Ecommerce Analytics: A Guide to the Most Popular Platforms and Tools

Introduction

A lot goes into successfully running - and growing - an ecommerce store. From selecting an ecommerce platform to setting up analytics and tracking to choosing the right platforms for customer acquisition, there are a lot of decisions to make - and, once you're up and running, a lot of data to analyze to evaluate your strategy and make sure you're on the right path.  

In fact, if you have an ecommerce business, you know that ecommerce goes way beyond just online sales. It encompasses marketing and advertising, customer loyalty and support, logistics and fulfillment, additional sales channels like subscriptions or marketplaces, and much more.  

That's why we've put together this four-chapter guide to some of the most popular platforms and tools used by ecommerce merchants - from Shopify to Google Analytics to Facebook, Instagram, Mailchimp, Klaviyo and more. Read on to learn what these platforms can offer merchants - and, critically, how to track your performance with the data they provide.

Chapter 1: Ecommerce data by platform

Many aspects of your ecommerce site go into keeping your business running (not to mention growing) - and that makes your choice of ecommerce platform important. But, as you probably know, your ecommerce platform goes beyond just processing orders. It also helps you measure your performance, providing (at least some of) the data you need to understand how you're doing and identify future opportunities.  In the first chapter of our guide, we’ll do a deep-dive into some of the most popular ecommerce platforms, go over the pros and cons and explore what they offer in terms of ecommerce analytics and reporting.  

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Chapter 2: Google Analytics and ecommerce tracking

In a nutshell, Google Analytics helps businesses better understand the traffic coming to their websites and the behavior of users when they land there. Particularly relevant for ecommerce merchants, Google Analytics also offers a higher level of reporting called Enhanced Ecommerce, which allows for additional data collection and analysis of an online business’s metrics.  In Chapter 2 of our guide, we'll go over what additional capabilities you can unlock with Enhanced Ecommerce, how to set it up, and how to use the reports to drive your business forward.  

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Chapter 3: Social media advertising and ecommerce

Social media advertising can provide ecommerce businesses with a great return on their marketing investment. While some advertising methods can take a long time to yield results, a successful social media campaign can start to bring in leads immediately. But in order to execute social media advertising successfully, you need to know how to analyze and understand the analytics.  In Chapter 3, we explore social media advertising options for ecommerce merchants, compare Facebook ads vs. Instagram ads, go over campaign best practices and discuss how to make sense of all the data.  

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Chapter 4: Email automation tools

Email marketing can be huge for ecommerce - in fact, upwards of 90% of people actually like to receive emails from brands they love. Email marketing also allows you to develop and nurture relationships with your customers - bringing with it huge benefits when it comes to customer loyalty and retention, lifetime value and more.  In the last chapter of our guide, we’ll go into why email marketing is so important for ecommerce businesses, best practices and tools for email automation, and performance reporting for email marketing.  

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