Google Analytics: Enhanced eCommerce Tracking Vs Standard eCommerce Tracking and Reporting

Should you choose enhanced eCommerce tracking or stick with the standard eCommerce tracking? Google Analytics allows you to track user activities on your website. From the pages they land on, to how long they are on the website, there is a wealth of useful data at your fingertips.

You can also use the analytics tool to gather enhanced eCommerce tracking data from your website. As a result, you can see how well your products are performing and make evidence-based decisions on what your next marketing steps are.

What are Google Analytics eCommerce Reports?

Within Google Analytics there are two main methods of being able to track your sales data: Standard and Enhanced.

• Standard eCommerce tracking monitors website transactions through to an Order Confirmation or Thank You page.
• Enhanced eCommerce tracking allows you to look at the buying process in more detail. This allows you to break down each step of the transaction. For instance; add to cart, payment, shipment and then placing the order.

Enhanced eCommerce can provide insight into promotions and funnel reports, as a result, you can see where visitors are dropping off, and specific product reports.

Which version should you use? Before we answer that, you will need to arm yourself with a bit more information.

Standard Ecommerce vs enhanced ecommerce tracking Report Comparison Table

Standard eCommerce tracking Reports

The following reports are available with standard eCommerce. Each report shows you a variety of information including the following:

• Overview – Summary of Revenue, eCommerce Conversion Rate, Transactions, Average Order Value and other metrics.
• Product Performance – Revenue, Purchases, Quantity, Average Price, and Average QTY by SKU and Category.
• Sales Performance – Revenue by Date.
• Transactions – Revenue, Tax, Shipping, and Quantity by Transaction ID.
• Time to Purchase – Days to Transaction and Sessions to Transaction.

Using this data, you can develop an understanding of the following:

• Which products sell well, which are best suited for your customer and which are supported by your marketing efforts.
• The revenue and the number of products that are sold per transaction.
• How long it takes customers to make the decision to make a purchase.

If your sales are stable or fluctuate predictably based on product or season, you can use this information (in conjunction with overall sales forecasts) to make revenue predictions.

If customers visit numerous times before making a purchase, think about making improvements to the user journey. As a result, this may require a redesign of the site.

Enhanced eCommerce Tracking reports

In addition to the data from standard eCommerce tracking you also gain access to the following reports:

Shopping Behaviour Report

This enhanced eCommerce tracking report lets you see the following:

• The number of sessions included at each stage of your purchase funnel.
• How many sessions continued step by step.
• How many abandoned the funnel at each step.

Where the funnel indicates abandonment (red arrow underneath the step), those users didn’t complete any additional steps during the same session.

Users can also re-enter the funnel at any stage (the separate blue bar at top of the step).

You should use funnel visualisation to identify strengths and weaknesses in your purchase funnel.

Additionally, you can use the visualisation funnel to create segments of your sessions. E.g. the number of sessions that included product views, or the number of sessions that abandoned the funnel at checkout.

Note: Analytics determines the funnel steps based on the tagging of your shopping funnel.

Checkout Behaviour Report

Additionally, as part of the Enhanced eCommerce tracking setup, the Checkout Behaviour report shows you how users moved through the checkout process.

The funnel visualisation shows how many users moved step by step, abandoned at each step and also entered at each step.

As a result, you can use funnel visualisation to identify strengths and weaknesses in your checkout funnel.

You can use the funnel visualisation to create segments of those sessions; for example, sessions that included Step 1, sessions that included user transitions from Step 1 to Step 2, the sessions that abandoned the funnel at the final step, or the sessions that entered the funnel at the final step.

Note: Analytics determines the funnel steps based on the tagging of your checkout funnel in the admin settings. However, you may need to ask a developer to help you find out what each step is.

Product Performance Report

This report lets you see how your products performed from two different points of view, Summary and Shopping Behaviour.

Summary View

The Summary view shows product performance in terms of revenue, price, and quantity, it also includes two of the Shopping Behaviour metrics.

The Summary view includes the following:

Sales Performance Section:

• Product Revenue (revenue from individual product sales).
• Unique Purchases.
• Quantity (number of units sold).
• Average Price (average revenue per product).
• Average Quantity.
• Product Refund Amount (amount returned to users as refunds).

Shopping Behaviour Section:

• Cart-to-Detail Rate – No. of products added per No. of product-detail views.
• Buy-to-Detail Rate – No. of products purchased per No. of product-detail views.

