Google Analytics™ Third Edition

Chapter 6. E-commerce Concepts and Methods

One of the most common reasons people use Google Analytics is that they have a web site that sells products and they want to know how to improve sales, what brings people to the site, and what users do while on the site. But what if you're just getting started and someone has said to you that you need to have a product web site if you plan to have a presence on the Web? And what if those same people said you should also have Google Analytics, even though you're not quite sure what e-commerce is or what analytics are?

For all you know e-commerce and analytics could be some strange diseases that you really don't want, but that your competition would like for you to have.

It's not that dire, of course. E-commerce is all about selling products on the Web. And as you've probably figured out by now, analytics are about measuring the visitors to your web site and their behaviors. The trick, though, is making the two go hand in hand.

What Works in E-commerce

What works in e-commerce?

That's really a loaded question. And to be completely frank, it's a question to which there is no exact answer. In the past, some said you would never be able to sell anything more than books on the Web. Others said there was no way you could put a giant flea market on the Web and expect to make money. Amazon and eBay proved them wrong.

What works in e-commerce is whatever there is a demand for. That's an oversimplification, of course. You could expand that simple statement ...