Google Analytics eCommerce Tracking in WordPress (No Code)

Have you ever looked at a week of strong sales and wondered where those customers actually came from?

Your store’s order records show what sold and for how much. They leave out the path that led there, such as the pages shoppers viewed and the carts they left behind.

Without that path, the danger is that your marketing time and budget could go to the wrong products or channels.

Google Analytics eCommerce tracking fills in that path. It records what shoppers do in your store, from viewing a product to paying for it, and ties each sale to the traffic that brought it.

We wrote this tutorial for anyone selling on WordPress who wants to set up Google Analytics eCommerce tracking without code and read the results.

In This Article:

What Is Google Analytics eCommerce Tracking?

Google Analytics eCommerce tracking shows you what shoppers do in your online store and how much revenue those actions bring in.

Once it’s set up, Google Analytics can report your overall revenue, number of purchases, average order value and add-to-cart activity, alongside the traffic data it already collects.

Here are a few key benefits of tracking eCommerce in Google Analytics:

• Track the pageviews and performance of your products.
• Track your sales and revenue.
• Optimize your conversion funnel to boost sales.
• Get important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are vital to your business, such as average order value, eCommerce conversion rate, cart-to-view rate, and more.
• Make data-driven decisions to generate more sales and revenue from your eCommerce store’s website traffic.

This data doesn’t appear on its own, though. Your store has to send it to Google Analytics, and we’ll explain how that works in the next section.

How Google Analytics eCommerce Tracking Works

Google Analytics records what visitors do on your site as events. An event is a single action, such as a page view or a click on a link. eCommerce tracking adds events for shopping actions, so it helps to know which ones matter when you check whether your setup works.

Google publishes a set of recommended ecommerce events for online stores. Four of them follow a shopper from browsing to buying:

• view_item records a shopper viewing a product.
• add_to_cart records a product going into the cart.
• begin_checkout records the start of checkout.
• purchase records a completed order.

Together, these four events show how many shoppers reach each step and how many stop along the way.

The purchase event carries the details that turn a visit into revenue. Its transaction_id parameter gives each order a unique ID, value holds the order amount, and currency tells Google Analytics how to read that amount.

Google Analytics doesn’t send these events for you. Its enhanced measurement feature tracks page views, scrolls, outbound clicks and similar interactions, but not purchases.

Setting up eCommerce tracking by hand means adding Google’s ecommerce events to your store’s code or building them in Google Tag Manager. A WordPress plugin can also send them for you, and that’s the route we take in this tutorial.

How to Set Up Google Analytics eCommerce Tracking in WordPress

Your Google Analytics eCommerce reports are only as reliable as the tracking setup behind them, so it’s worth getting each step right.

We’ll use MonsterInsights, the WordPress analytics plugin, which connects WordPress to Google Analytics. With its eCommerce addon, it sends your store’s ecommerce events to Google Analytics and shows the results inside WordPress, with no code to write.

The eCommerce addon works with nine WordPress plugins for stores, memberships, courses and donations:

• WooCommerce
• Easy Digital Downloads
• GiveWP
• Charitable
• MemberPress
• LifterLMS
• Restrict Content Pro
• MemberMouse
• WishList Member

In the steps below, we use a WooCommerce store as the example. The same four steps apply to the other eight platforms.

Step 1: Install MonsterInsights and Connect Google Analytics

Before you install MonsterInsights, make sure you have a Google Analytics property to connect it to. If you don’t have one yet, follow our guide to setting up Google Analytics in WordPress first.

If you don’t have MonsterInsights yet, sign up for a Pro plan or higher, since Pro is the level that includes the eCommerce addon. Then log in to your MonsterInsights account.

Open the Downloads tab and click Download MonsterInsights to save the plugin ZIP file.

In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins » Add Plugin, click Upload Plugin, choose the ZIP file and click Install Now.

When the upload finishes, click Activate Plugin.

Activating MonsterInsights opens its setup wizard. The wizard runs on the MonsterInsights website, so its screens look different from your WordPress admin.

You can also open the wizard any time from Insights » Settings, on the General tab, with the Launch Setup Wizard button.

The first screen, Welcome to MonsterInsights!, asks which category best describes your website. Choose Ecommerce from the three options, then click Save and Continue.

