Online stores have access to a wealth of customer data that can provide valuable insights into how to improve the shopping experience and increase sales. But with so many analytics platforms to choose from, how do you know which one is right for your ecommerce business?
From personal experience, big brands I’ve worked with typically use either Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics. Both offer robust analytics capabilities specifically tailored for ecommerce, but they also have some significant differences.
Throughout this article, I’ll share my experiences using both platforms and provide tips on how you can leverage Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics to gain better visibility into your customers and make smarter business decisions.
Why Care about Analytics Data
Analytics data is like having a microscope into your customers’ behavior on your website. It can reveal who your visitors are, what they’re interested in, where they’re stumbling, and how you can remove friction in their journey to drive more sales.
With ecommerce analytics, some of the key insights you can unlock include:
- Traffic source analysis – Find your highest converting traffic sources to focus marketing efforts on the right areas.
- Landing page optimization – See which landing pages encourage people to browse products or convert.
- Shopping behavior analysis – Discover how people navigate your site, which products get viewed the most, and where drop-off happens.
- Conversion funnel optimization – Pinpoint friction in the checkout process that causes customers to abandon their carts.
- Customer segmentation – Group customers by behavior, demographics and preferences to tailor marketing.
- ROI measurement – Connect marketing initiatives to revenue growth. See what’s working and what’s not.
Both Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics provide these types of insights, but through different approaches, features, and pricing models.
I’ll unpack the key differences between these two tools below to help you determine the best platform based on your business needs.
Key Feature Comparison
Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics have significant overlap in their core features, but also some distinct differences. Here’s an overview of what each platform offers for ecommerce analytics:
Data Collection
- Google Analytics – Uses tracking code to capture website data. Can ingest data from ads, CRM and POS systems via import features.
- Adobe Analytics – Collects data through JavaScript tags. Can ingest offline and CRM data through data connectors. I believe it has flexibility for capturing custom data.
Ecommerce Tracking
- Google Analytics – Provides basic ecommerce tracking for products, sales, revenues out of the box. It’s enhanced ecommerce adds deeper product and shopping behavior insights.
- Adobe Analytics – Has robust product catalog management for tracking SKUs. Adobe’s Analysis Workspace also provides detailed shopping behavior analysis and segmentation.
Reporting and Analysis
- Google Analytics – Customizable dashboards and reports. Google Analytics’ Explore page allows for ad hoc querying of metrics. Data is sampled for flexibility.
- Adobe Analytics – Visual drag-and-drop workspace to build reports. It also provides segmentation and fallout analysis, and provides hit-level data for statistical analysis vs. sampling.
Integrations
- Google Analytics – Plugs into Google’s marketing ecosystem including Google Ads, Google Merchant Center, Youtube, etc. Third-party integrations are also available.
- Adobe Analytics – Integrates tightly with other Adobe Experience Cloud applications. It’s third-party app ecosystem provides connectors to CRM, email, etc.
Data Governance
- Google Analytics – Consent modes and data retention controls help support GDPR compliance needs.
- Adobe Analytics – Adobe offers a privacy and governance toolkit to help comply with regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
This high-level overview shows that while the two platforms share similarities in being able to track ecommerce KPIs, Adobe provides more advanced analysis capabilities, while Google offers broader integrations with Google’s suite of products.
Next, let’s dive deeper into the key functionality you should evaluate when choosing an ecommerce analytics provider.
Critical Ecommerce Capabilities to Compare
Determining the right analytics platform goes beyond just feature checklists. You need to consider which functionality is most critical for understanding your customers and enforcing your ecommerce strategy.
Here are some of the key capabilities worth comparing head-to-head:
Granular Product Tracking
Collecting enhanced data on products and shopping behavior requires tracking details like product views, adds to cart, cart removals, checkout steps, impressions, etc.
This level of granularity provides clarity into questions like:
- What are your most viewed products?
- Where are customers dropping off in the purchase process?
- How many times do customers view a product before purchasing?
Fortunately, both Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics support enhanced ecommerce tracking for detailed product insights. While Adobe may provide greater flexibility for customization and mapping product attributes, Google Analytics’ integration with Google Merchant Center makes it easy to track millions of product SKUs.
Customer Segmentation
Not all customers behave the same way. Segmenting your audience is key for understanding what different groups need so you can tailor experiences appropriately.
Ecommerce segmentation can group users based on criteria like:
- New vs returning visitors
- Traffic source
- Location
- Purchase history
- Product preferences
- Demographics
This segmentation powers personalized experiences like special offers for loyal customers, or abandoned cart reminders for those who left items unpurchased.
Adobe Analytics has robust segmentation capabilities built into its Analysis Workspace, while Google Analytics requires exporting data to other tools like Google BigQuery or Google Sheets for advanced segmentation.
Multi-Channel Analytics
Today’s shopping journeys span across channels. Customers may research products on social media, click ads, and purchase in-store.
