Discover what is Google Analytics and how to install this most popular web analytics tool into your PrestaShop store.
When you have an online store, you need to keep a close eye on how it performs. Such advanced ecommerce platforms like PrestaShop have in-built ecommerce analytics tools, yet they may not be enough. In this case, we strongly recommend you to install a free web analytics tool – Google Analytics.
Read on and learn what is Google Analytics and what use can it bring to you as a store owner. Also, get detailed step-wise instruction on how to install Google Analytics into PrestaShop and what additional PrestaShop modules can you install to enhance its capabilities.
Table of contents:
What is Google Analytics?
Why does your PrestaShop store need Google Analytics?
How to install Google Analytics for PrestaShop
Top 5 PrestaShop Google Analytics modules
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool, launched back in 2005. It is aimed at tracking various types of website user activities, like a number of visitors, sessions duration, source of traffic, bounce rate and so on, and visualizing the gathered data into clear and comprehensive charts and graphs. At their Google Analytics’ account, a user will find a general, dash-board type performance overview for every time period as well as specific in-depth reports, aimed at professionals. In addition to this, it is a very intuitive tool, so there is no need in the lengthy introduction into how to use Google Analytics. These capabilities make Google Analytics a valuable ally of every website and online business owner.
Apart from being an impressive stand-alone tool, Google Analytics can be integrated with a number of other services, like Google Ads, a native Google advertising platform, in order to obtain a clear insight into how well your advertising campaign performs and how engaged your customers are. Moreover, Google Analytics has recently added the Android and IOS mobile apps performance and engagement tracking feature. Since Google Analytics leverages an immense amount of sensitive information, it implements sophisticated data security measures to protect their users’ data from hackers.
Not sure you need to sign up for Google Analytics? Read on and learn why every store owner needs this instrument.
Why does your PrestaShop store need Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is an essential instrument for every online business, large and small. Find out what can you do with Google Analytics and 7 essential questions a store owner will get answers to.
1.Who are your customers? Where are they from?
Knowing your customer is the key to determining correctly what they need. Google Analytics lets you acquire extensive visitor and customer data, like their age, gender, interests, where are they located, how much time do they spend on your store. You even get the information about the devices they use to access your webstore, which may prove as a critical piece of information for improving your store user experience and navigation functionality.
2. Which is your retail conversion rate?
As a store owner, you obviously have your sales reports to show you which goods or services are selling better than the others, yet his information is not sufficient to get a full picture of how your online store performs. Instead, there is a more precise metric to determine the “health” of your business – a retail conversion rate, and with Google Analytics, you get the most precise and up-to-date performance data to calculate it.
3. What content brings you more traffic?
In your Google Analytics account, you will find metrics like the number of visitors, new and returning visitors, time spent on the page and its bounce rate. These indexes are indispensable if you want to identify how well your content is received and which pages or article gain more attention from your audience.
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Even in the most successful of stores, there are pages and items that are less popular than the other. With Google Analytics installed at your PrestaShop store, you will be able to promptly detect the falling popularity of this or that page and take corrective actions to improve the situation.
5. How well is your store optimized for mobile devices?
With Google Analytics stats, uncover how many customers visit your store from mobile phones, what devices do they use and what pages do they view, and, most importantly, the bounce rate for mobile devices, which will give you an insight into how mobile-friendly is your store.
6. At what point do your visitors leave your webstore?
There is a bounce rate metric in Google Analytics which stands for the percentage of single-page visits, or how often do visitors leave your PrestaShop store without browsing it further. Comparing the bounce rates of each page, you can easily determine which ones are the least engaging to your customers.
7. At what point do your customers abandon their shopping carts?
Google Analytics features allows to see at which checkout step exactly do your customer abandon their shopping carts. If your PrestaShop webstore has a multiple-step checkout, then it is critical to be aware of which one is the weakest spot of this system.
How to install Google Analytics for PrestaShop: a step-by-step guide
Do you want to start a Google Analytics account for your PrestaShop store? Follow this step-wise instruction on how to set up Google Analytics.
Step #1: create a Google account, if you do not have one.
Although Google Mail is considered the most popular email provider around the world, there is a chance that you do use another, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. Unfortunately, to set up a Google Analytics account, the native Google email is required.
Another piece of advice – even if you or the person who will be responsible for your PrestaShop Analytics have a personal Google account, it will wiser to create a new one solely for Google Analytics. Firstly, this way your personal matters will not get mixed up with work, and if a person leaves the company, they will not take your valuable Analytics with them.
Step #2: navigate to https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/ and press Start for free in the upper right corner.
Step #3: press the Sign up button in the Start using Google Analytics section.
Step #4: fill in the following fields with New Account information.
- What would you like to track?
The options are – Website and Mobile app. You need to select the first, but if you have a mobile app as well, you can later set up Google Analytics for it as well to get a full picture.
