Enhanced Ecommerce needs Universal Analytics and code on every product, cart and checkout page. Send product views, cart additions and each named checkout step, then read where shoppers leave before changing the checkout.

Orders counted, everything before them missing

An online shop's owner opens the ecommerce reports in Google Analytics and sees orders, revenue and the products sold. What the reports cannot show is everything that happened before an order.

How many people looked at a product, how many put it in the cart, and how many reached the payment page and stopped there: none of it appears.

The owner suspects that carts are being left behind, but cannot say where, or why.

What Google introduced last month

In May, Google introduced Enhanced Ecommerce for Universal Analytics, labelled a beta for now. It follows a shopper from seeing a product in a list, through its page and the cart, to each step of the checkout and the purchase.

The new reports show how sessions move through those stages, how each product performs from view to sale, and how each step of the checkout holds or loses people.

It works only with Universal Analytics. A shop still running the classic tracking code has to move to the new code before any of this is possible.

What the shop has to send

Analytics knows only what the site tells it. For the reports to fill, the shop's pages send these events, each with the product's ID, name, category, variant and price:

Not every shop needs all seven at once. The detail views, the cart, the checkout steps and the purchase give a small shop most of the value.

The checkout steps are the useful part

In the view's ecommerce settings, the shop names its checkout steps: perhaps the cart, the address, shipping and payment. The checkout report then shows how many sessions reached each step and where they left.

That points at something a small shop can change. A step that loses people often reveals a cost shown too late, a form asking for too much, or a page that fails on a phone.

Earlier stages matter too, but the checkout is where a shopper has already decided to buy, so a loss there is the most avoidable.

The whole visit, stage by stage

The shopping behaviour report lays out every session in stages: all sessions, those that viewed a product, those that added to the cart, those that started the checkout and those that bought.

Splitting it by device or by traffic source shows whether phone shoppers, or visitors from an email campaign, drop away at a different stage from the rest.

A worked example

A craft supply store with a shop in a small city and an online store sells yarn, beads, card stock and paints, shipping across Canada from a room behind the counter.

Its Analytics showed orders and revenue each month. The owner suspected that many shoppers filled a cart and left, but nothing in the reports said where.

The shop moved to Universal Analytics in April and had Enhanced Ecommerce set up as soon as it was offered in May. It sends product views, cart additions and four named checkout steps: cart, address, shipping and payment.

Within a couple of weeks the checkout report showed far more sessions leaving at the shipping step than at any other.

That step was the first place the shipping cost appeared. A shopper buying two skeins of yarn met a postage charge close to the price of the yarn itself.

The shop now lists its shipping rates beside each product and inside the cart, along with the order total that earns free shipping.

Shoppers see the full cost before they begin the checkout, and the same report will show whether that step still loses them.

What the setup involves

The work happens in the shop's templates. Each kind of page, from category to receipt, needs code that sends the right event with product data drawn from the shop's own database.

The older ecommerce code comes out as the new code goes in, since Google's instructions say the two should not run together. Enhanced Ecommerce is also switched on in the view's settings, where the checkout steps are named.

On most shops this is work for whoever built the site, measured in days rather than minutes. It is easiest to do well while the templates are open for other changes anyway.

Testing before trusting it

Place a few test orders and follow them through the reports: the right product IDs, the right prices, each checkout step in order, and one purchase per order.

Note the test order numbers, so they can be set aside when reading the month's figures, and take any test products off sale afterwards.

Reading the first weeks

The reports begin on the day the code goes live and show nothing from before. Give them a few weeks, so that one busy weekend does not decide anything.

Look first at the step that loses the most sessions, and at whether phones and computers lose people at the same place.

The counter-case

A shop taking a handful of orders a month will not have enough sessions to read the checkout steps with confidence. Its customers' emails and phone calls may say as much as the reports.

For such a shop, the time to add Enhanced Ecommerce is when the site is rebuilt or the tracking code changes anyway. The setup is then done once, and done properly.

For any shop with steady orders, the checkout figures are among the most useful things Analytics has offered. They are worth having set up by someone who knows the shop's code.

Setting up the new reports

  1. Move to Universal Analytics if the shop has not.
  2. Name the checkout steps in the view's settings.
  3. Send product detail views from every product page.
  4. Send cart additions and removals as they happen.
  5. Send each checkout step with its number.
  6. Send the purchase once, from the receipt page.
  7. Test with real orders before reading the figures.

Step five answers the owner's question. Product and cart figures describe interest; the checkout steps show exactly where a shopper who had decided to buy was lost.

What moving to the new tracking code involves, and what to check before and after the switch, is covered in Universal Analytics is out of beta.

Frequently asked questions

What is Enhanced Ecommerce?

A set of Google Analytics reports introduced in May that follow shoppers from seeing a product in a list, through its page and the cart, to each checkout step and the purchase.

Does it work with the classic tracking code?

No. It needs Universal Analytics, so a shop still on the classic code has to move to the new code first, then add the enhanced ecommerce code.

What does the shop have to send?

Product impressions and clicks, product page views, cart additions and removals, each checkout step, purchases and refunds, each with the product's ID, name, category, variant and price.

Why do the checkout steps matter most?

They show how many shoppers reached each step and where they left, which points to a late cost, a long form or a page that fails on phones.

Can it be added with one snippet?

Rarely. The code runs on product, cart, checkout and receipt pages, using data from the shop's own database, so it is work in the shop's templates.

Will the reports show past sales?

No. They begin when the code goes live, so allow a few weeks of shopping before drawing conclusions from the figures.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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