Before we really delve into methods of marketing and spreading the word about your shop, let’s take a look at one of the sources you can utilize to evaluate the success of your future marketing efforts: Google Analytics. It’s a good idea to set up (or revisit your existing) Google Analytics account now, so that once you begin trying different marketing techniques, you can see if they’re making a difference.

Google Analytics (GA) is a metrics-tracking tool that gives the owner of a URL all sorts of interesting information about their site’s visitors, views, and more. Signing up for GA is 100% free! To link your Etsy shop URL to Google Analytics, keep the following tips in mind:

• Use your etsy shop’s main web address, http:// shopname .etsy. com (without the spaces), as the account name or default URL. Google will automatically capture the activity on both your shop page itself and all the little sub-pages for each of your listings.
• Once you’re done with set up, GA should take you to your “Account Overview” page. Click the “Tracking Info” tab to find your Tracking ID. You can copy and paste this ID on Etsy to link the two accounts. You do NOT need to worry about pasting any HTML or javascript info to link your shop to your GA. That’s for non-Etsy stuff.
• On the Etsy side, click “Your Shop” in the upper right corner, then scroll down and click “Options”, then click the “Web Analytics” tab. You can paste your GA tracking ID into the “Web Analytics” box here. It make take up to 24 hours for your GA account to begin working.
• Check out the Etsy help page for more detailed info.

magnifying glass by zipluxe on etsy

Now the fun begins! Your default GA landing page gives you a brief overview of the audience of your Etsy shop over the last month. If you scroll down, you’ll see a bunch of nifty percentages and even a pie chart of your repeat vs. new visitors. Hover your mouse over any of the stats to get a definition of that item.

To get more specific detail, check out the side bar on the left side of your screen. It could take you hours to examine all the juicy info under each of these items! Under “Audience”, you can find out what countries your visitors are visiting from, how many pages on your shop they’re checking out, and how long each visitor stays on your site on average.

“Traffic Sources” will tell you how people are finding your shop – via search terms, directly, or from other websites. You can even compare which source is giving you the highest rate of new visitors or which visitors spend the most time browsing your shop. This info helps you determine where your marketing time is most well spent; for example, I might notice that I’m getting lots of visitors from my Wanelo page, but those visitors spent an average of 50 seconds on my site and my bounce rate is in the 90s. Sounds like it’s not really worth my time to market there, and I might chose a source that has visitors with longer visitation lengths and lower bounce rates.

My favorite part of GA is the “Real Time” page. This page actually tells you how many visitors are currently on your page, where they’re coming from, and what they’re looking at during this very minute. You might think it’s a little creepy to cyber-spy on shoppers, but this is your chance to get some immediate feedback on how people are interacting with your shop! Next time you’re bored, go visit your Real Time page and watch what your next Etsy visitor does!

This is just barely skimming the iceberg of everything GA offers. The important part is to get set up and familiar with your stats as they are right now. It’s a good idea to record your current bounce rate and pages per visit. After you begin to put new marketing or advertising measures in place, GA will help you determine the effectiveness of your efforts! So get accustomed to your metrics now, and let’s work on getting them to improve!

Are you a stats junkie like me? Are you excited or intimidated by Google Analytics?

Related Articles:

• A Marketers Guide to Google Analytics (covario.com)
• Measuring Your Online Marketing in Google Analytics (iacquire.com)
• Understanding Bounce Rate (roundpeg.biz)