation is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal in Google Analytics. So it is vital to make the most of the Segment Builder included in the software. This article will tell you exactly how to achieve that. Now...
read moreUsing your Parameter Custom Dimensions to Discover Ecommerce Opportunities
Google Analytics can provide eCommerce businesses with a wealth of opportunity, but some of its best features remain unknown to the majority of users. One such feature that helps you better understand what is going on in your store involves storing parameters as...
read moreGoogle Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce on popular eCommerce Platforms
Most eCommerce sites rely on one of the major eCommerce platforms, and fortunately most of them have some kind of automatic implementation of Enhanced Ecommerce tracking that is built in, or access to a plugin that can make your job so much easier. The most popular...
read moreTaking your Segmentation Analysis Further
I'm a big fan of using Google Analytics data in novel ways to help you to understand what is happening on your website. One of these ways is to look at convertibility of each page. Its the equivalent of comparing the percentage of users who converted with the...
read moreHow to Turn your Ecommerce Parameters into Custom Dimensions in Google Analytics
In the previous article in this series, we talked about finding out what parameters are in your URLs, and I explained that there is a way to store these parameters outside of the URL so that they can be used in Google Analytics without causing the problems of...
read moreImplementing Enhanced Ecommerce Features to Collect Game Changing Data For Your Ecommerce Store
Product and transaction data is an important aspect of all the Google Analytics Ecommerce reports. Being able to use all the reports at your disposal is really valuable, but to do that you need to get the right data into Google Analytics. This is the trickiest part of...
read moreGoogle Analytics Segmentation Example – Transacted vs Did Not Transact
When comparing segments in Google Analytics of the most useful comparisons is between conversion status. For example Transacted vs Did Not Transact, or alternatively users who reached different stages in the sales funnel. I like to compare three segments - users who...
read moreAcquiring Your Ecommerce Store’s Unique Parameter List for Google Analytics
In the previous article, Fixing the Problem of Parameters in your Ecommerce URLS in Google Analytics, you learned about what a big problem parameters can be in your URLs, but how they're also very useful because they provide insight into how your visitors are using...
read moreFixing the Problem of Parameters in your Ecommerce URLS in Google Analytics
If you've read other articles in this series, you are probably familiar by now with the concept of filtering data to make it more valuable for your eCommerce store. This is undoubtedly a critical aspect of your overall Google Analytics configuration. We've covered...
read moreHow to use Segmentation Analysis to Identify Opportunities and Increase Conversion
Segmentation analysis is when you group your website users into different buckets (segments), and look for situations in which one group has a different behaviour from another. Understanding your customers is central to being able to sell to them effectively, so this...
read moreHow to Remove Slashes From The End of your URLs in Google Analytics
ECommerce analytics requires accuracy in order to make good use of the mountainload of data you have coming to you every day. You need to understand precisely what is happening on your site. And this really requires you to be on the ball, as just an errant character...
read moreGoogle Analytics Segment Examples to Enhance Your Ecommerce Sales
As we continue our detailed look at segmentation in Google Analytics, this latest article will help you to build specific segment recipes that you can create and reuse. These examples can help you to compare key audiences to each other in order to find differences...
read moreAdding Your Ecommerce Goals to Google Analytics
As I was describing in my last article, Setting Ecommerce Goals in Google Analytics and Why This is So Important, one of the key aspects of Google Analytics is defining your Goals. This is how you tell Google Analytics precisely what you're looking to achieve. This is...
read moreSetting Ecommerce Goals in Google Analytics and Why This is So Important
The practice of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO means increasing the transactions in your eCommerce store without needing to find more traffic), or in fact any kind of business optimisation, is driven by measuring and increasing specific business outcomes. In Google...
read moreDeep-dive your Product Sales with the Google Analytics Product List Report
The Product List Performance Report is the last of the built-in Ecommerce Conversions reports and is available to businesses with Enhanced Ecommerce. It is located in the Conversions menu, as shown in this image: WRONG IMAGE, WE NEED PRODUCT LIST PERFORMANCE The...
read moreWhat is the Time to Purchase Report in Google Analytics Used For?
The Time to Purchase Report is another of the many eCommerce-specific reports that appears in Google Analytics. It's worth considering how long it takes your customers to purchase after first discovering your website as this helps you with your remarketing strategy....
read moreHow can you see Individual Ecommerce Transactions in Google Analytics?
As you are probably learning by now, there are a lot of eCommerce reports included in Google Analytics once you switch on eCommerce reporting. And it certainly makes sense to take full advantage of these if you have an eCommerce store, as they provide valuable...
read moreWhat are the Google Analytics Ecommerce Settings For and How are They Set Up?
Feedback from customers has always been necessary for businesses, but in the era of online commerce it can be really hard to know what people are interested in. Essentially shopping via the internet is anonymous until the final transaction. Modern online retailers...
read moreWhat is the Product Performance Report Used for in Google Analytics?
The Product Performance Report provides a ton of useful information for your eCommerce store, and you're definitely going to want to take advantage of it. In this blog post, I will be describing some of the key data that is included in this report, and how you can use...
read moreThe Importance of the Checkout Behavior Report in Google Analytics
As we have established by now, there are a wide variety of different eCommerce-specific reports included in Google Analytics. It is valuable to be able to understand the data contained in these reports, which is why I've taken the time to walk you through them...
read moreSegmenting Users – A Powerful Tool for Providing Data Insights
This article and the several following in the series will cover the topic of segmentation, as this is undoubtedly one of the key aspects of Google Analytics. Segmentation provides a powerful way to analyze your data in order to discover insights, and you're not...
read moreWhat is the Shopping Behavior Report and What Should You Use It For?
The Shopping Behavior Report is another important aspect of Google Analytics, enabling you to better understand your customers. You can see the access point for the Shopping Behaviour report in the image below: If you have Enhanced Ecommerce set up in full then you...
read moreWhat the Heck are Parameters… And What do I do with the “Exclude Query Parameters” Field in Google Analytics?
In this article, we're going to take a look at parameters, and examine how collecting them in your Google Analytics can help your eCommerce business. My capturing parameters on the URL you can collect useful information about what your visitors are doing. But...
read moreHow to Build Specific Criteria using Google Analytics’ Segment Builder
As I've mentioned in previous posts, the segment builder providers you with a huge amount of potential because it can help you to compare different audiences to find insights that can drive your eCommerce strategy. But in order to use the segment builder effectively,...
read moreKey Google Analytics Settings You Might Have Overlooked for your Ecommerce Configuration
These settings are often overlooked when setting up Google Analytics but they can make or break your configuration. Lets look at Referral Exclusion, Cross-domain Tracking and Custom Alerts in more detail so that you don't forget to set them up. 1. Referral Exclusion...
read moreBonus: Six Reasons Why Your Ecommerce Store Needs Google Tag Manager
In this blog post, I'm going to run you through why your eCommerce Business should also make use of Google Tag Manager alongside Google Analytics. However, I’m not going to go into Google Tag Manager in detail here because it is a extensive topic worthy of its own...
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