- Account name
Fill in the name of your account. Since Google allows to have up to 100 Analytics accounts, it is better to give it a clear distinct name to avoid further confusion.
- Website URL
Paste the link to the website you want to track.
- Industry Category
Select the industry your company belongs to from this list. In case you do not find yourself among the listed categories, choose Other option.
- Reporting Time Zone
Defines the day’s boundaries for your future reports by selecting the time zone you do business.
- Data Sharing Settings
Google Analytics gathers a massive amount of data for your use and keeps it strictly confidential from other users. However, this information can be of practical value for the service itself. In the Data Sharing Settings, you determine the purposes for which you permit Google Analytics to use the data collected for you.
- Google products & services – share your data to be utilized for further Google products and services’ improvement.
- Benchmarking – your data will be anonymously contributed to calculate and understand global trends.
- Technical support – you allow your data to be accessed in case of technical issues with the account.
- Account specialists – provide access to your data to your own sales analysts or the ones from Google Analytics so that they could give you recommendation on your strategy optimization and improvement.
In case you are hesitant and want to make sure your data will not be used against you, follow the link below to learn how exactly Google safeguards your data.
Step #5: press Get Tracking ID.
Press Accept at the following fields with Terms of Service Agreement and Additional Terms Applicable to Data Shared with Google to continue.
Step #6: receive the website tracking code and an individual tracking ID.
The code, or Global Site Tag, needs to be embedded directly into the PrestaShop every page’s source code, while the tracking ID needs should be inserted via admin panel.
Step #7: download the Google Analytics module in PrestaShop admin panel.
This ecommerce platform does not have an in-built Google Analytics integration; however, there is a free module from PrestaShop themselves and a rather wide selection of third-party paid Analytics modules with extened functionality. In this guide, I will use the free one for demonstration’s sake.
Go to Modules -> Module Catalog in the PrestaShop back office.
Type in Google Analytics into the modules search bar.
Find the following Google Analytics module and click Install.
When the module is successfully installed, press Configure button. You will get to the following Settings field.
Enter your tracking code into the Google Analytics Tracking ID field. Press Save button.
Step #8: embed Google Site Tag.
Copy the Global Site Tag, generated for you, and insert it in the <HEAD> of every page you aim to track.
Done! Google Analytics is successfully installed in your PrestaShop store.
Top 5 PrestaShop Google Analytics modules
What does the Google Analytics module offered by PrestaShop do exactly? Are there any Google Analytics module alternatives, offered by third-party developers? Here is a list of top 5 PrestaShop Google Analytics modules with short but exhaustive descriptions of their functions and capabilities.
Google Analytics. This is a native and free Google Analytics module for PrestaShop that is can be used by default. It will show you a full picture of your customer’s store activity. With this module, you gain insights into the purchase history, internal campaign clicks, “add to cart” actions, and other valuable for a store owner metrics.
Compatibility: v1.4.0.1 – v1.6.1.24
Price: Free
Premium Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce. This is the most downloaded Google Analytics PrestaShop module, and as you assess its functionality, you will see there is no surprise it is popular. This PrestaShop addon beefs up Google Analytics capabilities and offers clearer and more focused reports, like aborted transaction reports, site speed sample rate, invalid order statuses and so on.
Compatibility: v1.6.0.4 – v1.7.6.0
Price: €69.99
Product Advanced Stats (Analytics & Tips). This is another native PrestaShop module, aimed at providing a more insightful store activity analytics and efficient catalogue management. The module allows a store admin data on revenue and sales as well as compare one product’s popularity to another in the same category.
Compatibility: v1.6.1.1 – v1.7.5.2
Price: €59.99
Google Analytics Pro. This PrestaShop addon will provide you with accurate metrics like the number of product clicks, views and adding products to cart, conversions and order process, voucher codes activations, refunds and so on. Having this data on hand, you will get a clear understanding of how your store performs and how your customers interact with it; apart from this, you’ll be able to quickly identify any navigation, content or design issues.
Compatibility: v1.5.0.0 – v1.7.5.2
Price: €49.99
Easy Google Analytics. This module for Google Analytics in PrestaShop is a reasonably priced solution for store owners who want to have a clear picture of their website traffic. Easy Google Analytics is compatible with all web browsers and as multi-language and multi-store capabilities.
Compatibility: v1.6.0.4 – v1.7.6.0
Price: €29.99
Wrapping it up
Hopefully, this article convinced you of how essential Google Analytics may be for your PrestaShop online store and how empowered your ecommerce experience becomes as you implement this tool into your webstore. Also, we believe that you found out PrestaShop step-by-step installation instruction clear and comprehensive and were able to install Google Analytics at your PrestaShop online store without any hurdles. Finally, we expect that our selection of top 5 PrestaShop Google Analytics modules gave you the chance to compare other alternatives and select the one to suit you the best.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them down below.
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