Welcome to our Data Analytics post category, where we guide you in the world of data. Discover and stay up-to-date with the latest advancements and our acquired business knowledge. If you need help with your project or online store, take a look at our Google Analytics and GTM Support Service.
Step into a place where data holds the power to unlock valuable insights, drive informed decisions, and propel businesses forward.
The eCommerce world is constantly changing, and making informed decisions is crucial to the success of any project. Leveraging data analytics can significantly enhance decision-making processes, leading to better project outcomes and higher client satisfaction. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of data analytics in project management and how we can use those data in our leverage.
Data has revolutionized how eCommerce works today and, more importantly, significantly impacted decision-making. Nowadays, we (business owners, eCommerce managers, and development teams) turn to data for decision-making. However, we often struggle with data interpretation because we’re unsure how to define success.
Given the complexity and volume of data in eCommerce, this is not a surprise.
Funnels are a visual representation of the customer journey, illustrating the process from initial discovery of your business to the development of loyal client relationships. In this post, we’ll share 3 different ways to use the funnel exploration report in Google Analytics to track and understand your customer journey better.
Google Analytics 4 is a powerful tool that allows businesses and website administrators to track, measure, and analyze various aspects of their online presence. It’s very likely that you have GA4 and you probably use it. However, like most users today, you are probably not aware if it is used to full potential. We hope that this article will help in answering whether it is time to seek for expert assistance.
Our goal with this post is to help you audit your GA4 and identify some of the gaps. Areas that need attention. GA4 has to be set up correctly so you can track the performance and effectiveness of your marketing campaigns effectively. Otherwise, you risk making important business decisions based on inaccurate and false data.
Identify a gap in monetization reports
When doing a Google Analytics self-audit, a good first step is identifying the gaps in monetization reports. Compare the monetization numbers in GA4 and your website’s reports. It’s normal for GA data to be slightly lower than the actual numbers. However, if the difference is more than 10%, it means that you should seek assistance from an expert and figure out whether something that can be done. Please note that if you are using “Ecommerce purchases report” in GA4, the item revenue metrics show the total revenue from items only, excluding tax and shipping.
Event Tracking
Event tracking in Google Analytics 4 allows you to track specific actions that users perform on your website link clicks, purchases, file downloads, etc. You can use that data to track which buttons perform best or which ones don’t perform well at all. You can also track how far down the page users scroll, amongst other things.
Google Analytics allows you to create up to 500 events in your account. There are a few different types of events. First, we have events that GA automatically collects when you set up GA for a website. They are triggered when users perform basic interactions like click or form_submit. Another type that’s automatically collected is Enhanced measurement events. They offer more information on how users interact with your website.
Next, there are two types of events you must implement yourself, recommended and custom events. Recommended events have predefined parameters, while Custom events don’t, you set them up yourself based on your specific needs.
How to ensure you’re making the most out of this GA4 feature? By using custom events for your specific needs. Custom events are the best way to track your customers’ journey. They allow you to track specific things that are relevant to your business.
To check the events you have set up, go to your GA4 dashboard > Reports > Life Cycle > Engagement > events. There you can see all your events. If you have less than 10 events, you’re likely not utilizing event tracking in the best way. Without setting up custom events, you can’t track your customers’ journey as well as you could.
Google Analytics 4 Audiences
Audiences in GA4 let you segment users that visit your website in ways that make the most sense for your business. For example, you can create an audience of users who are from the US or an audience of users who visited a specific page on your website. The audiences can be as broad or as specific as you need them.
Audiences come in handy, especially for advertising. You can connect Audiences to your Google Ads account and use them in remarketing campaigns. That means your ads will be shown to users who have already engaged with your website, making the ads more effective.
If you haven’t created audiences yet, this is your friendly reminder to do it, otherwise you’ll miss out on everything you could do with them. Our guide on creating GA4 Audiences can help you with that.
GA4 Audiences can help you understand your website users better and create more effective marketing campaigns. But what if the audiences you created aren’t right for you and your business? Think of audiences as different groups of users that are your target audience. For example, if you have an online shop and only ship to the US, create an audience with users from the US. Users from other countries aren’t relevant to your business if you don’t ship there.
How to ensure you’re making the most out of this feature:
Go to your GA4 dashboard > Reports > Life Cycle > Engagement > Audiences. There you can see all the audiences you created and analyze the data
Review the data to make sure your audiences aren’t too narrow or too broad – how can you make them more fitting for your marketing campaigns?
Archive audiences that aren’t relevant anymore
GA4 Content Grouping
Content grouping in GA4 is a way to organize pages on your website based on different topics. For example, if you have an online store, you can organize your content based on product categories so that each category would be one content group. Or, if you’re a service-based business, you can create a group for each service you offer, etc. Content grouping is helpful as it allows you to track the performance of each group separately.
Content grouping allows you to:
track the performance of each group on its own
analyze the behavior of users who visit the group (e.g., new vs. recurring, location, etc.)
compare different content groups based on performance
If you’re not sure whether you have content groups set up, go to your GA4 dashboard > life cycle > engagement > Pages and screens: Page path and screen class > in the left drop down menu click on “content group”. If you have set up content groups, they will appear here. If not, the table will be empty. By not having any content groups, you’re missing out on the valuable information they could provide.
Content grouping sounds great, but what if it’s done incorrectly? What if the content groups don’t make sense for your business? Content groups aren’t predefined on GA4, you have to set them up yourself. If you don’t effectively arrange them, they won’t be as useful as they could be.
Take a look at your content groups and ask yourself these questions:
Do my content groups make sense? How are the pages inside one content group related?
Are these content groups relevant to my marketing goals?
Does comparing data from these groups tell me anything important?
GA4 with Content Groups
GA4 without Content Groups
If your content groups aren’t giving you answers to these questions, it means they aren’t organized well, and you need to rethink your content grouping strategy.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Google Analytics 4 offers many tools and features that help you track your website’s performance, but it’s useless if it’s not set up properly. That’s why it’s essential to perform a GA audit regularly to ensure it’s used to a full potential and tracking the right data.
Does performing an audit on your own sound like too much work for you? Does all this work feel overwhelming? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. We can help you! You can sit back and relax while we audit your Google Analytics for you.
When was the last time you cleaned up your GTM containers? You’re not alone if you don’t remember. Many e-Commerce managers often overlook the importance of regularly reviewing them, leading to various issues and challenges for the website. In this article, we will discuss how to know when is the time for your GTM containers to be purified and what benefits you’ll get from that. Let’s begin!
As the 1st of July approaches, now is the last call to set up Google Analytics 4. For those still unfamiliar with the new property, it may be confusing when it comes to creating segments, audiences, etc. If you want to know more about GA4 audiences and how to set them up so they can be useful, keep reading.
Follow these clear steps to connect your Google Analytics 4 to Magento 2 store through Google Tag Manager!
This post has been updated, as the previous one had instructions for Universal Analytics (GA3) and Magento 1. Enjoy the refreshed instructions below.
The most basic way to connect your Google Analytics 4(GA4) property to any site is by inserting the Google Analytics 4 tracking code in the <head> element of every page you want to track. You can find the code by taking these steps:
Go to GA4 property Admin
ThenData Collections and Modification
Select Data Streams
Click the Stream for details
Select View tag instructions
Switch the tab to Install manually
You can also use one of many Google Analytics Magento extensions. After the extension is installed, it’ll ask for the Measurement ID — the number of your GA4 property, which can be found in step 3— in the Data Stream details.
To install any of these extensions, follow their instructions.
Installing Google Analytics using Google Tag Manager
While you can connect Google Analytics by placing its code into the <head> element or using an extension, using Google Tag Manager is, in fact, the best way. Google Tag Manager gives you many management options when handling Google Analytics and different marketing platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Pinterest, TikTok, and many more; thus, it enables enhanced eCommerce events to collect information about your customers’ shopping behaviour.
You can read more about why we feel using GTM is the best way to connect your eCommerce site to Google Analytics here.
1. Create a Google Tag Manager (GTM) account and container
Visit Google Tag Manager Home and hit the blue “Start for free” button. If you’re logged into your Google Account, you’ll see the “Add new account” interface asking you for your
account name (usually company name),
country, and
platform (in our case,it’s web).
After finishing this step, you’ll enter Google Tag Manager, where you’ll see the installation instructions.
If you close the pop up with instructions, you can always find these instructions by clicking on the Container ID in the top right corner.
2. Install the Google Tag Manager 2 Extension
We can’t suggest any particular GTM extensions as they all do the job. The best thing for you is to Google them and choose the extension with the features that best suit your needs.
