Collect and analyze purchase and transaction data.
You are viewing a legacy article about Universal Analytics. Learn more about Google Analytics 4 replacing Universal Analytics.
This article is about Ecommerce reports in Universal Analytics. For information about Ecommerce reports in Google Analytics 4, go to [GA4] Ecommerce purchases report.
The Ecommerce reports allow you to analyze purchase activity on your site or app. You can see product and transaction information, average order value, ecommerce conversion rate, time to purchase, and other data.
To see Ecommerce data in Analytics, you need to
In this article:
- enable Ecommerce in your reports and
- add code to your site/app to collect ecommerce data. To complete this task, you'll need to be comfortable editing HTML and coding in JavaScript, or have help from an experienced web developer.
Find the reports
Ecommerce metrics (e.g. Transactions, Revenue, Ecommerce Conversion Rate) are available on the Ecommerce Explorer tab of many standard reports. You can also see Ecommerce-specific reports:
- Sign in to Google Analytics.
- Navigate to your view.
- Open Reports.
- Select Conversions > Ecommerce.
Available data
Ecommerce data is composed of transaction and item data.
Transaction data is made up of the information collected about each transaction that occurs on your site or app, and provides the following dimensions:
| Transaction ID | Always collected and visible in reports | The transaction ID. (e.g. 1234) |
| Affiliation | Optionally collected | The store or affiliation from which this transaction occurred. |
| Revenue | Optionally collected | Specifies the total revenue or grand total associated with the transaction (e.g. 11.99). This value may include shipping, tax costs, or other adjustments to total revenue that you want to include as part of your revenue calculations. |
| Shipping | Optionally collected | Specifies the total shipping cost of the transaction. (e.g. 5) |
| Tax | Optionally collected | Specifies the total tax of the transaction. (e.g. 1.29) |
Note: Analytics uses the Transaction ID to ensure that each transaction on the same Transaction ID is only counted once per session, even if a user views your confirmation page multiple times during that session (such as refreshing a page during checkout). However, you can still report on ecommerce revenue without including a transaction ID.
An item represents an individual product purchased as part of the transaction. An item has the following dimensions:
| Transaction ID | Always collected and visible in reports | The transaction in which the item was purchased. (e.g. 1234) |
| Name | Always collected and visible in reports | The item name. (e.g. Fluffy Pink Bunnies) |
| SKU | Optionally collected | Specifies the SKU or item code. (e.g. SKU47) |
| Category | Optionally collected | The category to which the item belongs (e.g. Party Toys) |
| Price | Optionally collected | The per-unit price for the item. (e.g. 11.99) |
| Quantity | Optionally collected | The number of units of the item purchased as part of this transaction. If your tracking code collects a non-integer value (e.g. 1.5), it will be rounded to the closest integer value. |
Standard reports
The following standard reports are available. Additional reports are available as part of Enhanced Ecommerce.
- Overview: Summary of Revenue, Ecommerce Conversion Rate, Transactions, Average Order Value and other metrics.
- Product Performance: Revenue, Purchases, Quantity, Average Price, and Average QTY by SKU and Category.
- Sales Performance: Revenue by Date.
- Transactions: Revenue, Tax, Shipping, and Quantity by Transaction ID.
- Time to Purchase: Days to Transaction and Sessions to Transaction.
Based on this data, you can develop an understanding of:
- Which products sell well, and by inference, which products are best suited for your customer base and which are supported by your best marketing efforts.
- The revenue per transaction, and the number of products per transaction. For example, if the number of products per transaction is lower than you'd like, you might benefit from offering better quantity discounts, or eliminating shipping costs if customers meet a minimum dollar amount.
- How long (in time and in number of sessions) it takes customers to make the decision to purchase. If your sales cycle is stable, or fluctuates predictably based on product or season, you can use this information (in conjunction with overall sales forecasts) to make reliable predictions about revenue. If customers routinely make numerous visits before they purchase, you might think about a site design that leads more easily to your purchase pages, or options that let users compare your products and prices to your competitors'.
