Google Analytics 4 or GA4 is the cutting-edge technology solution that allows you to transform your overall eCommerce performance majestically. With the right use of GA4, you can surpass the competition and make your business stand out in the crowd.
Irrespective of the eCommerce platform you run your business on, there is a constant need for you to understand or analyze the journey of the customers in your store. And utilizing the data using GA4 is what can help provide you with such proficiency.
By acquiring a better understanding of the customers, you will be able to maximize the conversions, optimize your marketing spend and analyze the overall shopping behavior. This way, you will be scaling your online presence to the next level.
In July 2023, the use of standardized Universal Analytics was brought to an end, and eCommerce tracking with GA4 took over. This upgrade is what further advanced the level of proficiency in analyzing customer data for eCommerce businesses.
There’s a lot that is yet to be unveiled about Google Analytics 4 and its capability to help you drive more sales for eCommerce success. So, read this article till the end, and you will get an understanding of how you can use GA4 for your eCommerce business benefit.
What is GA4 and How is it Important for Your eCommerce Business?
GA4 is the recent version of the web analytics platform by Google. The purpose of its emergence is to offer a more detailed view of the overall user behavior across diverse platforms, including mobile apps or websites.
Not only that, but GA4 also tends to offer you more detailed, sophisticated reporting options alongside the basic data analysis approach. This data utilization and reporting features are all customer-centric, ensuring that you don’t miss out on any sales opportunity.
GA4 for eCommerce
If you are running an eCommerce store, GA4 can be a total game changer for you to drive online sales and take your business to the next level. You ought to leverage the potential of GA4 and channel success and growth for your online business.
With the capability of acquiring and analyzing in-depth data, with the help of event tracking or AI, GA4 will empower your business to make impactful data-driven decisions and revamp your marketing strategies to bring in more conversions.
The eCommerce benefits with GA4 don’t end here, as the cross-device and cross-platform tracking feature of this analytics solution will provide you with a centralized view of the customer’s behavior and the scope of high-end segmentation to support personalization.
With the unique collaboration and reporting features, you can ensure your eCommerce store can promptly respond to market opportunities and trends.
What are the eCommerce Events that GA4 Can Help You Track?
With GA4, you have ample eCommerce events that you can keep a tab on! But, if you are just starting with your business, you don’t have to get lost in the cosmos of trackable GA4 eCommerce events. Here is a list of a few that you can start with to ensure proper utilization of GA4 for your eCommerce startup:
1. eCommerce Purchases
Among the several GA4 eCommerce parameters, customer purchases hold the maximum weightage. Upon using this tool to track your purchases, you will be able to evaluate the success rate of your marketing efforts.
Not only that but upon tracking the purchases, you will also be able to determine the AOV (Average Order Value) along with the efficiency of your checkout process. Some of the things that you can do while tracking the eCommerce purchases with GA4 are:
- You will be able to compare your product promotions and then specify which among them is leading you to acquire the highest revenue.
- You will get an insight into the purchase habits of all your customers, based on which specifying the recommendations for related products will be easier.
2. Promotions (Item/Product)
Secondly, you will also be able to track your promotions or marketing campaign performance to see what worked well and what didn’t. This way, you will have the scope to identify the areas of improvement and optimize the existing strategies to help drive more conversions. You can use the promotions analytics report as your compass to help guide you toward attaining profitability from your new launches or product additions. Some of the things you can do by analyzing the performance of promotions using GA4 are:
- You will be able to derive which promotional strategy worked well for a specific audience group.
- Based on the data collected, running Personalized remarketing promotions might turn out more productive.
- Set out promotions only for the products that are successful in catering to the customers’ interest.
3. Checkout Journey
The checkout journey event is categorized into three sub-stages, which include ‘Begin Checkout’, ‘Add Payment Info’ and ‘Add Shipping Info’ events. These three events sum up the entire journey of the customers once they reach the checkout stage.
