How to track your Joomla e-commerce website using Google Analytics
If you are a fresh online business entrepreneur, have you ever wondered how many visitors are coming to your website monthly? Or How many leads does your Joomla e-commerce website generate? Or Which product is the most popular among your customers? And if the answer to all of these questions is a simple "I don't know" answer, then chances are you're not measuring your e-commerce website performance OR you are not doing it right!
In this article, I will talk about why it is important to keep track of your Joomla e-commerce online store and which metrics you should put attention to help you understand better what your customers did on your online shopping site.
Why is it important to track your Joomla e-commerce site?
You need to invest a great amount of time and money to create your online store, then it goes without saying that you want a good return on your investment.
But how do you know what goes well and what's not?
Obviously, you'll know you’re doing a great job when your bank account keeps increasing. But what if it is not? Or you need more detailed information on what’s actually working and what isn't?
Therefore, tracking your online store performance takes a crucial role in measuring what is working well and what needs to be adjusted. If you haven’t been keeping track of your results, then you won't be able to identify the problems that your customers are experiencing on your site. It is a serious issue for your online business, and as a result, the Conversion Rate (CR) will go down.
Now, there are many tools out there that can help you with the matter. But the most popular one is Google Analytics (GA). If you do not yet know how to install GA on a Joomla website, this step-by-step guide will help you go through the process.
The importance of Google Analytics to your online shop
Yes! Having an appealing design will grab more attention from targeted customers. However, with the only effort of good design won't help your Joomla e-commerce website to be successful.
After launching your Joomla online store, don't let your guard down yet, the hard-work has just begun. You need to keep your audience engaged. Google Analytics provides you with informative information such as: how many visitors you get, the pages or products they look at, how long they stay on your site, etc.
This information is vital when evaluating your online business and deciding what to adjust.
Which metrics should be measured?
Google Analytics provides a wide range of information and this can be overwhelming at first with the numbers, charts, columns, etc.
However, it will get easier once you understand these numbers and their function. You don’t need to keep track of all metrics, just some basic. And once you have mastered the metrics, you can easily expand your data portfolio as you build up your analytic skills.
Below are basic metrics that you should consider when measuring the performance of your Joomla e-commerce website:
Average Acquisition Cost
I’m sure that when you are running an online business, there will be a point in time where you pay for web traffics through ads, social media, review sites, referrals, etc. However, not all of this paid traffic will convert to customers and sales growth. And this e-commerce performance metrics measures how much it costs to acquire a new customer.
Analyzing your acquisition channels so that you only spend money on quality traffic only and minimize your cost.
It is believed that less traffic with high conversion rate can be more profitable than huge traffics but minimum converts.
Therefore, make sure that you figure out the maximum cost spot and don't exceed it.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate probably is the most important metric for a Joomla e-commerce website.
The metric measures the number of visitors turning into customers. Marketers love to point to the total number of new visitors to show how effective the top-funnel traffic efforts are. But quantity does not always come hand-in-hand with quality. One of the issues that e-commerce entrepreneurs face is getting loads of traffic but very few or no sales at all.
There are many reasons behind this failure: due to untrustworthy design, no social proof, high price for mediocre products, payment options are not diversified, etc.
Analyzing your conversion rates to see how many users actually purchase something from you; and to determine which marketing channels are doing the job and what's not to make reasonable adjustments.
Goal conversion rate
This metric can be considered as an upgrade of the "conversion rate" metric. It will help you setting up specific goals and keeping track of those goals.
Do you want to make 100 sales a day? Do you want to know which keywords have the most conversions and by how many? Plot out the goals that matter the most to your business and add them here so you can better track and analyze them.
Even though it is going to take some work and analysis to get it up and running, it will be very valuable in the long run.
Landing Pages
In Google Analytics terminology, a landing page is a page where your visitors arrive first when they enter your site.
This metric will show you which sort of contents, products or information that draw the visitors' attention. Then you will get an idea of customers' behavior and make suitable adjustments to your products and website.
You can check out this article on how you can make a perfect Joomla landing page using JSN PageBuilder 4.
Search Terms Analytics
An on-site search toolbar is important since it is the fastest and easiest way to find the products or activities that your customers are most interested in.
By analyzing your Search Terms, you can improve the customers' experience by updating your contents to suit their preferences and allocate the popular products to boost sales.
Page Per Session
Page per session determines the number of pages that your visitors browsed through during the time on your Joomla e-commerce website. You can extract a lot of information from this number if you break down into channels or look into new customers to have a clearer insight on user behavior.
Comparing the actions of new visitors with existing ones who are already familiar with the navigation of your website can help you find a better way to display/design your layout for better user experience and increase its effectiveness.
Exit Pages
Improving your site's conversion rate begins with understanding where and why your visitors bounce. It is essential to analyze your exit pages to see where in the process of checking out that the customers give up or decide not to buy.
By measuring this metric, you can start optimizing or simplifying your checkout process.
Cart Abandonment Rate
On average, over 65% of shoppers will abandon their carts and leave a site without completing a purchase. Imagine someone walking in a store, choosing what they like, then deciding to leave it back and exit empty-handed. That's cart abandonment, except that it is much easier to do online.
Cart abandonment is a deadly serious problem for many e-commerce businesses. Though, despite the astounding statistics of this, and the matter that these visitors are just 1 step away from converting, online store owners tend to overlook the situation.
By measuring cart abandonment, you will understand the reason behind it and improve your customer journey while securing further sales for your e-commerce business.
I find this blog very helpful with 4 steps to track shopping cart abandonment in GA.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the basic metrics that you should use to measure your e-commerce website. There are a lot more tools and metrics that can bring valuable insights to you and your business.
Finding the ones that are most suitable for you to achieve your goals and bring your business to the next level.
And for the fresh entrepreneurs out there who are looking for opportunities to invest in e-commerce and online business, let's have a quick read through our series regarding Joomla e-commerce website so you can have an idea on how you can start your own online business and at what cost:
