Wednesday, October 29, 2008

StoresOnline Merchants: Try Google Analytics

StoresOnline Merchants are able to track and view website activity with the StoresOnlinePro and StoresOnlineExpress backend capabilities. Another tool that might be helpful to StoresOnline Merchants is Google Analytics. Here is an excerpt from an article written by Brett Crosby who is currently the Group Manager of Google Analytics. In this excerpt, Mr. Crosby talks about what you'll want to look for with Analytics data:

1. How do your visitors arrive? For those coming through a search-engine query, a list of search terms will tell you what they were seeking when they arrived. Analytics can also give you a list of referring URLs -- websites that send you traffic. The simple step of marrying those referring URLs with conversions on your site will help you identify valuable sources of traffic and sites that send you high-converting traffic.

2. What are visitors looking for? Your checkout page can tell you only where you've succeeded, not where you've missed an opportunity. Search keyword reports and internal site-search reports can reveal what people are seeking, not just what they've found. Another crucial metric is your cart abandonment rate: the percentage of customers who put items in the cart but left your site before checking out. Use it to find if something's amiss with your checkout process.

3. Where are visitors landing, bouncing and viewing? The assumption that user experience begins on the homepage drives many designers to waste hours of work in the wrong place: for customers entering your site through a search engine, you have multiple homepages -- not just a single entry point. Your Top Landing Pages or Top Entry Pages report will tell you where your real "homepages" reside, so you can focus your design work there. Analytics will also tell you which landing pages have the highest bounce rate – pages on which people landed, looked around and left. And through your Top Viewed Pages report, you can see what content interests your customers -- or doesn't.

4. What are your website's trends over time? Analytics can help you understand what drives your performance up or down. E-commerce tracking shows the number of orders placed and the value of those orders, and by segmenting your data over different timelines, you can see subtle buying habits that could have otherwise gone unnoticed.

If you'd like to read the full article, click here.

Do you currently pay attention to the data that you get with StoresOnlinePro or StoresOnlineExpress? Do you or have you used Google Analytics? What are some key insights that you've learned or want to learn as you study the analytics data?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have found that by using the stats tab in Pro, that I can see the top ten referral sites. I can also see how if the referral came from a search engine, I can also see what word they searched for that referred them to my site. I have used this to help me know which words to use for pay per click.

Anonymous said...

Google Analytics is such a helpful tool. It can help me see where my customers entered my site and how they got their. That lets me know how to market my site and what marketing tool is working.

Dominic Bria said...

Hey Sam, thank you for reminding other StoresOnline Merchants about the StoresOnlinePro stats tab. If you are a Merchant who needs assistance with the stats information, visit http://support.myquickresponse.com/.

Google Analytics is a great tool to work with, especially if you are also using Google Adsense on your StoresOnline Website. If you haven't signed up for Google Adsense, it might be time to check that out as well.