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July 17, 2006
Special E-Commerce Article: The Promise of Product Merchandising
Our last newsletter included a survey which asked people what kind of site they have, and as of the date of this writing a whooping 75% of those who answered have an e-commerce site! Taking that into account, let's discuss the Product Merchandising section of Google Analytics, which shows up under the E-Commerce Analysis tab.
The Product Keyword Correlation report is especially exciting: this shows you directly inside the thought process of your customers! This report correlates product purchases on the site back to the original keywords used in a search. So this answers the question when customers search for your products, did they search under the product's brand name, a description, an attribute? What were they looking for? Once you understand this, you can directly address the customer's needs in their own language. This report can also be used as an idea-generator for PPC keyword discovery.
The Product Performance report offers a wealth of information, including the number of items sold, the total revenue, the average price, and the average order quantity for each product you sell online. This makes it possible to do very interesting things, such as testing site elements or promotions to see how they impact specific products. If you owned a candle store, assume in June you sold 1.2 candles per average transaction. Then in July you launched a promotion where you could get 3 candles for $29.95, when individual candles sell for $12 apiece. During this promotion you sell an average of 1.9 candles per average transaction, which you tracked with the Product Performance report.
The Product Categories report neatly shows product categories, product names, and product SKUs. This makes insightful observations on online customer behavior much easier - perhaps in a brick-and-mortar store you know that category A brings people into the store, but they tend to actually buy the most from category B. For example, assume you had a website that sold women's shoes and you knew that women were drawn to your site by new sandal styles, but most of the time bought business shoes. For a promotion that aims to bring in new visitors, you would feature sandals. For a promotion that aims to bring in repeat customers, you would feature business shoes.
You could make the customer's experience better if you knew where most of your customers are coming from, and the Product Country Correlation report helps you to do just that by showing you how popular each product is in each country. Today's global economy and the internet make international shopping easier then it's ever been, and this report can help you take advantage of those opportunities. Perhaps you notice that you are drawing some orders from Germany? A few well placed ads and another language option with popular products could really pay off.
The Product City, Region Correlation report shows you what products are popular in what cities, in USA and internationally. This report lists the number of items sold, the total revenue, the average price, and the average order quantity for each product you sell online. So if you sell food items and most of your customers are from the north then carbonated drinks would be called 'pop', but if most of your customers are from the south you would call them 'soda'. If you find out most of your customers are across country, you might try a promotion that reduces shipping and handling costs.
You can find out that the people who directly type in your website's URL are mostly buying that lamp that was featured in a local newspaper, but those people that find you through a Google search are buying something else with the Product Source Correlation report. This report shows you just how popular each product is with customers referred from a particular source. This is especially useful to create landing pages from referral sources. The Product Source Correlation report tells you that people coming from referralX site are interested in a certain product, so use that information to create a landing page that features links to the products that you know they are probably looking for.
The Product Merchandising section of Google Analytics in the E-Commerce Analysis tab has a whole fountain of useful information that a cunning e-commerce merchant can turn into money and a more loyal customer base. For more tips on how to use Google Analytics to make your company more profitable, tune in to our free "Learn How to turn Google Analytics into Pure Profit" Webinar.