Shopping Behaviour View

The Shopping Behaviour view shows product performance in terms of user engagement with your products. For example, viewing products and details, adding and removing products from carts, completing checkouts.

Shopping Behaviour view includes the following metrics:

Product…

• List Views
• Detail Views
• Adds To Basket
• Removes From Basket
• Checkouts
• Unique Purchases

Sales Performance Report

The Sales Performance report lets you assess sales by either of the following:

• Transaction – Date, time, transaction ID.
• Date – Cumulative transaction data by date.

This report includes the following metrics:

• Revenue – Total revenue from eCommerce transactions. Depending on your setup. E.g. this can include sales, tax and shipping.
• Tax – Total tax charges for eCommerce transactions.
• Shipping – Total shipping charges for eCommerce transactions.
• Refund Amount – Currency amount refunded for a transaction.
• Quantity – No. of units sold in eCommerce transactions.

Product List Performance Report

Product Lists represent a logical grouping of products on your site, based on your ec.js tagging. You can use them to represent the following:

• Catalogue pages
• Cross-sell blocks
• Up-sell blocks
• Related-products blocks
• Search results pages

The Product List report lets you see how the Product Lists on your site performed based on the following metrics:

Product list…

• Views – No. of times users viewed products when they appeared in the product list.
• Clicks – No. of times users clicked products when they appeared in the product list.
• CTR – The rate at which users clicked the product list to view products (No. of clicks divided by the no. of times the list appeared).

The available primary dimensions are Product List Name, Product List Position, Product, and Product SKU.

Marketing Reports

In addition to measuring product performance, you also need to measure internal and external marketing efforts that support those products. Enhanced eCommerce tracking allows you to do this.

Internal Promotion Report

Internal promotions include things like banners that you display on one section of your site to advertise another section of your site.

This report lets you see how your internal promotions performed in terms of the following metrics:

Internal promotion…

• Views – No. of times users viewed internal promotions.
• Clicks – No. of times users clicked internal promotions.
• CTR – The rate at which users click internal promotions (views/clicks).
• Name – This is the primary dimension.

How transactions are attributed

The Internal Promotion report attributes transactions to an internal-promotion click or an internal-promotion view.

Each hit in an eCommerce session can have the following:

• 0 or 1 internal-promotion clicks.
• 0 or more internal-promotion views.

Internal-promotion click attribution

When a hit includes a single internal-promotion click, then that internal-promotion is credited for the transaction.

A session which includes a number of internal-promotion clicks, then the last-clicked internal-promotion is credited for the transaction.

If a hit includes zero internal-promotions clicks but one of that user’s previous hits does, then the internal promotion from the previous click is credited for the transaction.

Internal-promotion view attribution

If none of the conditions above is true but a hit includes one or more internal-promotion views, then the transaction is credited to all promotional views within the same session.

Order Coupon Report

The Order Coupon report lets you see how your order-level coupons performed in terms of the following metrics:

• Revenue – Total revenue from eCommerce transactions; depending on your setup. E.g. this can include sales, tax and shipping.
• Transactions – Total number of completed purchases on your site.
• Average Value – The average value of eCommerce transactions.
• Order Coupon Code – This is the primary dimension.

Product Coupon

This report lets you see how your product-level coupons performed in terms of the following metrics:

• Revenue – Total revenue from eCommerce transactions; depending on your implementation. E.g. this can include sales, tax and shipping.
• Unique Purchases – Total number of times a specified product (or set of products) was a part of a transaction.
• Product Revenue per Purchase – Average product revenue per purchase.
• Product Coupon Code – This is the primary dimension.

Affiliate Code

The Affiliate Code report lets you see how your affiliate sites contributed to your eCommerce performance in terms of the following metrics:

• Revenue – Total revenue from eCommerce transactions; depending on your implementation. E.g. this can include sales, tax and shipping.
• Transactions – Total number of completed purchases on your site.
• Average Order Value – the average value of eCommerce transactions.
• Affiliation – This the primary dimension.

Which Should You Use, Standard or Enhanced ecommerce tracking?

In Google Analytics, the Standard and Enhanced eCommerce reports offer two different ways to analyse your revenue and optimise your customer journey.

The Enhanced eCommerce reports offer more information, however, setting them up requires more work and may include a cost if you were to outsource the setup.

We recommend that you only set up Enhanced eCommerce tracking if you don’t have any other tool that allows you analyse your customer journey, sales funnels and revenue generation.

Therefore, if you’re just getting started with Google Analytics eCommerce reports, the Standard option would be the best choice.