Ecommerce has exploded over the last decade, with global ecommerce sales projected to hit $7.4 trillion by 2025 according to eMarketer. This digital commerce revolution has been accelerated further by the pandemic. For online retailers, having a laser focus on data analytics is now necessary to find and engage customers, optimize operations and boost growth. This report provides a comprehensive guide to ecommerce analytics – types of analytics tools, metrics, use cases, implementation tips and an evaluation of the leading solutions in 2024.
Introduction to Ecommerce Analytics
Ecommerce analytics refers to measuring, analyzing and reporting key business data related to online sales activities. This can include:
- Website traffic, conversions and user behavior
- Multi-channel marketing analytics
- Sales performance – orders, revenue, margins
- Customer lifetime value metrics
- Inventory and supply chain analytics
- Competitor benchmarking
With ecommerce analytics, retailers can gain data-driven insights to make smart decisions on everything from marketing spend to product assortment and pricing. It enables a customer-centric approach to growing an online business.
According to Walker Sands research, the top areas where ecommerce companies are planning to invest in analytics and technology are:
- Conversion rate optimization (68%)
- Customer analytics (65%)
- Personalization (57%)
- Marketing attribution (55%)
- Loyalty and retention (50%)
This indicates the growing importance of data analytics across all aspects of ecommerce.
Types of Ecommerce Analytics Tools
There is a wide range of ecommerce analytics solutions available today. They can be broadly classified into:
Web Analytics
Tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics provide insights into your website performance – traffic sources, visitor behavior, conversions etc.
Business Intelligence (BI)
BI tools like Looker enable deeper analysis of business metrics – orders, revenue, margins, inventory etc.
Marketing Analytics
These tools like Amplitude analyze performance of marketing campaigns across channels – email, paid search, social etc.
Ecommerce Analytics Suites
All-in-one solutions like Shopify Analytics that provide both web and business analytics tailored for ecommerce.
Customer Analytics
Focused on understanding customer behavior through techniques like session replay and journey mapping. Examples – Pendo, SessionCam.
Tag Management
Used to manage deployment of tracking tags from various tools on your site. Example – Google Tag Manager
Open Source Analytics
Free open source software like Matomo that can be self-hosted, providing more customization options.
There is crossover in capabilities between these categories, with leading platforms offering an integrated suite of analytics. Let‘s look at some popular tools in each category and key features.
Web Analytics
This covers analytics related to your website traffic and visitor behavior. Key capabilities include:
Google Analytics
The most widely used web analytics platform offering a free version. Key features:
- In-depth reports – traffic sources, geo, devices, behavior etc.
- Cohort analysis
- Ecommerce and conversion tracking
- Integrates with Google marketing ecosystem
Adobe Analytics
A leading enterprise web analytics tool part of Adobe Experience Cloud. Key capabilities:
- Cross-channel customer journey analysis
- Algorithmic attribution modeling
- APIs for integration
- Powerful segmentation
Matomo
A free, open source alternative offering web analytics. Benefits include:
- Own your data without third-party tracking
- Available on-premise or cloud
- Plugin ecosystem for extensibility
- Customizable dashboards and APIs
Key Metrics
Web analytics provides insight into metrics like:
- Traffic volume, source distribution
- Page views, bounce rates
- Referrals, campaigns, channels
- Site search keywords
- Forms and funnel performance
- Engagement metrics – time on site, scroll depth etc.
These help optimize content and improve website performance.
Business Intelligence
BI analytics relates to ecommerce performance – orders, revenue, margins, inventory etc. Key solutions:
Shopify Analytics
Offers built-in automated reports on sales, revenue, traffic sources, abandoned carts and more.
Looker
A flexible BI platform for ecommerce analytics using SQL and modeling workflow. Benefits:
- Data modeling for easy analysis
- Customizable dashboards
-scheduled reports and alerting capabilities - APIs enable embedding analytics in apps
Metrics
Key ecommerce metrics provided:
- Sales volume, average order value, revenue
- Revenue and order trends
- Monthly/weekly seasonality
- Cohort analysis of customer lifecycle
- Customer and product segmentation
- Inventory levels, stockouts
Enable data-driven decisions on inventory, supply chain and promotions.
Marketing Analytics
Marketing analytics focuses on measuring performance of initiatives across channels like:
Google Analytics
Integrates with Google Ads, YouTube Ads, Google AdSense etc. to provide campaign analytics.
Adobe Analytics
Connects with Adobe Campaign, Experience Platform and Marketo to enable marketing attribution.
Mixpanel
Focused on event and user analytics across web, mobile and marketing channels. Benefits:
- Track any custom action as an event
- Funnel and retention analysis
- User profiles and segmentation
- Integration with 100+ marketing platforms
Metrics
- Spend, impressions, reach for each channel
- Clicks, CTR, CPC, CPA etc.
