Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great tool for analysing the traffic going through a site. It has pretty much become the standard for traffic tracking.
If you have an ecommerce site with a shopping cart, the actual flow of money through the site can be tracked. It can take a little work to get it working, plus decent knowledge of how the specific ecommerce platform works.
The basic idea is that you add some JavaScript to the bottom of the last page in the payment procedure, most likely somewhere where it says something like “Thank you for your order”. It then sends details of the order to Google Analytics, including the type of product(s) and how much money went through.
Simply by providing the amount of money in each order, you can then track how much money different campaigns are making for you, from SEO campaigns to AdWords (if you have one).
Use the advanced segments in Google Analytics to track revenue, and not just visits, so rather than just monitoring traffic, you can then start to track return on investment with your various Adwords campaigns, SEO campaigns, keywords and even the percentage of views ending in a sale.
Simon Davies
SEO Programmer
I agree, using tracking and analytics is absolutely critical to any kind of sustained long term success with online marketing. Most people fail because they see tracking as a brick wall and just procrastinate. I’ve written a little more about the subject here http://drivingonlinesales.com/?p=278 and linked back to you.