Top 7 Google Analytics Mistakes from E-Commerce Merchants

At the time of writing, nearly 85.3% of all websites use Google Analytics for traffic analysis on their website. This means, over 40 million websites use GA and out of these, according to Pipecandy, 2-3 million are approximately e-commerce companies excluding China. In the race for survival of the fittest, if a business fails to put efforts in selling online, its days are numbered. Google Analytics, is the benchmark by which businesses measure their success today. However, the platform itself is quite comprehensive and often, specialist assistance is required to make the most out of a company’s advertising budget. Leveraging the platform for both profit and branding is a team effort and requires constant measurement and evaluation. Your biggest Google Analytics mistakes will also be your biggest lessons towards building fail-proof strategies for future campaigns.

We all know the basics of Google analytics for e-commerce. You can identify your visitors, analyze their behavior, understand shopping patterns and recognize which products are doing well and which aren’t. With analytics, insights into marketing strategies such as organic searches, webpage health, conversion rate, email click-through rates, paid search advertising can also be gleaned to create customized ads targeted at a niche audience.

However, most small and medium-sized businesses either do not have the resources or do not want to hire a Google analytics trends expert. As a result, they end up handling the account themselves. And as we all know, even the best of us can make mistakes, especially when venturing into the unchartered territory of data, crawl errors, conversion rates and PPCs.

Here are the top 7 Google Analytics mistakes that e-commerce merchants make.

Mistake One: Not setting goals

What are you toiling for? What are your business targets monthly? Quarterly? Annually? If your GA dashboard doesn’t have these targets mapped, then you’re not on the right track.

Setting goals shows if your visitors are taking actions you want. With defined KPIs, you are able to see the micro-conversions and the final conversion, technically called macro-conversion such as a customer staying on the same page for a certain time period, adding items to their cart or entering shipping information. Once you have this data, you’ll be able to analyze your sales funnel and make necessary adjustments to convert more leads into paying customers.

Mistake Two: Not embedding the analytics code correctly on your site

Most of the time, incorrectly installed analytics code throws a lot of common errors. Things as trivial as an extra space or a missing character can throw the entire code off track. And this is most common with businesses who have multiple sites within a single Analytics account. You copy and paste the code and send it to the developer to install but it’s actually the wrong snippet.

When adding code to your site, double check. Or let a professional handle the account for you.

Mistake Three: Incorrect or no UTM parameters

Urchin Tracking Modules or UTMs are specific parameters which are added to URLs to track search results better. UTMs work by adding certain words or characters at the end of a URL which is tracked by Google Analytics.

If you haven’t yet started using UTM parameters, you’re losing on a great opportunity. These provide a clearer picture of your marketing campaigns both online and offline. Plus, they are pretty easy to set up. So, what are you waiting for? Get experts on Google Analytics for e-commerce to set up your UTM today.

Mistake Four: Missing tracking code

If you’re in the middle of creating your website, then make sure to add tracking code to every page. For older and already existing websites, use the GA checker to see if any of the older pages are missing the tracking code.

This is another common mistake that e-commerce merchants fail to notice. The next time your pages aren’t returning the traffic they should, do check the tracking code.

Mistake Five: Multiple Google Analytics scripts on the same page

Another common yet often overlooked issue is having a single page running multiple GA scripts simultaneously. Use Tag Assistant extension on Chrome to check if your page already has a script.

You can also use GA tracker to check this. To track a page view, you just need one script. Adding others will give you mixed and divided results, leading to ineffective analysis.

Mistake Six: Not implementing cross-domain tracking

With cross-domain tracking, you can see sessions on two related sites or micro-sites as a single, unified session. This way, you can track a lead’s movement from beginning to end. It’s also called site-linking sometimes.

Typically, whenever a customer loads a page on a different domain, a new session is created even if the user knows that the two domains are related. The previous session, in this case, unfortunately ends. Cross-domain setting ensures that you are able to track lead’s entire journey.

Mistake Seven: Using UTM parameters incorrectly

If not having UTMs is bad, using UTMs incorrectly is worse. Never tag internal links to UTM parameters. If you do so, every time your lead clicks on the link, a new session will be created, overwriting the earlier one.

If you suspect his happening, observe your campaign closely and see this pattern repeats often. You will see the internal links tagged with UTM parameters instead of other details.

These were some of the biggest Google analytics mistakes that business owners make. By avoiding these mistakes, you can create more effective campaigns and areas of improvement.

Article By John Tie, Outsourcing Enthusiast