- Multi-touch attribution modeling
- ROAS, LTV for campaigns
- Audience demographics and behavior
Optimize budgets across digital channels and campaigns using these insights.
Customer Analytics
This focuses on understanding customer experiences and journeys.
SessionCam
Records visitor sessions via video and heatmaps to analyze behavior. Helps find issues causing cart abandonment etc.
Pendo
Tracks and analyzes how customers use your site or app. Features:
- Behavioral analytics and user segmentation
- Surveys, polls and NPS
- Guidance and messaging
- Analytics embedded real-time in product
Metrics
- Visitor session replays show user experience
- Journey and funnel analytics
- Heatmaps visualize on-page interactions
- Sentiment analysis via surveys
- Churn analysis
Improve customer experience and loyalty through these CX insights.
This summarizes the spectrum of ecommerce analytics solutions and use cases. When assessing tools, prioritize capabilities that align with your business goals and KPIs. Now let‘s go deeper into the leading analytics platforms.
Top Ecommerce Analytics Platforms Compared
With the foundations covered, let‘s do a detailed comparison of the most popular ecommerce analytics tools.
| Tool | Key Capabilities | Pricing | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics | In-depth web analytics, integration with Google marketing products | Free version available. Paid plans start at $150/mo | Smaller ecommerce sites already using Google tools |
| Shopify Analytics | Built-in web and business analytics for Shopify merchants | Included with Shopify plans | Shopify merchants |
| Adobe Analytics | Enterprise web and marketing analytics, Attribution, APIs | Premium pricing customized per customer | Large and complex ecommerce organizations |
| Amplitude | Product analytics focused on customer journeys, retention and engagement | $249/mo to $999/mo based on events tracked | SaaS ecommerce products, mobile apps |
| Looker | Cloud data analytics and BI platform | Starts at $2,000/mo | Sophisticated BI analytics and modeling |
| Mixpanel | Event analytics across web, mobile, and marketing channels | $999/mo for standard plan | Customer journey and conversion funnel analysis |
| Kissmetrics | Cohort analysis, user segmentation, multi-channel attribution | Custom pricing | Analytics across marketing channels beyond web |
| Heap | Automated analytics capturing all user actions on web/mobile | $359/mo to $1,799/mo based on events | Ease of implementation via auto-capture |
| Domo | Integrated BI with pre-built analytics for retail & ecommerce | Custom pricing | Retailers who want BI spanning POS, supply chain etc. |
| Matomo | Open source product analytics alternative to GA | Free self-hosted option. Cloud plans start at $19/mo | Total data ownership, customization |
This summarizes the key players across web, marketing, business intelligence and customer analytics. When evaluating tools focus on aligning capabilities to your analytics maturity level and specific business goals.
Now let‘s look at the crucial metrics and KPIs provided by these platforms.
Key Ecommerce Analytics Metrics and Reports
Ecommerce analytics solutions track a vast array of metrics across your business. Here are some of the most important reports and KPIs to focus on:
Traffic and Acquisition Reports
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Channels: Traffic source breakdown – direct, organic search, social, referral, email, paid campaigns etc. Helps allocate marketing budget most effectively.
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Geography: Visitor breakdown by country and region. Identify your key markets.
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Referrals: Top sites and pages driving traffic to you. Fuel partnerships and mentions.
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Landing Pages: Traffic volume to landing pages and campaigns. Shows how entry points convert.
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Keywords: Top keywords driving organic traffic. Optimize content.
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Ad Performance: Impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC for campaigns. Tune spending.
Behavior and Conversion Reports
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Site Search: Popular search keywords and conversions. Improve discoverability.
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Page Analysis: Page views, bounce rates, and flow. Pinpoint usability issues.
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Paths: Top click paths taken by visitors. Identify opportunities in site navigation.
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Funnels: Conversion rates across steps in key funnels – signups, checkouts etc. Minimize drop off.
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Forms: Submissions and failures for online forms. Fix issues reducing conversions.
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Scrolling: Scroll depth showing engagement on pages. Demonstrate interest in content.
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Exit Pages: Top pages visitors leave from. Assess potential pain points.
Customer Experience Reports
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Session Replay: Watch anonymized visitor session videos. Identify usability pain points.
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Click Maps: Heatmaps showing links clicked across site. Demonstrate engagement.
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Surveys: Feedback scores and NPS. Gauge customer sentiment.
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Churn Analysis: Retention rates, repeat purchase rates by cohort. Focus retention efforts on at-risk users.
Ecommerce Sales Reports
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Revenue: Overall site revenue and growth trends. Set targets.
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Orders: Total orders and average order value. Assess order volume.
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Products: Product/category sales, views, CTR. Optimize catalog.
