The number one reason, is that consumers who search tend to convert at a higher rate. So if you get more people to search, you can get more people to buy…

Here is a snapshot from Google Analytics, where you can measure the difference in conversion rate by visitors who search and those who don’t.

You can find this report under: Content –> Site Search –> Usage. Note: This section will only be visible if you set up your Google Analytics account to track site search.

How Do I Check?

In Google Analytics, go to Ecommerce –> Conversion Rate. Select a 3 month date range, last 90 days is the best. The click on the little clock icon where it says “Graph By”. This will segment your conversion rate for the last 90 days by hour of the day. You should see two charts like this sample below.

Conversion Rate By Hour, Click To Enlarge

If your chart is anything like this one, you will see that specific hours of the day perform better than others. This means that your cost per acquisition will likely be higher during those times.

What Do I Do?

There are two possible solutions to help minimize wasteful spend during these hours.

Option A — Lower Bids

The first basic option, is to lower your bids in each campaign during these hours. You can do this by going to Campaign Settings –> Advanced Settings –>Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling. It will pop up a window where you can set hours and percentages of your regular bids. (Click on Mode: Bid adjustment.)

Option B –Pause Ads

The second basic option, is to pause your campaigns automatically during these hours. You can do this by going to Campaign Settings –> Advanced Settings –>Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling. It will pop up a window where you can set which hours you would like your ads to run. (Click on Mode: Basic.)

Bottom Line

Make sure that you are getting the most out of your advertising spend. Every little trick can help. Another thing you can do is to set your campaigns to use Accelerated Ad Delivery to display your ad every time someone searches for your keywords during the correct hours.

Magento Configuration

In Magento, navigate to System –> Configuration –> Google API –> Google Analytics. Select “Enabled” and enter your Google Analytics account number. (The account number can be found when you login to Google Analytics on the main page, right next to the site URL.

Google Analytics Configuration

In Google Analytics, navigate to Analytics Settings –> Profile Settings –> Main Website Profile Information. Set “eCommerce Website” to “Yes, an E-Commerce Site”. This will track orders, total order amount, products ordered and quantity. It will also allow you to break down revenue by geographic location.

Bottom Line

eCommerce Tracking is very simple to set up in Magento. You may as well take advantage of it.

Read how to track eCommerce sales in Google Analytics on other platforms. You can also track Site Search behavior in Google Analytics.

1. Under Settings –> General Settings there is a section called “Site Search”
2. Check the radio button that says “Do Track Site Search”
3. Enter Search Query URL Parameter
   (Example: Search Google for “apple” and it gives you the following URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=apple — “q” would be the Search Query Parameter)

Google Analytics Site Search Configuration Example

That’s it, your done. You can now go to View Reports –> Content –> Site Search to see reporting once the data starts to collect.

Will your ad perform better on the top spot on the left or on the right? Sixth one up from the bottom?

When you link your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, it will track performance of your ads with a lot of detail. One of the things it tracks, is performance by ad position.

Go to Traffic Sources » AdWords » Keyword Positions

In this report you can see all the familiar information such as impressions, clicks, CTR etc… The great thing about this report is the ability to segment by keyword and ad position. If you have Conversion Goals and E-Commerce Tracking set up you can see sales and revenue by ad position as well.

How Do I Know?

You will need to test your ad in a few positions for a couple of weeks each. Make sure you have enough representative data and then run the Ad Position report and see what has performed better.

Image Credit: danielbroche

What I did not know, until now, was that you can link your Google Analytics Goals to Google AdWords. What this means is that you don’t need to have two tracking pixels on your order confirmation page. Just install the Google Analytics tracking pixel and it will feed Google AdWords the ecommerce and conversion data from Analytics.

Link Google Analytics & Google AdWords Goal Conversions

Did you know you can do this?

Standard Tracking

The standard Google Analytics tracking pixel will get you all the basic data such as visitors, page views, referring source and keywords. This is essential for any website, especially an online retailer.

You can get the code for this sample Google Analytics standard tracking pixel from Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Check Status (top right), or copy from here and replace the UA-XXXXXXX-XX with the ID from your account on the same page.

<script type="text/javascript">
	var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
	try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
</script>

Setup Conversion Goals

The next thing you’ll want to do is set up conversion goals. For an ecommerce site, the primary goal will be a customer’s purchase. However, you can set up additional goals like customers who used the contact form or signed up for your newsletter or mailing list.

You can set up a Goal under Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Goal Settings. In the first section fill out the requested fields as follows (see screenshot below):

• Active Goal — Yes
• Match Type — Generally use Head Match
• Goal URL — For the goal page “http://www.ecommercecircle.com/thankyou.html” enter “/thankyou.html”
• Goal Name — This can be anything you choose
• Case Sensitive — Better leave unchecked unless you know what you’re doing
• Goal Value — If your goal has a set price, enter it here. Otherwise, leave it at 0.0.

Google Analytics -- Goal Set Up Section 1

In the next section, you will need to outline the pages that a consumer must go through to place an order. I have used the page names from Magento Commerce as an example. The first step will generally be required, the best place to start will be your shopping cart page. You can assign any name to these pages.

Google Analytics -- Goal Set Up Section 2

In Google Analytics, there is a section with many reports on your goal funnel. you can see your conversion rate as well as a Funnel Visualization. This will also help you see where people are dropping out of you checkout flow.

E-Commerce Tracking

Tracking your sales is by far the most important part of this guide. Without knowing where to attribute your sales you won’t know where your ad spend is being effective and where you you are losing your pants. Google Analytics’ ecommerce tracking allows you to track data such as purchase quantity, items ordered, product category, sale referring source and much more.

Here is a sample Google Analytics ecommerce tracking pixel. Note the comments in the JavaScript code. There are two parts, one for the order info (order number, total, city, state zip etc…) and one for the product information (model, description, quantity, price etc…) — the second part must be looped once for each item in the order. Ahain, make sure to replace “UA-XXXXXXX-X” with your ID.

<script type="text/javascript">
	var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
	try {
	var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-X");
	pageTracker._trackPageview();
	// Main Order Info //
	pageTracker._addTrans(
		"1234", 		// Order ID
		"Mountain View", 		// Affiliation
		"11.99", 		// Total
		"1.29", 		// Tax
		"5", 		// Shipping
		"San Jose", 		// City
		"California", 		// State
		"USA" 		// Country
	);
	// Loop Once Per Item //
	pageTracker._addItem(
		"1234", 		// Order ID
		"DD44", 		// SKU
		"T-Shirt", 		// Product Name
		"Green Medium", 		// Category
		"11.99", 		// Price
		"1" 		// Quantity
	);
	pageTracker._trackTrans();
	} catch(err) {}
</script>

Note: One limitation of most analytical software is the inability to track phone sales.