Level Up Your Marketing with Data: The Importance of eCommerce Tracking

If you didn’t immediately check off that last box on our hypothetical list of things you need for your eCommerce website, you might want to pause for a moment. Knowledge is power, and in this case, the knowledge that you will gain from tracking data on your website will lend you the ability to improve your marketing strategy and ultimately increase your total sales.

How Do You Implement eCommerce Tracking?

In order to get started, you need to put tracking in place first. Google Analytics is a great place to start for many eCommerce stores. Some platforms, like Shopify, also have their own tracking. There are also numerous WordPress plugins that you can use to help you track sales, customer habits, and more.

What’s your understanding of how to use eCommerce tracking? Here, we review how to use data on a basic, intermediate, and advanced level.

Basic: What Are People Buying?

Some of the simplest data to digest is what your customers are buying. This includes which products they are purchasing, how many of those products they bought, and how much they are spending in a single order. This type of information is critical so that you know which products you need to stock in your inventory. It can also help you decide when to offer incentives to move some merchandise or to get customers to spend more per order, perhaps to meet a “free shipping” threshold.

Intermediate: How Are People Finding Your Online Store?

Considering that your business is conducted either partially or entirely online, it should come as no surprise that many people will find your website through the internet. But honestly, “online” encompasses so many different potential sources: web search, social media, and email marketing are all ways that your customers might have found you. It’s critical that you discover exactly how people are getting to your website so that you can push harder on some marketing efforts and fill in the gaps in others. For example, if you’re not implementing SEO on your website, then you’re definitely missing out on opportunities for people to find your store in organic search results.

Advanced: Why Are People Buying Your Products?

This one’s a real doozy of a question, and there’s no simple answer. Certainly, some of that information is subjective. However, having a wealth of data at your disposal enables you to put together some of the pieces of the puzzle. For example, look at your top-selling product. Is there something different about that page of your website that makes it more appealing? Do you have it listed as a “featured” product on your homepage? Is the price point more enticing as an “entry level” purchase? This is where you have to play detective so that you can figure out what motivates your customers and capitalize on it.

How to Take Your eCommerce Tracking to Expert Level

Knowing how to look at the data in Analytics and use it to answer the questions in this article will definitely help to understand your customers and make more informed decisions about your marketing strategy. But there’s much more to eCommerce tracking than what we’ve covered here. If you’re ready to take your knowledge to the next level, check out our whitepaper: Top 3 Tracking Mistakes for eCommerce. 

Knowing how to implement and analyze tracking is one thing. Finding the time to do it well? That’s something else entirely. Our team has managed full digital marketing campaigns for eCommerce businesses like yours to help them grow. Want to find out how we can start winning for you? Reach out to us today.