In digital marketing, we call “conversion” the moment in which a person buys a product in your online store or completes an action that brings them closer to becoming a customer. In this article, we are going to delve into the concept of conversions and discover how to visualize them in Google Analytics.
If you are starting to measure the results of your online store, you need to know what the most important conversions are and how to use conversion funnels to improve the results of your business.
For this reason, we have prepared this post so that you can take full advantage of them and be able to make the decisions of your business based on accurate data. 📈
💡 If you haven’t created your Google Analytics account yet or integrated it with your Tiendanube, read this article about it and start using this incredible tool.
Types of conversions
There are two types of conversions:
- Macro conversions: occur when a main objective is fulfilled, such as when a person makes a purchase in the online store. It is the most important type of conversion and all your statistical analysis work will be focused on increasing the number of these conversions.
- Micro conversions: they are the ones that have to do with intermediate objectives, which are also key because they will allow you to more easily achieve macro conversions. An example of this type of conversions could be that a person subscribes to newsletter of your online store, so it shows that it is interested in receiving information about the products you sell.
What is the conversion rate?
From the concept of conversion we can go a little deeper and talk about a statistic that says a lot about the health of your online store: the .
The conversion rate is a percentage that relates the total visits you received to the amount of sales you made in your store. Therefore, obtaining this data is quite easy: you just have to divide the number of sales by the number of visits.
Let’s consider this example: if during one day your online store was visited by a hundred people and one ended up buying, the conversion rate was 1%.
How to measure conversions through Google Analytics goals
First of all, you have to know that Google Analytics allows you to establish four types of objectives, associated with the actions of the visitors that you want to track:
- destination url: is the page visited by the user;
- Visit duration: is the average time visitors spend on the page;
- visited pages: corresponds to the number of pages visited by the user in a session;
- Event: Occurs when a visitor performs an action previously defined as an “event” by you: sharing on social networks, clicking on an ad, etc.
Next, we will show you step by step how to establish these objectives.
How to set goals in Google Analytics
1. Access the administration panel in your Google Analytics account:
2. Select the view in which you want to create your objectives and then click on “Objectives”:
3. Next, click on “+ New goal”:
4. By clicking on this option, several models will appear but you can configure them as you prefer. In the case of electronic commerce, we suggest that you select “Make a payment”:
5. Next, I wrote a name for this goal and defined what parameters will be used to measure it. In the case of payment by electronic commerce, you have to select “Destination”:
From now on, every time a user confirms a payment, it will appear as a completed goal.
What is the funnel or conversion funnel?
The funnel o Conversion funnel is a term commonly used to group the steps a person takes to accomplish a goal determined on a website (in this case, an online store).
With a conversion funnel you will be able to understand what the moments when your customers leave the store without making a purchase.
This is a visual example of a conversion funnel:
It is very important to analyze in depth what happens in each of these steps to understand what could be done to improve the results.
For example, if you see that you are losing a lot of customers after clicking on a certain product, maybe you could , or that the payment and shipping information is clearer.
How to configure the conversion funnel in Google Analytics
When you are on the goal creation page we saw earlierenter the final URL that the user must reach to complete a purchase and activate the funnel, as we show you in this image:
In this step, you have to specify which are the pages of the tour through which the user is going to navigate. Define a name for each of these steps and, in the “Screen/page” section, insert the final extract of the URL, without the domain.
In this fictitious example, the full URLs of the pages are:
- www.tiendaonline.com.ar/carrito/
- www.tiendaonline.com.ar/pago/
- and www.tiendaonline.com.ar/confirmar-pago/
In this case, you are going to fill in the fields in the “screen / page” section with:
- /trolley/
- /payment/
- /confirm payment/
These fields do not require you to enter the full URL because it already recognizes that it is measuring information for that domain.
You have to be very precise when filling in the fields with each of the URLs that make up the check out or purchase process of your online store. For this, we recommend simulate a purchase on your website and write down all the endings of the addresses that appear in each step.
💡 If you have doubts, you can consult your own.
How to visualize the conversion funnel in Google Analytics
To access this information, go to Conversions > Goals > Conversion Funnel Chart.
From here on, and in order to visually show how the results look, we are going to use the example account provided by Google itself, Google Merchandise Store:
Scroll down and see each stage of the funnel:
In the case of the Google Merchandise Store example, the configured steps were the pages of:
- Cart (shopping cart);
- billing and shipping (billing and shipping);
- payment (payment);
- Review (confirmation of purchase data);
- Purchase Completed (purchase made).
As you can see in the image, the conversion funnel in Google Analytics shows at each step how many customers are leaving the pages defined by you.
Also remember that you have to select in the upper right the period of time you want to analyze.
How to use this information to improve the experience of your users?
To provide the optimal experience for your audience based on the data displayed by the Analytics conversion funnel, the first two questions you need to ask are:
- How many people start the buying process and how many finish? If the difference is too big, there are obviously things to improve in the intermediate steps.
- Is there a point on the graph where a lot more customers are being lost than elsewhere? If so, start making improvements at this point.
Based on this, you will be able to carry out specific actions within your virtual store, such as:
- Clearly indicate the price of your products and the shipping cost to prevent users from abandoning the shopping cart;
- Simplify as much as possible the forms that the customer must fill out, requesting only the data necessary to complete the purchase;
- Show what means of payment and shipping are available, as well as clarifying whether there is the possibility of paying in installments;
- Transmit security in the payment confirmation, showing data such as the value of the product, date and method of shipment, and the general details of the total purchase.
By identifying where the problems are, you can more precisely solve those that are causing users to abandon the purchase process in your e-commerce. In this way, the conversion rate of your company will grow. 🚀
We hope that this content allows you to apply the necessary improvements to your digital business and that your business continues to consolidate.
If you have come this far but still have your Tiendanube, and know everything that the platform has to offer your company. Creating an online store with Tiendanube is quick, easy and you don’t need any technical knowledge! 😉
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