Cart Abandonment Funnel in Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great resource for anyone setting up an online website.  Google Analytics has many tools from information on how customers are finding you, where your best traffic sources are coming from, and what your top pages are.  You can use the information that Google provides to enhance your website and really push your top areas. Another thing that you can do with Google Analytics is find out where your web weaknesses are. You can do this by finding out what your top exit pages are or tracking your cart abandonment. Customers may leave your website for many reasons, and finding out where they are leaving your website can help you pin point what's 'scaring' them away. Below are the steps for setting up a funnel in your Google Analytics account to track cart abandonment in your ShopSite store.

Start by logging into your Google Analytics account, clicking on the website you would like to setup the funnel for, and clicking on "Edit."

 

Next scroll down to the Goals section and click to add a new goal. Name your goal, make it active, and set its position in relation to your other website goals.  If this is your only goal you can have it be set 1 goal 1. For the goal type select "URL Destination." 

Once you select "URL Destination" the page will be updated and provide you with new fields. For the "Match Type" select "Head Match." For the "Goal URL" you will want to enter the URL to your thank you screen, everything after your root domain. For example, my website is laurenhillsdesign.com, my thank you screen would be at something in a similar format to https://www.laurenhillsdesign.com/cgi-bin/sc/thankyou.cgi. So I would enter "/cgi-bin/sc/thankyou.cgi" into that field.  You can enter a goal value if you want, but this is not necessary if you are using this funnel for tracking abandonment. Once you have entered your goal URL, click the link to "yes, create a funnel for this goal."

For this last section you will want at least two steps.  The first step is the shopping cart screen, and the second step is the checkout screen.  You do not enter the thank you CGI URL because that has already been set up as the completed goal URL.   Your last section should look something similar to the following:

Now you are done.  You can save this goal, and wait.  The amount of time you wait depends on the number of hits your website is getting.  When you are ready to check this goal you can log into your Google Analytics account, click on your website profile, then click on "View Report." In the left navigation bar you will have a link to view your goals. Next week I will write more on analyzing your goals.  You may want to also check out my article on streamlining your checkout process to minimize your cart abandonment. http://laurenhillsdesign.com/ecommerce-tools/streamline-your-checkout.html