On the Connect MonsterInsights to Your Website step, paste your license key and click Connect MonsterInsights. If your site is already connected, this step shows Reconnect MonsterInsights and Skip and Keep Connection instead.

Google then asks you to sign in and allow MonsterInsights to access your Google Analytics account. Choose the account you want to use and approve the access.

You’ll then return to the wizard to pick your Google Analytics property. With the property picked, your site is connected, and eCommerce tracking is the next thing to turn on.

Step 2: Turn On the eCommerce Addon

The eCommerce addon sends your store’s sales data to Google Analytics, so no orders reach your reports until it’s on.

In your WordPress admin, go to Insights » Addons and find the eCommerce card. Click the toggle on that card to turn the addon on.

Once the toggle is on, the addon is active and MonsterInsights can start looking for your store plugin.

Step 3: Confirm MonsterInsights Detects Your Store

MonsterInsights detects your store plugin automatically, and a quick check now saves you from waiting a day on data that was never sent.

Go to Insights » Settings and open the eCommerce tab. Enable eCommerce Tracking should be turned on, and your store’s row should read “WooCommerce has been detected and eCommerce data is being tracked.”

Other platforms show the same message with their own name in place of WooCommerce.

With your store detected, the last job is to check that orders are reaching Google Analytics.

Step 4: Check That Purchase Data Is Arriving

A quick look in Google Analytics confirms the whole setup works from end to end. New ecommerce data can take up to 24 hours to show up in Google Analytics reports, so give your first orders a day before you check.

Google Analytics treats the purchase event as a key event automatically, so you don’t need to mark it yourself.

To confirm, open Admin, then Data display » Events, and select the Key events tab. If purchase is listed there, it’s already counted as a key event.

The Recent events tab lists the events Google Analytics has received in the last 28 days, so it’s also a quick place to spot purchase after your first orders.

Once purchase shows up in your events, your eCommerce tracking is working, and your reports start filling in with real orders.

How to Read Your eCommerce Reports in WordPress

The MonsterInsights eCommerce reports turn your store’s events into answers about what sells, who buys and where shoppers drop off.

To open them, go to Insights » Reports and click the eCommerce dropdown. It lists Overview, Coupons, Cart Abandonment, Funnel, Orders by Location, User Journeys, Spend by Day, Spend by Hour, Refunds and Refunds by Geo.

When a question about your sales doesn’t fit any single report, you can type it into Charlie Chat, the MonsterInsights AI assistant. Open it with the purple mascot button in the bottom-right corner of the report pages. Each question uses credits from your plan’s monthly allowance.

The eCommerce Overview Report

The eCommerce Overview report gives you a one-screen summary of how your store is doing. Below its Sessions and Pageviews graph, four tiles show Conversion Rate, Transactions, Revenue and Avg. Order Value.

Conversion Rate shows how well your traffic turns into orders. Avg. Order Value is the average amount each order brings in.

Below the tiles, the Top Products panel lists your best sellers. For each product, it shows the quantity sold, its percentage of sales and its total revenue.

We cover more ways to dig into product sales in our guide to finding your best-selling products.

The Top Conversion Sources panel lists your store’s traffic by source / medium, with each source’s total users, percentage of users and revenue. These are the traffic sources that send customers to your website.

When you compare revenue across sources, you can see which channels deserve more of your marketing time.

For a channel-level view, go to Traffic » Overview and scroll to the Traffic Details table. It shows sessions, purchases, conversion rate and revenue for each channel.

A channel that brings plenty of sessions but few purchases is a good place to look for missed sales.

Back in the eCommerce Overview, four more tiles show Total Add to Carts, Total Removed from Cart, New Customers and Abandoned Checkouts.

If Abandoned Checkouts looks high, the Cart Abandonment report can show which products shoppers are leaving behind.

Coupons, Funnel and Cart Abandonment Reports

The Coupons, Funnel and Cart Abandonment reports each answer a narrower question about how shoppers buy.

Open the eCommerce » Coupons report to see how your coupon codes perform. For each code, it shows revenue, transactions and Avg. Order Value.

Our coupon code tracking tutorial covers coupon reporting in more depth.

Next, head to the eCommerce » Funnel report. It shows the steps of your purchase funnel, labeled with their Google Analytics event names: view_item, add_to_cart and purchase.

