Using Google Analytics in iStore

With the advent of internet growth, it has become imperative for a merchant to find out the ROI on a website. Who is visiting the site, from what part of the world, what pages are being viewed on daily, weekly or a monthly basis are some of the things that a merchant is always interested in konwing. Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, what pages were visited and lot of other useful information. Basically you can see the ROI on your website very quickly.

IbizSoft has received lot of requests to be able to integrate iStore with some online Analytic tool. Google is an obvious choice to show case how best we can integrate the tools with Oracle iStore.

Following are the steps involved for the integration.

Initial Basic Steps:

Step 1 – Create a Google Analytics account
Step 2 – Configure your profile
Step 3 – Edit the tracking code for custom website setups
The tracking code that is provided to you is designed to work with most site setups  but may require some scenarios that require updates to the tracking code on each page.
Step 4 -Add the tracking code to your pages
Google Analytics only tracks pages that contain the Google Analytics tracking code. This code needs to be intelligently included in each page of your site in order  to give the appropriate desired results from the analytics account.

Setting up of Google Analytics tracking code on an Oracle iStore :

Some of the Tracking Code Customization for an iStore are as follows  :

1) Google Analytics tracking code :

We would have to Install basic tracking code (ga.js) on all templates/webpages .


2) Virtual Pageview (VP)

VP’s allow you to trigger a page view generation on a page so that you can see that event or action in your Content reports inside GA. For form elements on a page, we can add a javascript “onclick” function to trigger the virtual pageview generation.

Example:
.pageTracker._trackPageview("/my/virtual/url");
iStore Implementation :
The custom code would be added to buttons ,links,menu links etc .This will enable in tracking those events and  seeing more readable reports in the GA analytic account.

Goal Funnels 

Goal Funnels is a feature which can track users through a flow process and put it in a easily readable funnel diagram. To take advantage of Goal Funnels we can incorporate the Virtual Pageviews to track the form events.


3) Ecommerce Tracking :

Tracking of ecommerce transactions requires two things:

1) Enabling E-Commerce for reports
The first step of tracking e-commerce transactions is to enable e-commerce reporting for the website’s profile:
Sign in to your account.
Click Edit next to the profile you’d like to enable.
On the Profile Settings page, click Edit next to Main Website Profile Information.
Change the E-Commerce Website radio button from No to Yes.

2) Configuring of the shopping cart
The shopping cart’s receipt page needs to send the ecommerce tracking data to Google Analytics.
Google Analytics collect two types of e-commerce data: transaction data and item data. Transaction data describes the overall transaction (transaction ID, total sale, tax, shipping, etc.) while item data describes the items purchased in the transaction (sku, description, category, etc.).
This data has to be send using the GA javascript after the transaction processing for example during checkout.

Transaction Data

Transaction ID: your internal transaction ID [required]

Affiliate or store name

Total

Tax

Shipping

City

State or region

Country

Item Data

Transaction ID: same as in transaction data [required]

SKU

Product name

Product category or product variation

Unit price [required]

Quantity [required]

GATC Ecommerce Methods that need to be used :

_addItem(orderId, sku, name, category, price, quantity)
To track items purchased by visitors

_addTrans(orderId, affiliation, total, tax, shipping, city, state, country)
Creates a transaction object with the given values

_trackTrans()
Sends both the transaction and item data to the Google Analytics server
iStore implementation :
The GA javascript code can be inserted in  ibeCCkdHdrDisplay.jsp inside  a condition
if (!shopCart.getOrderNumber().equals("")) to obtain all the item details information once the order has been processed.

4) Site Search

Site Search basically enables to keep a track of how people search a particular site once they are on it.
Tracking of Site Search has to be activated on Google Analytics and it requires the search term in the URL  but since in iStore the keyword is not visible in the URL ,the workaround is to alter the way the search results pageview is created. This means manually creating a pageview for the search results page that contains the search term. This is done by passing the tracking code on the search results page a value. Make sure that value includes a query string parameter containing the search term. Then specify the query string parameter in the on Site Search setup.

Thus Google analytics basically helps an organization to enhance its profits by intelligent integration of the tracking code.

