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Nicolas Miller

How to Use Google Analytics to Find and Repair Underperforming Items

Updated: Jun 1, 2023


When online retailers review product sales, the first question they always ask: why certain products on my website perform so poorly? Google Analytics already provides advanced Metrics to identify underperformers. Unfortunately many retailers are not aware of these metrics.

You must first realize the significance of each item you sell in your shop. Every product in your business has to perform well if you're serious about increasing your conversion rate and maximizing revenue. Not only your "top sellers" or your "new products".

Make sure that every item in your store sells well if you want to grow your e-commerce business. So, you must act swiftly to identify the issue and find a fix whenever a product is functioning poorly.

To start off, let's examine how to spot and improve underperforming products and also underperforming product pages on your website.


Let's imagine that you are undergoing your weekly Google Analytics reports. What you notice is that sales of one of your best-selling items have dropped 50% from what they were at this time a year before.

You also see that sales of one of your new products have surged by 200% since the same week last year.

The most crucial concern that pops into your head right away is:


What led to this week's sharp decline in best-selling products and a surprising increase in more recent products?

Is it something you did with your Facebook ads and Google Ads? Or was it a modification you made to the look of your website? Product performance analysis might be useful here.

Navigate to Google Analytics' Product Performance report (Conversions > Ecommerce > Product Performance) to begin looking into your product performance statistics.

The Product Performance report reveals which goods are most commonly browsed, put in shopping carts, and then bought in a transaction.

This is where you should go to analyze your product performance depending on the many ways your business arranges its items on your website (name, category, brand, stock-keeping unit or SKU, etc.).


Product Metrics as per the above image:


Product Revenue

The total quantity of sales for a given product. The report is generally arranged by-product revenue.


Unique Purchases

Cumulative transactions in which a certain product was included.


Quantity

This shows how many units of the product were bought in total.


Average Price

The average revenue per product.


Average Quality

The total quantity of products sold in each transaction.


Product Refund Amount

The entire amount of a product's refund.


Cart-to-Detail Rate

Items added to the cart divided by product-detail page visits.


Buy-to-Detail Rate

Unique product purchases divided by views on product-detail pages.


Let's start how to configure the products:


Step 1:

Look for items with a high total refund amount to see whether customer satisfaction is an issue.

Let's return to the previous example: you're wondering why the top-selling product is performing poorly in comparison to last year.

You observe that the top-selling has a high Average Price and a low Average Quantity when compared to the other goods on your website.

This suggests that your top-selling is a high-priced item, and your consumers purchase fewer units of it. As a result, a large number of refunds might be the reason your revenue is lower than projected.

Examine the Product Refund Amount to test this theory. In fact, have an extremely high Refund Amount, accounting for 95% of all returns.

A large product return amount might indicate one of two things:


1. Consumers were dissatisfied with the product as a whole (e.g. there is a product defect)

2. There was a misalignment between consumer expectations and the actual product.


Step 2:

Look at "problematic products" that aren't being added to carts or bought.

Why some of the products are not selling?

To get the solution, we must move to a different section of the report – the Shopping Behavior metrics.

In the left side panel in conversions, select the Shopping Behavior tab.

Now, you're getting two types of "problem items" here:


1. Customers who do not add products to their cart after coming to the product page i.e Sessions with Product Views

2. Customers who do not purchase a product after adding those to the cart. Cart Abandonment

To find those problematic products, check the Shopping Behavior Metrics


Step 3:

Address the issues with your product pages.

When your Cart-to-Detail Rate and Buy-to-Detail Rate are low, the issue might be with your product detail pages.

For example, a low Cart-to-Detail Rate indicates that few visitors who browsed a product detail page added the product to the cart. This most likely indicates a mismatch between (1) what the buyer expected based on how it was sold and (2) the product they're actually seeing on the detail pages.

Make sure your advertising doesn't oversell and underdeliver on your items, or you'll lose potential consumers.

Notable differences between advertisements and e-commerce websites include:


1. Your ad pricing and your website prices differ.

2. The product might not be in stock.

3. Making false promises in advertisements (e.g., exaggerated promises about advantages) and underdelivering on product sites


To prevent these mistakes, double-check your ad campaigns to ensure that the price and language are consistent across your advertising and your website.

It's also likely that the phases of the buying procedure are the source of the problem. The following are some frequent purchasing process issues:


1. A technical problem that prohibits consumers from adding items to their shopping cart.

2. Shipping charges that are very expensive or shipment periods that are unusually long

3. If comparison consumers find lower costs with your competition, they will abandon their cart.


Final Step:

Then, use the Shopping Behavior reports seeing whether there are problems with your website.

Finally, if you label your products with tags like SKU, product category, or brand, I would recommend going to those tabs in the report to check which categories and brands are performing well or poorly.

While many eCommerce stores concentrate on broad metrics like purchases, revenue, and traffic, there is a lot to be learned when product-level information is included. Product performance analytics is an important aspect of managing eCommerce operations, and data directly related to product performance and usability may be helpful in increasing and improving your overall operations and income.


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