Google provides some fantastic reporting for ecommcerce sites broken down into product performance, sales performance, transactions and time to purchase. Each section offers numerous ways to slice and dice the data based on various dimensions and metrics. Because there's so much to see and do in GA's ecommerce reporting, it can be a little confusing as to what exactly each metric means and how you can use the information to gain actionable insights about your site's performance.
Below I've listed out some common metrics that cause confusion in GA or should simply be reviewed in more detail. I've added some details on how some of these metrics differ, and how you can use them to evaluate and optimize site performance.
Transactions
Total number of orders or sales.
This means that a customer completed checkout and submitted an order. Each individual transaction could include a single product or it could include multiple products. It's when there are multiple products in a transaction that can cause confusion with other metrics.
Unique Purchases
Total number of times a specific product (or set of products) was part of a transaction.
Unique purchases is essentially a subset of transactions. Because it shows the total number of times a specific product was part of a transaction, this number is often higher than transactions because each individual transaction has multiple products in it.
Unique purchases can help you better understand purchase habits of your customers, and may help you bundle product offerings. If you see that a single product has been ordered numerous times, but only has a handful of unique purchases, you know the customers buy this product in bulk. You may consider offering a discount if they buy a certain number of that product at once, which can help to increase overall revenue numbers.
Quantity
Number of units sold in ecommerce transactions.
Quantity is often confused with unique purchases, as it seems they would be the same number. Let's say 10 customers made purchases, each with 3 products in their orders. If those three products were different in each order, then quantity and unique purchases would be the same. But that's sometimes not the case. Customers may order one or more of the same item. It's these instances when quantity is a higher number than unique purchases.
Average Order Value (AOV)
Average value (in dollars) of all ecommerce transactions.
Average Order Value again helps you understand purchase habits of your customers. Are they buying more high-ticket items or lower priced products? How does the AOV compare to the average price across all of your products? Use this information and analysis to understand what products you should be promoting to further increase revenue.
Ecommerce Conversion Rate
Percentage of sessions (i.e., site visits) that result in purchases.
While there are some standards out there conversion rate by industry (see chart below), it's best to use this metric as a gut check for your site's performance. If your ecomm conversion rate is growing, awesome! Take some time to celebrate this success. (But also be sure to identify why it's increasing so you can continue to see this performance.)
Source: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/conversion-rates-retail-categories
If your ecomm conversion rate is dropping, well then something's wrong and you need to figure out what the problem is. There are myriad reasons why it could be happening, so you'll need to further investigate to understand if it's a site content issue, a user experience issue, an inventory issue, a promotional issue or some other problem. Or it could be that you've received an influx of new visitors from a big announcement, and they're only in the beginning stages of their customer journey. This is a good thing, you simply need to stay top of mind with these potential customers so you're there when they're ready to make a purchase.
Google's Ecommerce reporting can seem overwhelming if you're just getting started, but it's extremely useful for identifying opportunities, merchandising products and increasing revenue. So don't be afraid to get in there and poke around to see what insights you can uncover. A few minutes in and I guarantee your hidden super nerd will come out!