Regardless of the extension provider, connecting GTM to the extension is more or less the same.
3. Connect your GTM container with the Magento GTM extension
Open your GTM container, and you’ll see the previously mentioned Container ID in the top right corner.
Open your Magento GTM extension configuration and find the appropriate field to paste the Container ID.
Once you save the configuration, you can check your site’s source code and search for the Container ID in the markup to verify the installation.
4. Create a GA4 configuration tag in GTM
Assuming you already created the GA4 property (if you didn’t, check out this article), now’s the time to add GA4 to your site through Google Tag Manager.
Select “Tags” from the sidebar navigation and hit the “New” button.
Once the new tag interface appears, click the whitespace under the “Tag Configuration” title and select “Google Tag” from the list.
Once you add Google Tag, it will ask you for your Tag ID — your GA4 Measurement ID.
Since this information will be required each time a new tag is created, and you probably don’t want to copy-paste it each time, placing the Measurement ID into a variable is a good idea.
Click the little lego icon next to the input to proceed.
In the next interface, hit the plus icon in the top right corner to trigger the new variable interface.
Like before, click the blank space under the “Variable Configuration” title and select “Constant” from the list. Paste your GA4 Measurement ID into the “Value,” give the variable a meaningful name (GA4 – Measurement ID will work fine), and save it.
GTM will automatically populate the Tag ID in your new tag configuration with your new variable, and in the future, click the lego icon and select your variable when you need to add GA4 Measurement ID to a tag.
Now click the whitespace under “Triggering” title, and select “All pages” from the list.
Give the tag a name “GA4 – Configuration” and save it.
And that’s it. You have connected your Google Analytics property to your Magento webshop with Google Tag Manager!
5. Test your connection in GTM Preview Mode
You can test the connection using GTM’s preview mode.
Hit the preview button in the top right corner of GTM’s interface and type the URL for your eCommerce site.
GTM will open your site in another tab. If the connection isn’t successful, GTM will give you a message saying the tag is not found on the site.If it is successfully connected, you should see a page_view event when GTM opens your site in another tab. Continue to browse through your webshop and observe what events are starting to show in the preview mode!
6. Test your connection in Analytics Debugger
Besides testing whether the GTM connection works, you should check whether Analytics receives data from your eCommerce site.
Open analytics property admin and go to Data Display > Debug view.
Reload the GTM preview mode, and you should see the same page_view event that happened when the GTM opened your webshop in another tab.
This means your Google Analytics receives hits and is connected to your webshop. Continue browsing your site and observing what events are starting to show in the DebugView in Google Analytics!
If you want to continue and set up Enhanced eCommerce events, feel free to reach out to us!
When it comes to automotive sites (eg. webshops that sell vehicle parts), it’s good to track additional events that can give more insights into visitor behavior, their actions, and needs. In this article, we will summarize and explain additional tracking events that we use in automotive eCommerce sites as a foundation for conversion rate optimization of those sites.
Almost every webshop owner heard about Google Analytics, if not using it already as many of them do. And it’s obvious why the Google Analytics tool is so widely used. It’s free, it’s easy to connect to the webshop, and relatively easy to use. It can give the webshop owner/merchant insightful data on user behavior and answers to many questions like who their visitors are and what’s going on in their webshop in general. But, the full benefit of Google Analytics comes together with the use of Google Tag Manager.
Although Google Analytics 4 era is approaching rapidly, we’ve wanted to share the most common Universal Analytics & GTM mistakes we’ve encountered while auditing numerous Google Analytics accounts.
Feel free to take a sneak peek into our most common recommendations that come from the audit report.
When was the last time when you embraced big change easily? Even more so if it was forced upon you? As it happens Google has made it clear that we won’t have an option but to migrate to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Of course, this is true if we plan to continue using their analytics tool. There’s really no point debating whether this is good or bad. It’s happening nevertheless.
Big data has revolutionized the way businesses work. One of the biggest advantages of online stores is the ability to track anything customers do. You can even track what customers almost do at your store. A recent Forrester survey shows that 70% of data decision-makers gather data faster than they can analyze and use it. Still, 67% constantly need more data. This trend will likely accelerate in the years ahead. As a decision-maker, it can be pretty daunting trying to make sense of all that data. Most important thing is to create proper data infrastructure – starting with a measurement plan, but what is a measurement plan?
