enhanced e-commerce tracking

Using Google Analytics to track your WooCommerce metrics is an excellent way to keep tabs on your conversions and goals. But if all you’re doing is adding the standard Google Analytics tracking code to your site and calling it a day, you’re missing out on a ton of helpful information that you can get with enhanced ecommerce tracking.

With enhanced ecommerce tracking for WooCommerce, you’ll be able to track even the smallest interactions with your products, such as how many people read your product details, add items to their carts, and even how many customers abandon their carts without purchasing anything.

In this article, we’ll give you a brief primer on customer tracking, in case you haven’t implemented it yet. Then we’ll tell you how to enable enhanced ecommerce tracking for WooCommerce in three simple steps. Let’s go shopping!

What is customer tracking?

First of all, let’s take a moment to dispel any negative connotations around the term ‘customer tracking’. It’s a practice that most sizable websites use to find out what’s working and what isn’t on their site. When it comes to ecommerce, the stakes are even higher since money is constantly changing hands.

The term itself might sound invasive, but as long as you don’t store any identifying data about your customers – which most platforms don’t – you’re all good. Plus, the benefits far outweigh the concerns when it comes to tracking. For example, you get:

  • Access to valuable information. Customer tracking enables you to peek into your clients’ behaviors and use that data to improve your site.
  • The ability to track your conversion rates. Google Analytics enables you to set specific goals and find out which users are helping you meet those goals. This, in turn, provides you with the perfect way to analyze your conversions.

Analytics are already an important part of most online stores, and enhanced ecommerce tracking enables anyone to accrue even more data about their customers. Especially if you know the most significant analytics metrics you need to follow. Now that you understand the importance of customer tracking, let’s go over how to implement the enhanced version for your WooCommerce store.

How to enable enhanced ecommerce tracking for WooCommerce (in three steps)

Google Analytics is already compatible with WooCommerce, but enhanced ecommerce tracking enables you to keep an eye on even more specific metrics.

For the feature to work, you’ll need to have a WooCommerce installation ready to go (and don’t forget to consider adding some extensions!). Plus, your WordPress site should already be integrated with Google Analytics. Once you’re ready, you can move on to the first step.

Step #1: Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics

To activate this feature, you’ll need to visit your Google Analytics Admin tab. Once you’re there, look for the Ecommerce Settings section:

Google Analytics' ecommerce settings section.

Then, turn on the Enable Ecommerce option if you haven’t already:

Enabling ecommerce tracking for Google Analytics.

After that, click on Next step and, on the following screen, make sure the Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting option is set to On:

Enabling enhanced ecommerce tracking for WooCommerce.

Finally, click Submit at the bottom of the page. That’s all we need to do here for now, so let’s head back to WordPress.

Step #2: Install and configure the Enhanced Ecommerce Google Analytics plugin

For this step, you’ll need to install and activate the Enhanced Ecommerce Google Analytics plugin on your site. Keep in mind that this particular plugin will only work if you already have WooCommerce installed.

Once you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll need to navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Integration in your dashboard. First off, look for the field that reads Google Analytics ID and add yours within. Here’s how to find out what yours is, just in case:

Adding your Google tracking ID to WordPress.

Scroll down until you find the option that reads Add Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking Code, and turn it on:

Adding the enhanced ecommerce tracking code to your site.

Now, the plugin will automatically start tracking performance for all your WooCommerce Simple products, including product impressions, clicks, and when someone adds or removes it from a cart, and more. Keep in mind – the plugin doesn’t support other types of products, such as subscriptions, out of the box. You can add that functionality manually if you’re up to it, or try out the plugin’s premium version, which does support more advanced products and report types.

Step #3: Review your new metrics on Google Analytics

Return to Google Analytics, and open up your Conversions tab. Inside you’ll find a few new additions, including Shopping Behavior, Checkout Behavior, Product Performance, and Sales Performance.

Let’s talk a little about these tabs, one by one. Shopping Behavior is all about providing you with a bird’s eye view of your store’s performance. It shows you shopping activity, products that have been added to carts, and how many people have abandoned the site during the checkout process:

Google Analytics' shopping behavior section.

Keep in mind that if you just enabled enhanced ecommerce tracking, you won’t see any activity yet.

Moving on, the Checkout Behavior tab provides you with more information about checkout abandonment. When you select it, you can see how many visitors are leaving at every step of the process:

The checkout behavior section.

Next, the Product Performance section is one of the most interesting parts of Google Analytics. It enables you to check your total revenue for a single product over a set period of time, keep a count of purchases, and even track your refunds:

The product performance tab.

Finally, the Sales Performance tab is concerned with sales data, including total revenue, how much of the money goes to taxes and shipping costs, and how much you’ve paid for refunds:

The sales performance section.

Each of these sections gives you excellent insight into how your store is doing. However, we recommend that you pay special attention to the Checkout Behavior section. It’s completely normal for any online store to have some users abandon the process midway, but if you start seeing abnormally high rates, there may be something wrong with your checkout screens.

Conclusion

Tracking your customers isn’t necessarily an invasive practice. Plus, the data it enables you to collect is vital to making smart decisions and improving your WooCommerce store. Using Google Analytics’ enhanced ecommerce tracking will enable you to peek into your customers’ behavior even more closely.

To enable it, you’ll first need to integrate Google Analytics with WordPress and set up WooCommerce. Then, simply follow these three steps:

  1. Enable enhanced ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics.
  2. Install and configure the Enhanced Ecommerce Google Analytics plugin.
  3. Review your new metrics in Google Analytics.
Do you have any questions about enhanced ecommerce tracking and how it can help you? Ask away in the comments section below!

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Karanbeer Singh
June 7, 2018 3:58 pm

John, I installed the plugin and did the same as you explained, but its not working for me. Its not tracking the revenue of the sales. I cant see the numbers of amount of dollars. Just wanna mention one thing that i am not adding the basic GA code through manually in the head tag. as its already in the plugin that its optional so i dont think so that its the issue, but can you please let me know what will be the issue here?comment image

Sebastian Agosta
October 12, 2017 7:35 pm

Great post, thanks for sharing. is there anyway to confirm that this is working prior to having a sale? I took a look at the GA code on my site and it seems to be the same as it was before. Shouldn’t some type of additional tracking code been added? Thanks!

Chad Warner
June 15, 2017 7:22 pm

John, is there a reason you like “Enhanced Ecommerce Google Analytics Plugin for WooCommerce” better than the WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration plugin by WooCommerce?

Tom Ewer
June 16, 2017 3:13 pm
Reply to  Chad Warner

Hi Chad! The WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration plugin is another popular option, but it doesn’t quite meet our high standards for plugin quality. If you take a look at the downloads page, you’ll see quite a few negative user reviews pointing out various issues with the tool.

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