How Shoes of Prey Uses Google Analytics

Shoes of Prey uses Google Analytics to monitor visitor behavior. The e-commerce company was created in 2009, and allows users to create their own shoes based on shoe style, heel height, color, fabric and many other variables. Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Michael Fox was a Google executive when he and two others decided to create the company (1), so it’s no surprise that Shoes of Prey uses Google Analytics to see how visitors are interacting with the website.

The company uses Google Analytics for basic information, such as unique visitors. For example, the company used Google Analytics to discover it had 5 million unique visitors during the last year. They also use Google Analytics to track what pages users visit, and found that 5 million visitors have used the 3D Design Studio on the site to design a pair of shoes (1).

However, other data, such as referral pages and the use of Intelligence Alerts have been key to the company’s success.

Intelligence Alerts can be set up to let a company know when significant changes in website statistics are taking place. These can be defined by the user, but can be events like a decrease in traffic by a certain percentage, or an increase in visitors from a certain geographic area (Scheijbeler, 2015).

When the company first started, they depended a lot on blogs and other sites getting the word out about their products. Therefore, the company set up Intelligence Alerts to let them know, within 24 hours, when traffic increased by a large amount, as well as when traffic from a certain country increased by a large amount. This let them know that a blogger probably wrote a piece highlighting their company, and they would use their referral page data to find the blog (2).

They could also switch over to the “Goals/Ecommerce” tab, and by sorting by conversion rate/revenue, find out which blogs would be worth reaching out to and possibly partnering with. Shoes of Prey could provide them with more information for their piece, or discuss the possibility of a follow-up piece (2).

Google Analytics Funnels are also useful for Shoes of Prey. Funnels, or the defined path that companies expect their customers to take to converting to a goal, are useful tools for ecommerce sites. By setting up a funnel, a company can see how many users abandon the funnel at certain stages, or how many enter the funnel at a page different than the one expected by the defined order (Reed College, 2015).

As many ecommerce sites do, Shoes of Prey has defined a funnel with the destination ROI as its “thank you” page. This helps the company see not only how customers are making their way to a purchase, but also what pages have a high abandonment rate (2). For example, if many visitors were abandoning the funnel during the second page, which is the 3D design page, they may infer that the page is too confusing for visitors, and they could create a popup window asking if a visitor would like a tutorial on how to use the tool. 

By simply looking at this path customers take, a company can find out a lot more about how visitors interact with their website. For example, they may have been alarmed when they realized that only about half of their customers complete the funnel and make it to the thank you page. However, after taking a closer look, they realized this was simply because they give customers the option to pay through PayPal (2). By changing the destination page, the company could get a more accurate percentage of how many people complete a conversion, or make a purchase.

The company also uses Google BigQuery to look at its massive amount of Google Analytics Data. BigQuery is a cloud database that can analyze terabytes of data in just a few seconds. The service can be used to store and analyze Google Analytics data, and users can choose to share the data with other BigQuery users (3). Shoes of Prey has used BigQuery to run queries on billions of records, then share that data with analysts, which made it easier and faster for them to get the data and make decisions. For example, analyzing all of the purchases made it easier for the company to see seasonal trends, and helped them make decisions for future fabric and shoe style offerings (Gliddon, 2012).

Google Analytics Goals may also be a useful tool for Shoes of Prey. The company could create micro-conversion goals, or goals such as visitors viewing more details about the company or designing a pair of shoes and adding them to their shopping cart. Analysts could then look at Google Analytics data to see which sources are sending the site the traffic that is converting on these micro-goals. This could help them define new sources for potential customers, and they could reach out to these sites and work with them through a partnered blog post with a promotion, for example, to convince the site’s already interested readers to make a purchase (Kissmetrics).

Custom Campaigns could also be beneficial to Shoes of Prey. By setting up these parameters, the company can measure the effectiveness of each campaign. The company partnered with a wedding blog to help kick-start its wedding shoe line (2). By using Custom Campaigns, Shoes of Prey could create different URLs for each blog post or ad their new line was mentioned in on the blog. This would make it easier for the company to track what parts of its campaign were the most effective, as it would give information on how many times each link was clicked (4).

Setting up a Site Search could provide valuable insights on website visitor behavior. In the video below, Avinash Kaushik explains the importance of this analysis.

Site Search could be connected to the internal Shoes of Prey website’s search box, and looking at this data can provide marketers with what visitors are looking for. This report can show on which pages people begin searches, what they found, and whether they were satisfied with the results based on exit rate (5). This could help Shoes of Prey identify any problems with the layout of their site, and whether navigation is user-friendly. For example, if multiple users are searching “pre-designed shoes” or a similar term while at the main page of the site, Shoes of Prey may consider making the link to that section more visible on the home page.

Overall, Google Analytics made it much easier for Shoes of Prey to expand its business quickly. Valuable insights were easily attainable to help the company make important decisions about how to increase sales, optimize its website and market its products to the right audiences.



References:

1. https://www.shoesofprey.com/content/media-release

2. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/us/analytics/customers/pdfs/shoes-of-prey.pdf

3. https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/what-is-bigquery

4. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033863?hl=en

5. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032402?hl=en

Gliddon, J. (2012, Dec. 20). Shoes of Prey integrates Google Apps, Analytics. Retrieved online from http://www.itnews.com.au/news/shoes-of-prey-integrates-google-apps-analytics-326849.

Kissmetrics. (n.d.). The 8 Google Analytics features every site must have enabled [blog post]. Retrieved online from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/8-google-analytics-features/.

Reed College of Media. (2015). Lesson 6: Exploring Google Analytics. West Virginia University. Retrieved online from www.ecampus.wvu.edu.

Scheijbeler, M. (2015, Feb. 25). Become intelligent: Use Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts to your advantage [blog post]. Retrieved online from https://moz.com/blog/become-intelligent-use-google-analytics-intelligence-alerts-to-your-advantage.