Multi-channel analytics provides a complete picture by stitching together data from all touchpoints, such as:
- Website and apps
- Online ads
- Social media
- Call centers
- Point of sale
- Mobile apps
Understanding how channels work together helps optimize budgets and your tech stack. You can see the true customer journey rather than channel-specific data silos.
Adobe Analytics has an edge in connecting data cross-channels through Adobe Experience Platform, but Google offers multi-channel functionality as well through imports and Google Tag Manager.
Actionable Insights
At the end of the day, analytics dashboards full of charts and metrics don’t drive growth unless they lead to action.
Look for platforms that help convert data into insights allowing you to:
- Identify underperforming products to remove or promote
- Find high-intent audience segments for targeting
- Capitalize on traffic and conversion trends
- Optimize pages lowering conversion rates
- Surface friction during checkout drop-off
Both Adobe and Google provide tools to enable deriving insights from analysis. Google Analytics Discover offers automated insights while Adobe Attribution IQ finds optimization opportunities. These tools are an aid, but you still need to turn these insights into action through strategy and execution.
Tips for Getting Started With Ecommerce Analytics
Once you’ve selected the right analytics platform for your business needs, how do you go about actually implementing it?
Here are my recommended tips for getting up and running with ecommerce analytics:
Pick Your Key Metrics
Don’t get overwhelmed trying to track every possible metric and segment right away. Start by identifying 3-5 key conversion and financial metrics like revenue, transactions, average order value, etc.
Focus on getting clean, accurate data for those vital few KPIs. You can always expand from there.
Set Up Ecommerce Tracking
Ensure your platform is capturing all the detailed product and shopping behavior data points. Refer to the platform’s help docs for how to properly install tracking code and implement tags.
Test purchases end-to-end to confirm data is being collected. Fix any errors before kicking off site-wide tagging.
Connect Data Sources
Combine other sources like ads, CRM, POS, etc. to get a cross-channel view. Most analytics platforms have imports, APIs, and connectors for ingesting external data.
When joining datasets, ensure users have matching identifiers across systems like customer IDs or email addresses.
Align Teams on Goals
Get alignment from executives, marketing, product, engineering, design etc. on the key questions analytics should answer and the decisions it will provide insight on.
This drives everyone to focus analytical efforts on business impact vs. vanity metrics. Enable faster optimization through collaboration.
Monitor KPIs and Optimize
Setup dashboards that track key performance indicators over time. Analyze trends, gaps, or underperforming areas.
Once that’s done, then work cross-functionally to turn insights into action. Continuously test and optimize based on what the data reveals.
Choosing Between Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics
So with an understanding of the key features and tips for getting value from analytics, how do you decide whether Google or Adobe is a better fit for you?
Here are a few key considerations as you evaluate both platforms:
- Budget – Adobe Analytics has higher costs but also more powerful capabilities. Google Analytics is free and provides robust core functionality.
- In-house expertise – If your team is skilled in one platform, leverage that knowledge base. The learning curve for new analytics tools is steep.
- Integrations – Choose the platform that best connects to your existing tech stack for unified data.
- Data needs – Adobe provides more flexibility for advanced analysis and customization. Google makes it easy to integrate Google-sourced data.
- Scalability – Both platforms grow with enterprises as long as proper tagging and tracking foundations are set.
I typically see brands start with Google Analytics if they want to minimize costs. For being free, it provides tremendous value out of the box.
For large brands with high complexity, Adobe Analytics unlocks deeper insights for enterprise growth, but it requires greater investment and dedicated personnel.
Ultimately there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Choosing the right platform depends on your budget, resources, technology ecosystem, and analytics maturity.
Hopefully this overview of Google Analytics vs. Adobe Analytics capabilities helps provide a framework for determining the best solution for your organization.
Key Takeaways
Here are the big picture lessons on getting the most value from ecommerce analytics:
- Implement comprehensive product and shopping behavior tracking to see how customers interact with your site. Look for platforms that provide enhanced ecommerce capabilities.
- Don’t just look at aggregate metrics. Segment users into groups like new customers vs. repeat purchasers, traffic source, product affinity etc.
- Combine analytics data from every channel and touchpoint to get a complete view of the customer journey. Understand how touchpoints work together to drive conversions.
- Focus analytics on answering key business questions and identifying optimization opportunities. Collaborate across teams to turn insights into ROI.
- Consider both your current ecommerce maturity and long-term needs when evaluating analytics vendors, but also start small by focusing on key metrics and expand from there.
With the right analytics foundation providing accurate, granular data across channels, you’ll be equipped to gain visibility into your visitors and shoppers. This makes it possible to continually refine the customer experience and boost sales performance.
So don’t leave these powerful ecommerce insights on the table. Use this guide to find the right platform for your needs, implement tracking to capture quality data, and leverage analytics to drive tangible business results.