The Conversion Rate By Stages and Abandonment Rate columns show where shoppers move on and where they drop out.

The stage with the highest abandonment rate is a sensible place to start, since it loses the largest share of shoppers. If that stage needs rebuilding, a WordPress funnel builder plugin can help.

To see which products shoppers leave in their carts most often, go to eCommerce » Cart Abandonment. The report lists each product with its quantity, revenue and cart abandonment.

When you’re ready to win those shoppers back, we’ve shared ways to bring abandoned carts back to checkout.

Orders by Location, Spend by Day and Spend by Hour Reports

The Orders by Location, Spend by Day and Spend by Hour reports show where and when your customers buy, so you can put your marketing budget where sales are strongest.

Click Orders by Location in the eCommerce dropdown to open a panel headed Purchases by Geography. For each location, its table shows Transactions, % of Transactions, Revenue, % of Revenue and Avg. Order Value.

A location with a high Avg. Order Value could be worth a targeted campaign or a shipping offer.

The Spend by Day report shows which days are most profitable for your store. The Spend by Hour report shows which hours are most profitable, which can help you decide when to send promotions and emails.

Refunds and User Journey Reports

Refunds lower the revenue your store actually keeps, so it helps to see them next to your sales.

The Refunds report includes a Products Refunded table. It shows each product’s Items Sold, Refunds, % of Total Refunds, Revenue Refunded and % of Refunded Revenue, with a Totals row at the bottom.

The Refunds by Geo report breaks the same refunds down by location. For more on reading refund data, see our guide to WooCommerce refund tracking.

The User Journeys report, headed User Journey Report on screen, shows the pages a customer visited before buying. It helps you spot which pages come right before a sale.

Where to Find eCommerce Reports in Google Analytics

Your eCommerce data also lives in Google Analytics itself, and two reports there cover the basics.

To see your store’s revenue summary in Google Analytics, open Reports, then Life cycle » Monetization » Overview. Its cards show Total revenue, Purchase revenue, Total ad revenue, Total purchasers and First time purchasers.

The same Monetization menu also holds Ecommerce purchases, Purchase journey, Checkout journey, Promotions and Transactions. Some properties also have a Business objectives collection, where sales reports sit under Drive sales.

To see purchases by channel, open Reports, then Life cycle » Acquisition » Traffic acquisition. Scroll right in the table to the Key events column.

Click the dropdown under Key events (it reads All events) and choose purchase. The Session key event rate column has its own separate dropdown, so make sure you open the one under Key events.

Key events now counts purchases for each channel, in the same row as that channel’s Total revenue.

Total revenue stays the same whichever event you pick, so read it as each channel’s overall revenue rather than a purchase-only figure. If a channel name is unfamiliar, see our guide to Google Analytics channels.

Why Google Analytics Revenue Might Not Match Your Store’s Orders

Google Analytics revenue can differ from your store’s order records. Once you know the causes, you can tell a normal gap from a tracking problem.

Visitors who block tracking scripts or decline cookies aren’t fully measured. Google Analytics fills some of those gaps with modeled data.

A purchase tag that fires twice can also double-count an order unless each purchase carries a unique transaction ID. MonsterInsights sends each WooCommerce order once, using its order number as the transaction ID.

Refunds matter too. If they never reach Google Analytics, its revenue stays higher than your store’s. The eCommerce addon sends WooCommerce refunds to Google Analytics, so they’re recorded alongside your sales.

Revenue by channel adds one more variable, because Google Analytics decides which channel gets credit for each sale. To see how that credit is assigned, read our guide to multi-channel attribution in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics eCommerce Tracking FAQ

With eCommerce tracking in place, you can trace your sales back to the products, channels and pages behind them. We hope this article helped you set up Google Analytics eCommerce tracking in WordPress. If you liked it, check out these guides:

• How to Set Up WooCommerce Google Analytics (Track Revenue Correctly)
• WooCommerce Refund Tracking: The Metrics Most Stores Miss
• Multi-Channel Attribution in GA4: Which Marketing Channel Actually Gets the Sale?
• How to Track Top Selling Products in Google Analytics
• Top eCommerce Metrics & KPIs to Track in Google Analytics 4

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