Mia Geeks :: Google Analytics

As soon as etsy introduced Google Analytics for our shops, I signed up. The whole thing looked awfully confusing at first, but I've managed to figure things out pretty well and the information provided can be very useful for determining where to advertise, how people are finding your etsy shop, and what tags and keywords people are using to land at your site. People have asked me over and over where my traffic comes from. I always say "word of mouth" and "repeat customers", and according to my google analytics reports, it's true. The majority of my traffic is "direct", as you can see in the pie chart, and not from people searching or finding me through links on other sites. In addition, over 33% of that direct traffic is from people visiting my shop for the first time.
In order to get accurate information, make sure that you filter your IP address; You don't want to include yourself in the traffic data. Steps to do this can be found in the etsy forums, where I learned tons about Google Analytics! In this report here, you can see that four of the top five search terms people use to find my shop are simply variations of "miabeads"... maybe tags aren't that important after all? You can access this list of keywords by going to "content" on the left side of the reports page, and then selecting "site search".

How can you use the traffic sources report to determine where to advertise in the future? When in the report overview, select "all traffic sources" and you will see a chart like this:


This is a list of my top 20 traffic sources; At the top you see "direct" traffic and then the following are "referring sites". Referring sites are those with a link, ad, or article about your shop or sites where people frequently come to your shop after visiting. By clicking on the individual site names, you will get a lot of information about when people are visiting, how long they stay on your site and what pages they are looking at. To me, this is one of the most valuable tools that Google Analytics has to offer.

The referring site I chose to interpret was Vintage Glam Weddings. This was a blog that I hosted a giveaway on a few weeks ago. The graph is typical of what you will see when hosting a giveaway, placing an ad, or being featured on a blog. There is a spike in views for the first few days, and then the views slowly trickle as the article/ad/giveaway is no longer featured. In total, the blog sent 348 visits, however, only 18% of these were from new visitors. I will have to decide whether or not I feel like that is enough of a new audience for me to advertise on that blog again. The average visitor did look at 7.29 pages on my site, which is more than the 4.82 that I average overall, but spent less time in my shop. This is pretty typical of a giveaway where people have to choose a favorite item from your shop to enter. This information is a really helpful when deciding where, and when, to place online ads.
Other helpful reports:

What percentage of your visitors are returning? While in reports, click on "Visitors" and then "New vs. Returning". A pie chart will show your percentages. If you explore furthur you will also be able to see how long each group spends on your site, the average number of pages they look at and more. {Blue shows repeat customers & Green shows new customers}.

What time of day does your etsy shop get the most traffic? While in reports, click on "Visitors" then "Visitor Trending" and then "Visits" below that. Next to the graph that appears, there will be a small clock symbol in the top right; This will show your traffic per hour in a graph like the one here.

I hope you can use some of this information to see who is checking out your shop and where that traffic is coming from, what tags you should use, and even when the best times to renew or list a new item is. The etsy forums have a wealth of info on this topic, and feel free to comment if you'd like me to better explain the steps to finding this information in your Web Analytics! Happy Analyzing! xo -Mia