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Promotions: Performance of coupon codes and sales. Tune promotional calendar.
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Inventory: Stock levels by warehouse. Avoid stockouts and write-offs.
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Customers: Cohorts by lifetime value, order frequency etc. Focus on VIPs.
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Checkout: Conversion rates and abandonment rate for checkout process. Remove friction.
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Refunds: Return volume and reasons. Identify product/service issues.
These cover the primary reports and KPIs spanning traffic, digital marketing, sales, and customer analytics. Choosing the metrics aligned with your goals helps build the right reporting foundation.
Implementing Ecommerce Analytics Best Practices
Now that we‘ve explored key capabilities of analytics tools and metrics, let‘s look at some best practices for implementation:
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Start early: Implement web analytics even before launch to track progress. Don‘t wait till after the site is live.
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Focus on key reports: Track only actionable KPIs tied to goals, not vanity metrics that lack context.
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Map customer journeys: Model multi-channel customer journeys to identify optimization opportunities.
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Integrate tools: Connect your analytics platform with your payment system, CRM, email service provider and other digital tools.
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Tag transactions: Use tags to tie analytics to your transaction system, capturing revenue data.
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Build dashboards: Create customized analytics dashboards for different users – marketing, product, finance etc. aligned to their goals.
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Leverage segments: Divide users into meaningful cohorts for targeted analysis and personalization.
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Automate reporting: Schedule key reports to be emailed to stakeholders on a cadence.
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Focus on actions: Foster a data-driven culture using insights to drive tangible strategy changes.
With the right foundations and processes, ecommerce analytics can enable smart decision making across the business.
Driving Value from Analytics
Here are some additional tips for driving maximum value from your analytics investment:
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Connect data sources – Unify your analytics tools with other data systems – CRM, email, PoS etc.
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Leverage attribution – Use multi-touch attribution to model impact of each channel and campaign.
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Monitor competitively – Build an external competitive intelligence process fueled by analytics.
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Personalize experiences – Use behavioral analytics to segment and tailor messaging per cohort.
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Enable self-serve access – Let employees access standardized reports without relying on analysts.
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Build automated alerts – Configure alerts when KPIs exceed thresholds for immediate visibility.
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Visualize data creatively – Leverage techniques like scatter plots, heat maps and histograms beyond standard reports.
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Conduct testing – Continuously test new segments, content and campaigns.
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Sharpen forecasting – Combine predictive analytics with business metrics for sharper forecasting.
With the massive amount of data available, it is important to stay focused on deriving actionable insights tied to specific outcomes.
Ecommerce Analytics Innovations on the Horizon
The ecommerce analytics landscape continues to see rapid evolution with new innovations:
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Deeper personalization – Segmenting users based on behavior and predicting what content or promotions will convert best for each cohort.
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Advanced attribution – Shifting from last-click to data-driven cross-channel attribution models to quantify marketing ROI accurately.
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Journey analytics – Analyzing entire omni-channel customer journeys to optimize each touchpoint.
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Real-time data – Processing analytics data in real-time vs daily batches to enable instant reactions.
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Prescriptive analytics – Machine learning led recommendations on best actions needed based on analytics.
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Alternative data – Incorporating new data sources like social media feeds, reviews and IoT data.
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Democratization – Enabling more self-serve access to analytics instead of relying on experts.
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Experience optimization – Connecting analytics directly to testing and site personalization engines.
The pace of analytics innovation shows no signs of slowing down. Adopting capabilities that give a competitive edge will be key for ecommerce success.
Recommendations – Choosing the Right Tool
Here is a quick guide on how to select the best platform based on your ecommerce business profile:
Emerging Ecommerce Company
Focus on free tools like Google Analytics for web traffic and Google Ads for campaign analytics. Grafana is a good open source data visualization option.
Small Shopify Store
Leverage the built-in Shopify Analytics for unified insights. Add email marketing and social media analytics.
Fast-Growing D2C Brand
Consider analytics suites like Amplitude or Mixpanel that provide product usage analytics, journeys and cohorts.
Large Multi-Channel Retailer
Adopt enterprise platforms like Adobe Analytics for full omni-channel analytics and machine learning capabilities.
All Ecommerce Companies
Complement your core web analytics with marketing attribution tools, customer analytics like surveys and session replay, and tag managers like GTM.
Assess your analytics maturity, long term goals and internal analytics user personas. Prioritize scalable platforms that empower your teams with actionable insights.
Key Takeaways
With the exponential growth in ecommerce, having a 360-degree view of your digital business through analytics is now table stakes. Ecommerce analytics enables data-driven customer-centric decisions across the value chain. By leveraging the breadth of tools available and honing processes, retailers can build analytics into their DNA. With the innovations on the horizon, embedding intelligence everywhere via analytics will separate the market winners from the rest.