Can Google Analytics Help – increase clicks to your Add to Cart button?
Google Analytics definitely can. Google Analytics reports are fine tuned to specific ecommerce needs and sales being the primary one. Revving up sales could be handled in many different way on a website. Some are-
– Proper marketing through keyword targeting.
– Building a great user friendly website design
– Content tuned to effortless reading and understanding by clients
– Easy search ability through good navigation
Functionality or effectiveness of a button is really part of the user-friendly quality of a website design. The features of a good button are:
– Highly contrasted button colors against background
– Button shapes generally are rectangular with rounded corners
– Button sizes are optimally 144X34 Pixel
– Wording most attractive is ‘Add to Cart’. Others used by top ecommerce companies are Bags/Basket, Buy or Select.
– Design details could have a plus sign, bag or basket sign, arrow or a cart sign in the button
And these are just a few – probably the ones that have generally seen to be working over others. But it can hardly be generalized. Every design element can work or not work based on the website surrounding, the business messaging , branding elements etc. Question is- how do you determine what works and what not so much?
The best answer to this question probably lies in trying and testing each design element comparing with other designs elements and measuring changes in metrics like hits, session duration , social likes/shares etc –More vividly there are 2 approaches to improving a website.
1. You go in and change what you think might be a good idea to change here for eg: are buttons and hope the sales will go up.
2. You start by figuring out which pages cause the biggest drop-offs – where the flow is stuck. Once you understand WHERE the problem is, you proceed to identifying WHAT the problem is.
The problem with the first one is that you commit the royal classic error of any conversion optimization that says ” your opinion does not matter” –
Craig Sullivan likes to say that “opinions are like assholes – everybody’s got one”. Remember you don’t know what will work and there is no magic template showing what button will be best for your website content.
It’s the second method that really is about hard facts. And to follow this method you need to follow these steps in Google Analytics –
2. Use experiments to set up measurement and gather data
5. Turn insights into prioritized hypotheses
8. Back to data analysis. And round and round we go.
Let’s us use an example to see how we can apply this method in buttons.
You have a button that looks like this:
You want to check if a color change could work .
Everything remaining same , can color change from blue to orange impact conversion?
Step1- Set up Goals and Gather data- Google Analytics can help you create Goals . Google Analytics goals help you decide the one or few purposes your website is there for. Here for example we will analyze if the purpose of the ‘ADD TO CART’ button is met.
– First create two pages with two different buttons.
– Then in Google Analytics define goals to track your ‘add to cart’ button. This will be an event type goal . Check our event gaols to understand how it is done.
– Set up a value in terms of sales impact ($$)- Goal Value . The pricing for that product or service beside your add to cart button could be set as the goal value. Every time the button is being clicked, report will show values generated at each and every step to conversion.
– Conduct an experiment with Google Analytics A/B Test feature. Here are the benefits and types here is the method to set one up.
Step 2-Analyze Data- Within Google Analytics you have several reports to help you analyze data directly linked to goals and conversion. From the reports you could analyze. Calculate metrics within Google Analytics Experiments
Step 3 – Test Statistical Significant
Now that you observed some change in metrics between the blue an orange buttons we need to see if the change was statistically significant.
Within Google Analytics experiments you have this feature in-built. The percentage change and the significance level produced reflect the result of this common statistical procedure. If you do-not find this change significant , you could tweak something else about this experiment and re-test.
Step 4- Turn data into insights
The Experiment section is great place to find insights related to change , but you could also check difference in behavior for each page and conversion rate through each buttons. Use the following reports and get access to some useful insights .
1. Measure conversion in terms of goals achieved – Conversion Reports
2. Activities that visitors do when they are on your website – Behavior Reports . You could analyze rate of bounces from that products page containing buttons, one reason for which could be