Web analytics are an important tool for you to monitor and better understand the performance of your e-commerce store in all aspects – not just sales. It can help increase your bottom line by providing you reports detailing what is working and what isn’t in relation to your marketing efforts.
As an X-Cart store owner you should have a properly functioning Analytics system (X-cart statistics do not count). Not having one is like not having financial reports for your company. You have no way of knowing if your business is successful or in need of dire help!
Because Google Analytics offers more reports than you could possibly need it is easy to become lost and thus end up ‘avoiding’ your reports. To help combat this I have created a list of 5 reports that you can use to improve your website today.
Listed below are the top 5 reports I have used with other clients to help them increase the performance of their stores. This is by no means an exhaustive or ‘best of’ list, but it is meant to help you get started in turning your Google Analytics reports in actionable data for improving your visitor experience.
It is important to note that these reports assume you already have Google Analytics set-up properly and are recording both your visitors & e-commerce transactions as well as proper segmentation & filtering. By default X-cart (up to version 4.2) does not have the correct set-up for the Google Analytics code. If your profile name is ‘www.yourdomainname.com’ then chances are your Google Analytics settings are not optimized either.
Using Google Analytics that is not set-up correctly is like reading a map upside down…you’ll end up somewhere, but nowhere near where you should be! For more information on proper Analytics set-up check out
The Complete Analytics Package for X-cart.
Ok time to start crunching reports, let’s begin!
1. Top Landing Pages Assessment
To access this report click Content->Top Landing Pages in the left hand column. We are interested in the first 5 results. Take a look at these pages as they’re your websites most popular point of entry. Is it what you expected?
Look at your bounce rates for these pages…are they higher than 50%? If so that is generally an indicator that something is amiss: either in your visitor acquisition strategy or your landing page design – or both.
You should then proceed to click on the link to find more information as to what issues it might be facing. In the example above page 3 might need some attention as its bounce rate is 62.23%. Clicking on that page will take us to more detailed view:
Now we are getting more information, but don’t quite have anything actionable yet. What we need to do is look at the entrance keywords for this page. That will tell us what keywords brought your visitors to this particular page. Click on the ‘Entrance Keywords’ link in the lower right portion of the page under ‘Landing Page Optimization’.
That will bring up something like this:
Here we have the list of keywords, both paid and non-paid (you can adjust this by clicking on either link to view on or the other) that visitors typed in and were brought to your page.
Are these keywords all closely related? Do they reflect the content on your landing page in its headline, images and body copy? If not that could explain the high bounce rates and means you should work on optimizing the page to better meet the “scent” your visitors are hunting.
From the report above it looks like the first term – which brings the most traffic – also has the highest bounce rate: 83.33%. In this case it was a result of two issues: first, the client was targeting a very broad keyword which typically will lead to higher bounces and second their headline was not very clear and did not contain this particular keyword.
Using this report from Google Analytics will help you improve the performance of your top high traffic landing pages. Since these are your ‘first impression’ pages it is essential they are operating at their best!
2. Top Traffic Sources Assessment
To access this report click ‘Traffic Sources -> All Traffic Sources’ in the left hand column – once there be sure to click the ‘E-Commerce’ tab like you see above. This report is telling you the top sources / mediums that sent traffic to your website AND how much revenue each source has generated as well as its e-commerce conversion rate.
Look at your top 5 sources / mediums, is it what you expected? Which of these 5 are generating the highest revenue? Can you expand traffic generated from this source? Why is one greatly outperforming the other?
These are just a few questions you’ll want to start asking about your results. Just like the a Top Landing Pages report you’ll want to click on a link to see more information about that source / medium at which point you can drill down to the keywords those visitors used and landing pages visited to help uncover performance issues.
3. Top Keywords Assessment
You can view this report by clicking ‘Traffic Sources -> Keywords’ in the left hand menu. You will then need to click the ‘E-commerce tab’ followed by the ‘Comparison’ button on the upper right. Here we see two reports for our top 10 keywords, their e-commerce conversion rate (compared to the site average) and their revenue generated (compared to the site average).
Looking at your reports are your top keywords performing as expected? Using the example above we can see that the number 1 keyword generates a good portion of revenue…but it’s conversion rate is low. We would want to click on that keyword to find out more information as to why that could be. Again we’d look at the same things: top landing pages and sources for this keyword.
Perhaps the highest landing page for this keyword has a high bounce rate – you would want to examine the content and presentation of that page, possibly explore testing new variations to try and lower the bounce rate and increase conversions.
Also, we want to ‘mine’ this list for new converting keywords you might not know about. Clicking on the ‘Table’ view in the upper right corner and then clicking on the ‘Revenue’ column will sort the keywords in order from most revenue generated to none. Carefully eyeball this list (top 50 or so) and see if there are any keywords you are surprised by.
Are you targeting the successful keywords in your PPC campaigns and SEO efforts? If not it’s something to consider given they’ve already proved they can make the sale!
4. Checkout Process Assessment
You can view this reports by clicking on ‘Goals -> Funnel Visualization’ in the left hand menu. This is a great report because it shows you visually how your checkout process is doing. The only tricky thing about this funnel is that it is very easy to set-up improperly and not know it because it will still show some results. Proper set-up is key!
You will quickly be able to spot errors or problems in your checkout process. Is it too long? If visitors are dropping off at a particular page be sure to examine that page for any problems with assurances, anxiety, length and even technical issues.
From the example above it appears this client has some issues to workout on both the cart and checkout pages. The client was having a sale in which customers had to ‘add to cart’ to see the price which would help explain for some of the drop-offs. They also had their shipping calculator on the cart page so perhaps shipping rates are too high? Maybe the call to action isn’t large or clear enough on the cart page?
These are just a few questions you can start to ask as you examine your checkout process. You may then want to start testing variations of your checkout pages to help fix poorly performing aspects.
5. Site Search Assessment
You can view this report by clicking ‘Content -> Site Search -> Search Terms’ in the left hand column. This report shows us the top search terms used on your stores internal search engine. This is your visitors TALKING TO YOU! They’re telling you exactly what they want or are looking for on your site so its important you pay close attention to it.
Keep an eye out for non-widget terms such a help, support, instructions, contact, price, etc. which indicate your visitors are having trouble finding information on your site. Looking at the ‘% Search Exits’ column tells you who is leaving immediately after their search (meaning they didn’t see any relevant results). If these search terms are for widgets you don’t offer that may not be cause for alarm (but maybe an opportunity to expand into a new market), but if they are searching for widget you carry and leaving you will want to drill down on the search terms to uncover what is going on.
From the example above it doesn’t appear the site search engine is used a lot, this could be due to poor location or excellent site structure. In this clients case it was the latter. Clicking on the ‘Ecommerce’ tab will show you what (if any keyword) searches resulted in a conversion and is a great way to find new keywords to describe your widget(s) that you might not have thought of!
I hope you found this helpful! For desk reference you can Download the Printable PDF Guide Here
Tags: actionable analytics, analytze data, e-commerce, e-commerce tracking google analytics, google analytics code, smarty, x-cart analytics