Common Analytics Tools Used in E-Commerce

Google Analytics
My favorite e-commerce analytics tool is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is free and can be incorporated into many e-commerce sites. I find it has the clearest reports and the most useful insights to help my e-commerce site grow. Some of the items you can track in Google Analytics are: how many website visitors you receive, where the traffic comes from, how long visitors stay on your site, the top pages visited on your site, and conversion rate. These are just a few. Anyone can get started with Google Analytics- you do not need to be an expert here although there are many services available if you want to create more complex reporting and insights.
Shopify Analytics:
Shopify is by far the most popular website hosting platform, and its analytics abilities are one of the reasons why. Your level of access to analytics is dependent on your subscription plan, but all Shopify stores will give you recent activity, sales (if applicable), and website speed, and it also offers some insights on how you can improve your performance metrics.
Social Media Analytics:
Social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik-Tok can provide additional insights. Most offer analytics tools themselves, and there are also add-ons to give you better analysis such as Sprout Social and Hootsuite. When reviewing analytics from social media accounts you will want to look at different metrics than your website: brand awareness, impressions, applause rate, and referrals are a few.
Brand Awareness: Measures the attention your brand received across all social media platforms
Impressions: The number of times your content is displayed to your target audience
Applause Rate: The number of approval actions such as likes, mentions, retweets, or favorites that a post receives
Referrals: The number of times someone was guided to your website from another site
Last, but certainly not least, is email marketing. A lot of work goes into creating email marketing campaigns and it is important to understand if the effort was worth the results.
The best way to track email analytics is through email marketing platforms such as MailChimp or Constant Contact. CRM tools like Hubspot and Salesforce also can track email campaigns. The top metrics to track for email campaigns are open rate, click-to-open rate, unsubscribe rate, and conversion rate.
Open Rate: The percentage of users that open your email campaign.
Click-To-Open Rate: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links in an email.
Unsubscribe Rate: Percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from your send list after opening an email
Conversion Rate: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link in your email and took a desired action, like making a purchase

There's a lot to track, analyze and act on- but it is worth the time spent! Learning from campaigns can help make each additional campaign more of a success. If you need help planning or analyzing a campaign, we at Point of Sale Strategies are here to help!