All SEO professionals know that ranking is not the whole picture, especially if you are working on an eCommerce site or any other brand. Your brand needs to see how much organic traffic converts to money in their pockets. It is time to use the power of Google Analytics 4 to do that.
The team at DigiChefs recently worked with HomeTown, one of India’s top furniture and home decor brands. In studying their traffic patterns and behavior, we found out that using the right metrics is key to discovering how conversions can be achieved in furniture eCommerce sites. What we learned helped us optimize their SEO performance and completely change our approach to eCommerce SEO optimization.
In order to show you which metrics are important to track for your eCommerce SEO, we are going to use HomeTown as a case study in this guide. For all the brands you work with, whether furniture brands or any other type of eCommerce business, the following 11 GA4 metrics will prove useful.
1. Organic Traffic Sessions
This is your baseline metric. Organic Traffic Sessions will tell you how many people visit your client’s website via search engines such as Google.
For you to check this in GA4, click on the “Report” option at the top-left corner of the screen. Then go to “Traffic Acquisition”. In order to check the organic results, click “Add Filter,” choose “Session Source/Medium,” pick “equals to,” and type in “organic.”
When we did an analysis of the traffic of HomeTown, we realized that their “3-seater sofa set” product page experienced a 40% increase in organic sessions after optimization of their product descriptions.
2. Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is the number of users that interact with your website for longer than 10 seconds and browse through other pages or interact.
If your engagement rate is high, it means your content aligns well with the intentions of the users. For instance, if your “modular kitchen” landing pages have an engagement rate of 65% but your “bedroom furniture” have an engagement rate of 35%, then you will know exactly what type of content needs improvement. Users would want to interact with websites that provide them with the best user experience.
3. Average Engagement Time
With average engagement, we understand how much time users spend engaging with your website content. In Google Analytics 4, we can view this particular metric in Reports > Engagement or Traffic Acquisition.
For e-commerce websites, the more time spent on product category pages is generally associated with high intention to purchase. For example, if the average time spent by users on “dining table” pages is 4 minutes compared to 1 minute on other furniture categories, it’s likely that dining tables will bring you conversions.
4. Conversion Rate (Organic Traffic)
One thing your client is interested in is his/her sales. Organic traffic conversion rate indicates how many search visitors perform the action of purchasing. Filter your GA4 conversions report to display results only for organic search traffic.
Different industries have their benchmarks, but usually eCommerce stores convert from 1.5% to 3.5%. If you have an organic conversion rate of about 2.8%, then it is good performance to share with your client.
5. Ecommerce Purchase Revenue
Purchases revenue represents the amount of money made through completed purchases in your eCommerce website. The Monetization reports in Google Analytics 4 show precisely the amount of revenue made through organic search, either based on the landing page or product category.
It is always essential to compare your purchases revenue either monthly, quarterly or yearly in order to see any patterns that will help you adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.
6. Add to Cart Rate
The add-to-cart rate is the ratio of those users that add products to their cart. Track this metric specifically for organic traffic to get an idea about the pages where your visitors turn into prospective customers.
Tip of the day: Go to the Explore tab in your account and create a free-form report. Here you will be able to find the number of sessions on a particular landing page and the number of people adding products to their cart.
7. Top Landing Pages (Organic)
It is important to remember that landing pages create the first impression. In order to get this information, you need to go to GA4 clicks -> Explore tab -> Traffic Acquisition -> dropdown above metrics table, filter by “Page views”, and then select “Landing page + query string”. This way, you will be able to see which landing pages have the most organic traffic. Or else, you may just go to the Explore tab and create your own report about landing pages with organic traffic segment.
You may discover that your blog post gets 5,000 visits per month but doesn’t convert. Then, you know that it is the right time to do internal linking from this post to high-converting product pages.
8. New vs. Returning Users
Analyzing behavioral patterns of users can assist you in developing your SEO strategy. It is important that new users receive information content, while returners will be near purchasing.
In case 80% of your organic traffic consists of new users, then the key points of your SEO strategy are to provide awareness stage content and make good first impressions. In order to attract more returning users, utilize email subscription popups, provide exclusive offers to those who sign up for your emails, and develop special “Welcome Back” offers.
9. Product Performance Metrics
Performance of individual products will help you determine how many views, adds to cart and sales individual products have got from organic users. You can check this metric in the GA4 under the Monetization part by moving to Ecommerce Purchases and further by selecting item names or product categories.
For example, if there is a product that has 500 organic views per month, but only 10 sales, it means that you need to improve your product descriptions or photos.
10. User Demographics and Location
Knowing your visitors is key to optimizing the right way. The demographic report of Google Analytics 4 allows you to know the age, gender, and geographic information of your organic visitors.
Location information allows you to target your city-based audience and produce content accordingly. For instance, if 60% of your visitors come from Tier-1 cities, then your focus will be on urban content.
11. Search Console Integration Metrics
You can integrate your Google Search Console with GA4 to get insights on all your search metrics including the search queries, landing pages, and countries. With this integration, you will be able to understand which search queries are bringing traffic to your website.
You may find that people make searches about a certain product using specific keywords tens of thousands of times in a month, but your website doesn’t have any content targeting those queries.
How to Use These Metrics Effectively
Data analysis is the key component of SEO. In the absence of data analysis, all metrics become useless figures displayed on the screen.
Design a monthly dashboard with 11 metrics included. Analyze month-over-month and year-over-year performance. Pick up the most successful landing pages and reproduce the results. Identify pages that are doing poorly and optimize them with better content and calls-to-action.
The most crucial step is to relate each metric to the bottom line. When you can demonstrate to your client that the certain SEO changes have driven sales increase, you are no longer a vendor but a growth partner.
Final Thoughts
Google Analytics 4 presents eCommerce SEO experts with a wealth of information. All 11 of these metrics paint the picture of your performance in totality, starting with how visible your business is to search all the way to a customer’s final purchasing action.
These metrics will make it easier for you to prove the worth of your SEO efforts by providing data that impacts your client’s bottom line in a very tangible manner.
Want to improve your eCommerce SEO reporting game?
Work together with DigiChefs, a results-oriented digital marketing firm based in Mumbai, to help your brand grow through data analytics.
