Now, you can extend the Magento experience with Google Universal Analytics extension! The extension can sync well with all the Magento CE versions (since 1.4) and all the Magento EE versions (since 1.10). The new version of Magento Connect flaunts customer group tracking, number of orders per customer tracking, scroll depth tracking and first order date tracking within Google Universal Analytics. Without any template change, it is easy to enable e-commerce tracking for your Magneto Stores
Why Connect Magento with Google Analytics?
Keeping a track of visitors and sales allows your company to understand the manner in which it is growing (through significant metrics like conversion rate, lead rate, campaign results). Running a successful e-commerce store is possible only when you have the right and relevant data to drive decisions. Google offers Google Analytics to keep an eye on the traffic and conversion ratio of your website. Website admins and webmasters have access to this information. For a Magento store, Google Analytics offer:
- Visitor Acquisition analytics
- Conversion funnel analytics and
- Site search analytics
Magento offers two kinds of tracking:
- E-commerce Tracking: This lists all the customers who have made purchases along with the name of sold items
- Page View Tracking: This shows the origin from where the visitors landed on your page.
How to set up the Magento-Google Analytics meeting?
Once you sign up with Google Analytics, they will send across the Google Analytics account number. You should store this number safely, as you would be using it for configuring Magento later.
Go to your Magento store and configure Google Analytics tracking. This can be done through the Admin area. Find the Google API option through the following steps: System à Configuration à Sales à Google API. Reach the Google Analytics option and expand it. You can ‘Enable’ it by choosing the ‘Yes’ option on the drop-down menu. Once you enter the Google Analytics account number in the Account Number box and click ‘Save Config’ button, the Google Analytics code would be added to your website. Here is a flow line to track the steps:
Magento store à Admin area à System à Configuration à Sales à Google API à Expand Google Analytics option à Choose “Yes” and “Enable” à Enter Google Analytics account number à Save Config à Google Analytics Code has been added to your website à Done!
Don’t embed Google Analytics code into the Magento theme file directly!
One of the common mistakes that developers tend to make while bringing Magento and Google Analytics together is to embed the Google Analytics codes directly into the Magento theme files. Though this works and you would be able to observe traffic-data on the Google Analytics interface, it is not the correct way to go.
Developers generally embed the code by editing the footer.phtml file in the folder: app/design/frontend/default/[your_theme]/template/page/html. When you follow this method, while the visitors’ data will be collected, the e-commerce data will not be gathered.
To make sure Google Analytics knows that your profile is an e-commerce site, you will need to go through the Google Analytics interface. After selecting account for the site, you will select the ‘Edit’ option on the list of Account profiles (make sure you do not click on the reports). Choose the other ‘Edit’ button to the right on the first box named ‘Main Website Profile Information’. A page showcasing the profile information will come up. Under the subheading ‘E-Commerce Website’, choose “Yes, an E-Commerce Site”.
Even though you can embed the JS code onto your website when prompted after this step, you can avoid the trouble by simply noting down Web Property ID of the profile. Enter the Magento administration interface and choose the ‘System’ option. Move to ‘Configuration’ and then ‘Google API’. Here, select ‘Google Analytics’, enable it and enter the Web Property ID.
Ensure that you have updated your version of Magento since there are many reports on incorrect tracking of e-commerce data by Magento versions older than 1.2.