In recent discussions, we’ve been talking about Google Analytics 4 for Tour Operators and how that informs business decisions, the new perks of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and any action steps needed in this changeover from Universal Analytics (UA). Now, we are going to dig deeper into GA4 eCommerce tracking and how to optimise sales funnels and reduce cart abandonment.
GA4’s enhanced eCommerce tracking can help your team identify bottlenecks or diversions in your sales funnels and improve conversions. Having more visibility on user behaviour across devices and the ability to collect user-centric data gives us more insights to dial-in the buying journey. In addition, Google now tracks engagement rate, replacing bounce rate that includes a broader range of interactions.
Sales funnel indications found in Google Analytics 4
Evaluating the buyer funnel with data from GA4 clues us into the visitor’s product awareness, loyalty, and other considerations before purchasing.
- Take, for example, to gauge awareness; we review the traffic source—are they new visitors, returning (direct traffic), or being directed from a retargeting campaign?
- Next, to assess the visitor’s interest, we analyse page views and time spent on pages.
- Then, to understand considerations for purchase, we inspect the pages that lead them to conversions, such as product pages, FAQ pages, and terms and conditions.
- Lastly, to audit conversions, we head to the goals and events section to dive into eCommerce tracking.
Some of these analytic types and tracking terms are not the most intuitive for gathering the type of data you desire, but it’s all here with the improved event-based tracking model. GA4’s more in-depth tracking across devices (mobile, tablet, and desktop) will help your teams tailor and target future marketing campaigns most effectively. And, certainly, your Success Manager is here to translate any of these foreign terms so you get the most out of your data informing all business decisions.
Palisis customers, here are the parameters that can be tracked:
- Route code and name
- Passenger category and quantity of tickets
- Priceplan
- Discount code or voucher code or price reduction amount
- Price per ticket and basket value
- Currency and payment method
For a more hands-on, backend explanation, customers head to the Palisis help centre for the step-by-step support article.
How to identify drop-off points in the buyer journey
To troubleshoot drop-off points, removal from carts, and cart abandonment, we are going to review a few key areas that will colour in why this may be occurring. Let’s start by asking the following questions and reviewing the data.
- What can we gather by looking at the traffic source? Is there a traffic source/s that has increased drop-off rates?
- Is there a particular location that continues to have low conversions?
- Are you noticing that a specific user device type has a commonality to drop-offs? This can help explain a defect in the buying journey related to a device.
- By reviewing page speed and load times, we can identify if users find individual pages frustrating, resulting in drop-offs.
- How far into the checkout process do they make it? Are you asking too many questions, requiring unnecessary personal data—suggesting a better checkout flow?
- Are products being added and removed implying uncertainty and indecisiveness around which products might be the most relevant or best fit—suggesting better descriptions are needed?
These are just a few ideas to get your brain thinking about looking closer at the data to unearth kinks in the purchasing process that may be creating hangups for your potential customers. Lastly, a helpful exercise is looking at user flows, following the potential sales funnel versus the funnel they take. Let’s look at these funnel flows:
In case you missed our four takeaways that everyone should know about Google Analytics 4, browse this article as well. Our dev team is strategically recording as many data points to make analysing the information GA4 makes available to us so that we can evaluate user behaviour flows and drop-off points for course correction, creating the best user experience and sales funnels for revenue.