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Configuring Ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics

 If you have an ecommerce website, you can enable ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics. This gives you detailed (but aggregate) information about sales you make through your online store. Once you have that, you can then track back and examine the analytics data for visits with sales vs visits without sales.

There are two steps to enabling ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics.

  1. Enable ecommerce tracking within your Google Analytics profile.
  2. Configure your shopping cart to send data to Google Analytics.

Enable ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics

  1. Log into your Google Analytics account
  2. Click Edit next to the profile you want to enable ecommerce tracking for.
  3. Click Edit in the Main Website Profile Information
  4. Select the option Yes, an E-Commerce Site.

That's the easy part. The next part will depend on the shopping cart you are using.

Configure your online store software to send data to Google Analytics

To complete the process of integrating your shopping cart with Google Analytics so you can see ecommerce transaction information in your analytics reports, you need to configure the shopping cart to send information to Google Analytics each time a transaction is completed.

Most open-source shopping carts include a module that does this for you. Here are some examples - if you know of others, or or know some alternatives for the following products, please add a comment below:

If you don't have a shopping cart that supports ecommerce integration with Google Analytics, you may need to develop the integration yourself. Google has a page that explains what you need to do, although it will require some programming skills to get it working. You can read the instructions for developing an ecommerce integration wtih Google Analytics here.

Google Analytics, Google Adwords and Ecommerce

The integration between Google Analytics and Ecommerce is well worth making the effort for, since it provides you with considerably more information about your ecommerce store that you can then use to drive more traffic and conversions to your store.

However, the real value kicks in if you also integrate Google Analytics and Google Adwords. Once you do that, your Google Analytics reports will link your Adwords cost data to your ecommerce sales, which in turn will give you hard data on the ROI of your Google Adwords spending, and allow you to determine whether your Adwords spending is paying off.

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