If you’re trying to manually activate Google Ads enhanced conversions with Google Tag Manager there’s a chance you’ll be stuck at the 4th step in the Instructions for manually Enabling enhanced conversions in the Google Tag Manager tag that says: Click Include user-provided data from your website. Well, that happened to me (and to my unknown friend here :)) when I tried to activate enhanced conversion in several GTM containers. Some tags in some containers did have that option but some didn’t.
There are many how-to blog posts out there, so this will not be yet another one. Instead of the technical step-by-step guidance, I’ll share my experience with implementing Google Analytics 4 with Google Tag Manager (GTM) on Magento 2 store and what to keep in mind when activating the GA4 property.
Let’s first read the following premise: For successful optimization and revenue-generating Google Ads campaigns, you need access to ALL search terms for which users clicked on your ads.
It’s simple logic. You want to know what users searched for when they clicked on your ads, and then converted. Am I right?
Not if you ask Google about it. Read on and find out why Google is behaving f…[CENSORED] bad with this one.
What was one of the most wanted requests from SEOs around the world when it comes to data from Search Console? Its freshness. And Google gave it to us. But, how accurate is that data? Read on to find out what we have found out.
At the time when new technologies are emerging almost every week, it is quite difficult to keep up with everything that helps us grow. In almost every field, digital marketing has triumphed over traditional advertising channels, and this is especially true in data gathering and measurement.
Today, with the rise of machine learning, we are again at the brink of a revolution, and digital marketing expertise is becoming more important than ever to those that want to stay or become competitive.
At ad:tech London, our Digital Marketing Team Leader, and eCommerce Consultant Vanja Bunjevac will give a talk named: Data-driven decision making: Embracing technology for triple-digit growth. For those wanting to catch a glimpse of the topic before the main event, I had a little chat with him to share his views on the future of digital marketing in eCommerce.
On May 25th, a data privacy law known as GDPR came into effect. It impacts the way companies collect and handle user data. In this article we will show you how to handle personal user data when creating database dumps in order to avoid potential GDPR penalties.
We’re very excited to announce that Inchoo has just leveled up to a Google Premier Partner status, which placed us among the top trustworthy PPC experts in the world in the eyes of the almighty Google. How did we deserve it? Well, with Google, You can never be certain, but there are a few key factors that could be the reason for this exciting upgrade. Here’s our short story on becoming a Google Premier Partner.
If you don’t run retargeting and remarketing ads, your marketing efforts may not be as profitable as they could be. On average, only 2% of visitors convert during their first store visit, which leaves staggering 98% of visitors unconverted. This is why we use retargeting and remarketing strategies.
Superweek [#spwk] is an annual conference held in northern Hungary (but still close enough to Budapest airport) covering all apsects of (web) analytics – from decision making to real life events tracking.
Recently I have been working on a Magento extension for a 3rd party customer analytics and targeting web service, think Google Analytics alternative. One of the eCommerce tracking features that needed to be implemented was the “add product to cart” action. Since these kind of tracking services use JavaScript to trigger their tracking code, it’s up to us to see where and when will be embed certain tracking JavaScript in Magento. What’s interesting about “add product to cart” action is that it’s not your usual web page on which you land and are then in possibility to execute certain JavaScript.
As a store owner or a person in charge of e-commerce at your company, you probably gaze upon Google Analytics stats every day. In this article I’ll give you 3 simple tips that you can try today that will give you actionable data which will help you boost your sales.
In the process of conversion rate optimization a store owner will sooner or later hit a wall with available Magento tools. While e-commerce tracking and cart abandonment information work great with Magento, checkout process is still a bit foggy area.
There are tutorials all around the web as well as at the Inchoo website that guide you through various Google services integration with Magento eCommerce platform. I wanted to unite all of these resources on one place and also bring something new to the table.
Did you know that you can actually track what your visitors are searching for inside your website? We are going to explain you how it’s done via Google’s Analytics tool. It is possible to track your internal site searches if your internal search engine passes the search term in the query string as Google Analytics tracks everything entered in location bar of user’s browser.
Drop us a line. We'd love to know more about your project.
We use cookies on our website to support technical features that enhance your user experience. We also use analytics. To opt-out from analytics, click for more information.