It takes more than just orders, which Google Analytics' normal e-commerce tracking measures. With Enhanced E-Commerce Tracking, Google Analytics provides reports to track the entire customer journey through the store.
Enable Enhanced E-Commerce Tracking
The first step is to enable e-commerce tracking in Analytics Administration. There are two stages to this. The first one starts capturing orders. The second step activates the e-commerce reports, which can be used to evaluate product calls and shopping carts, for example. After activation, the "E-Commerce" item in the Google Analytics navigation menu shows new reports. For this, additional tracking codes must be integrated on the page. In advanced tracking, Google Analytics offers a distinction between actions and impressions.
Actions can be accessing a product detail page, an addition to the shopping cart or a new order. Impressions, on the other hand, are the insertion of elements at various points on the page. For example, different products on a category page or insertion of advertising within the own page.
In contrast to classic sales funnels, the funnels that visualize the purchase behavior and the checkout with enhanced e-commerce are displayed horizontally, meaning that users pass through the individual phases from left to right.
Product Detail Page (PDP)
A product detail page contains information about different product attributes. For example, a category overview or even a search result consists of many products that match certain criteria. Dedicated hits tracking can be used to record the impressions of individual products. In the case of a product impression, the insertion of a product is counted. The complete information, however, is only available after a click onto the detail page. The impressions of this detail page have therefore been given their own command.
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Your users usually do not only reach a product via categories or a search, but also via ads or affiliate pages - Enhanced E-Commerce offers own functions to measure these, so that a comparable evaluation as for example for AdWords campaigns are displayed.
With impressions, clicks and CTR, all key figures known from external campaigns are available. In addition, the target achievement and orders are displayed for each advertised item.
Search Filter
An important function in every store are the filter options, especially in B2B online stores, with which the display and selection of products can be limited. Thus, it is usually possible to select brands, prices or ratings, but depending on the product area, more options are also available. If these settings are transferred in the URL of the page, it is hardly possible to obtain a meaningful analysis out of it. An export and further processing in Excel or a text editor is time consuming.
With Custom Dimensions a powerful tool is available to evaluate such filters. A Custom Dimension can be handled like a new column in Google Analytics. It can belong to different scopes: Hit, Session, User or Product. The scope determines in which reports the dimension will be available later.