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Hello Reader

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Some time ago, a client struggled to determine which products performed well in their store. They had a ton of data but no clear direction.

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After diving into GA4, they discovered that a few unexpected products were being added to carts more frequently than others.

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By placing these products higher on key lister pages, they not only increased sales but also optimized their inventory—saving both time and money.

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So in this email, I’ll show you how to find in Google Analytics 4 what products people view and add-to-cart on your site.

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But first I want to mention today's sponsor...

Find the report:

We will need the Ecommerce purchases report:

• Head to GA4 dashboard
• Navigate to reports
• Under monetization, you have “E-commerce Purchases”.

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This is where the magic happens. You’ll see:

• which products are most viewed,
• added to carts, purchased,
• and how much revenue they’re generating.

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So the product that you see on top that’s the most viewed product.

You can also sort the date by clicking on the little arrows next to the titles (you need to hover over the titles first to see the arrow).

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Oh and you can also view this report by the SKU number, for many of you this will avoid seeing different variations of the same product.

To view the report by SKU:

1. Just click on the "item name" drop-down
2. And choose "Item ID."

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Missing metric:

But GA4 being GA4, they “forgot” to include a crucial metric “add-to-cart rate”.

Fortunately, you can easily add it with calculated metrics. This is inside the the GA4 dashboard and which takes 2 minutes. Here is a tutorial.​

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Here’s the calculated metric formula for Add-to-cart rate:

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{Items added to cart}/{Items viewed}*100

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With this metric, you’ll be able to easily see which products are most added to the cart compared to their views. Sometimes, products are viewed a lot, but in proportion, they are not added to the cart.

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For example...

if I ask you what product is performing the best based on the below table?

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Well, at a quick glance, it shows that product 1 has by far the most add-to-carts.

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But the story changes when you show the add-to-cart rate.

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Now it’s clear that product 2 has by far the most add-to-carts in proportion to its views.

If we increase the views of product 2, in theory, it should also yield more add-to-carts.

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With this insight I could now boost this product on multiple lister pages and increase the visibility.

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By doing this, you can uncover those hidden gems that are flying under the radar and give them the spotlight they deserve.

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How to get insights from the data:

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I like to use ecommerce purchase reports to analzy the following:

• Top sellers in the shop
• See products with most add-to-carts
• Compare add-to-cart rates (preferably products in the same category e.g., a sneaker vs a sneaker)
  • If I see high or very low rates, this is an indication that there is an insight.
  • I would then investigate if there is any apparent reason for the low/high performance.
  • If not, I will increase or decrease the product's visibility and see how that affects the add-to-cart rate.
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• Compare the “add-to-cart to revenue rate.”
  • this will tell you if people add the product to their cart and at what rate they also purchase it.
  • It will reveal if people get stuck, add the cart, or checkout. For example because of high delivery costs, or maybe lack of assembly/installation, and so on.

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Happy analyzing,

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Robert

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