 

 Analytics interface :

See the diagram below to explore some of the features available for Google Analytics users.

1. Click this link to navigate back to your Analytics Settings page, so you can get an overview of and edit all your Analytics accounts and profiles. From there, you can navigate to the Profile Settings page, where you can view your tracking code, and create goals and funnels.

2. You can also navigate to any account using this pull-down menu.

3. The ‘Settings’ page is different from the "Analytics Settings" page. Here, you can set the email address associated to your account, your account language, and your email notifications settings.

4. The ‘My Account’ link takes you to a page listing all your Google Accounts.

5. Click here to go to our Google Analytics Help Center. It searches over 30,000 pages of Google Analytics support content from the Help Center, Google Analytics Help Group, and the web.

6. Always remember to sign out of your account when you’re done! Google Analytics reports
Google Analytics has over 80 reports to help you gauge your site’s performance — whether by usage metrics, return visit numbers, or time on page. Below is a list of reports that are available as of January 2009. However, please keep in mind that Analytics is continually releasing new features and reports, so this list may occasionally change and grow.

7. Visitors
This section provides information on visitor interaction with your site, the type of visitors, and information about how they are viewing your site.

8. Traffic Sources
Find out how different offline or online sources sent traffic to your site. View which sources are driving the most traffic to your site and spot trends from the provided graphs and charts.

9. Content
These reports are all about the pages in your site and how visitors interacted with each one. Use the data here to find time on page, landing and exit page information, and a navigation summary for pages. Another free Google product, Website Optimizer, has been useful for advertisers looking to increase conversions by testing different versions of their content.

10. Goals
If you’ve set goals for your Analytics account, then you should see data in these reports.

11. Ecommerce
The ecommerce reports give extremely helpful information on the revenue, transaction, and ecommerce activity on a site. There’s a whole section on product performance to view your top-selling product, right down to the SKU number.

12. A custom report can be designed using the metrics and dimensions required.

13. Settings – Advanced Segments and Email
Advanced Segmentation: Slice and dice your data in the way you want to see them. Click ‘Advanced Segments’ to create these segments and apply them to your reports.

14. Click on any of these help resources to get information on the specific report you’re viewing, tips on how to interpret and use the information for your campaign, or learn what other people’s common questions are.

15. Select from this pull-down menu to jump to another Analytics account.

16. Apply the advanced segment you created to a report and compare it side-by-side to other graphs. See number 13 to learn more about advanced segments

17. Select a date range through a calendar or timeline slider to graph your report data by clicking on the arrow. You also have the option compare to past data in this section. Instructions on how to use this feature can be found here.

18. Graph your report by day, week, month, or hour (where available). Learn more.

19. The selected date range, graph by view, advanced segment or metric is viewed as a graph here.

20. Get at-a-glance views of your account’s key metrics here.

21. Add or delete report snapshot modules to your dashboard. To add a module, go to your desired report and click ‘Add to dashboard’ at the top of your report. To delete one, click the ‘X’ on the upper right-hand corner of every module in your Dashboard report.

 

 Benefits of Analytics

Google Analytics is absolutely free and there are many benefits that come with installing it on your site. The top five things you can do as soon as you start tracking your site with Analytics:

AdWords advertisers can make Analytics available right in their AdWords account as a separate tab through a simple linking process. Advertisers can review extra data for their online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals), and pick out their highest performing ads.
You can also use Analytics to track other Google products including AdSense, Blogger, and Google Sites.

See which pages drive the most pageviews on your site from the Top Content report. This report can answer questions you have about your most or least effective pages – for example, a high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it.

Which groups of visitors became customers or did something else important to the success of your business? You can get key insights for these questions by setting up goals.
Grant other people in your company or organization access so that they are restricted to viewing reports in a profile or given full access to help manage your entire account as an administrator.

There are over 80 reports with customizable, drag-and-drop interfaces. You can also create your own reports with Custom Reporting, create the segments you want to see with Advanced Segmentation, or view multi-dimensional views of your data with Motion Charts.

References:
http://www.google.com/analytics/features.html
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=55543