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Begin Checkout:
‘Begin Checkout’ event tracking is to determine the number of customers who were interested in buying the product but didn’t go ahead and click on the ‘Buy Now’ tab. If the numbers are higher, you can presume that your checkout process, page design, payment options or shipping costs are what has hindered the customers’ decision.
Upon tracking the ‘Begin Checkout’ event, you will be able to specify any potential issues that are leading your customers to abandon their carts. Following that, you can also simplify the overall checkout process and make the transactions user-friendly for your site users.
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Add Payment Info:
Next in the checkout journey is the ‘Add Payment Info’ event that GA4 allows you to track. This analytical event is to determine the count of users who have added the payment details over the checkout page due to the eagerness to place their orders from your store. Still, for some reason, they couldn’t proceed further.
Acquiring this data will help you be aware of whether or not your payment methods are efficient enough to convince the customers for a purchase. To be precise, you will be able to specify the potential issues within the payment process of the checkout journey.
Whether it’s about adding new payment methods or optimizing the present ones, use the data to decide on it. Upon collecting this data, you will have the count of customers who were willing to make the purchase but eventually abandoned the cart.
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Add Shipping Info:
As filling out the shipping form is probably the second step in almost all eCommerce checkout forms, it is equally important as the payment-specific tracking. Upon tracking the ‘Add Shipping Info’ event on GA4, you will have data on all the users who tend to enter their shipping data and look out for any issues within this stage of the checkout journey.
Upon acquiring the relevant data, you must make sure to specify if the shipping or delivery method that you offer is working well for the customers. You can go ahead and simplify the overall shipping cycle and give out accurate information on the added costs. This way, your eCommerce business can attain transparency with the customers, and GA4 will help you with it.
What are the Potential Benefits of Using GA4 for Your eCommerce Business?
It is a reality that you ought to use the latest technologies and tools to survive the competitiveness in the eCommerce industry. When it comes to tracking and boosting the online presence, Google Analytics is always the go-to tool for everyone to attain!
With the evolution of GA4, you are now packed with a lot of new-age features, ideal for you to revolutionise your business performance. To help you feel more convinced about using GA4 for driving your eCommerce sales, here are a few of the benefits for you to count on:
1. Get a User-Specific Data Model
GA4 brings to you the fresh data model which focuses on helping you measure the store performance based on users’ experience. This way, you will have an even better understanding of the behavior of users across diverse touchpoints.
It means tracking the customer interactions will be more accurate, and you will be able to scale the engagement factor by making specific data-driven decisions. GA4 keeps a tab on the conversion events for several times in a particular session.
2. Helps You Acquire Predictive Insights
One of the best perks of using GA4 that can help you drive more sales for your eCommerce business is its ability to predict future performance numbers. With the use of specific ML algorithms, GA4 will help you predict the lifetime value of specific customers, identify target audiences for better engagement and determine potential churn rates.
With such predictive insights, it will be easier for you to empower your business and curate the marketing campaigns accordingly. Thus, data-backed decisions will eventually drive outstanding growth.
3. Get a Complete View of Customers’ Journey
GA4 is backed with the ability to help you acquire a complete view of your customer’s journey in your store. That’s made possible by tracking their interactions across diverse devices or platforms.
When you have such comprehensive insights into the life cycle of your customers, it is easier to set more effective and targeted marketing strategies. With the use of GA4, you will be able to uncover the hidden behaviour insights of consumers, and make data-driven decisions that will help you earn more revenue.
Parting Words
As you know, data holds the superior power in the digital marketing arena. And, with the ability to store and utilise it efficiently, you can distinguish your efforts from the average marketers. GA4 brings you that proficiency in handling and utilising business metrics or data and using them to channel growth.
With this article, you are now clearly aware of how proficient eCommerce tracking GA4 is for your business growth, including the crucial tracking events and noteworthy benefits. So, if you were in a dilemma of whether or not to leverage the potential of GA4 for your eCommerce business, put an end to it. Integrate the tool right away and bring in exceptional sales.
