How To Use Google Analytics Ecommerce Reports Part 1: Overview

At first glance, Google Analytics can be very overwhelming. There are what seems like a million different metrics and charts to look at, but which ones are the most important for your website goals? It’s easy to say all of them, but as an ecommerce business, there is one section of Google Analytics that you will want to be watching regularly: the Ecommerce Report.

Finding the Ecommerce Report in Google Analytics

On the left-hand side of your Google Analytics dashboard, there are several categories listed out. Click on ‘Conversions’ and all of the ecommerce options will appear. This reveals each specific report available especially for ecommerce websites. You can pick from Overview, Shopping Behavior, Checkout Behavior, Product Performance, Sales Performance, Product List Performance, and Marketing. This is the first article of a 7-part series that will dive deeper into each available ecommerce report in Google Analytics, so we’ll be starting with the Overview report.

Ecommerce Overview Report

This is where you’ll find all the most important information on your online store. Just like any other Google Analytics report, you can look at your weekly or lifetime performance, or any period in between. You also have the ability to segment the data based on the type of traffic or user. Keep in mind that this segmentation is available on each report type.

Right up at the top, you can find revenue, ecommerce conversion rate, transactions, and average order value for the time period that you have chosen. Also, see how your marketing efforts are doing. Under ‘Marketing’ you can see how many transactions used coupon codes or were completed through an affiliate link. For more details on individual campaign performance, look at the Marketing Report.

The overview will also highlight revenue by product, brand, and product category if you have enhanced ecommerce set up. You can see more details about specific products in the Product Performance Report and Product List Performance Report.

What are the KPIs to look at in the Ecommerce Overview Report?

Because this is the overview, all of the metrics presented are pretty essential. On the business side, revenue and transactions are going to be very important in determining business success. On the website side, ecommerce conversion rate determines how well marketing efforts and the website overall are performing.

When should I use the Ecommerce Overview Report?

This report is a great page to look at on a more regular basis, such as daily or weekly, to get the topline numbers for your ecommerce store’s performance. If you’re in a position where you need to report top products or revenue information to your team, or you need to know these numbers for yourself, this is the quickest way to capture those numbers.