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8 user-friendly ecommerce analytics tools to grow your store
The right ecommerce analytics tools help you make data-driven decisions to optimize your ecommerce business and drive sustainable growth. But with so many choices, where should you begin?The right ecommerce analytics tools help you make data-driven decisions to optimize your ecommerce business and drive sustainable growth. But with so many choices, where should you begin?
If you’re setting out to conduct ecommerce website analysis and have found yourself drowning in tool options, you’re in the right place. This guide takes you through eight popular (and user-friendly) ecommerce analytics tools, platforms, and software. Discover how these tools benefit your ecommerce store, and set yourself on the path to actionable insights that increase conversions and sales.
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Grow your ecommerce business with the right analytics tools
Use Hotjar Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys, and Feedback tools to see why shoppers convert or click away.
8 best ecommerce analytics tools for every budget
Here are eight popular, easy-to-use ecommerce analytics tools, priced from free to enterprise-level.
Remember: you don’t need to use them all. Pick a couple of tools that generate a mix of quantitative data (like traffic numbers and sales totals) and qualitative data (like customer feedback responses) across the customer journey to get a complete view of what’s happening on your ecommerce website.
1. Google Analytics (G4A)
Google Analytics (GA) is by far the most popular ecommerce analytics tool, used on around 38 million websites. GA4, Google’s latest analytics version, is free—but data sampling kicks in from over 500,000 sessions.
💰 Use Google Analytics to grow your ecommerce store by:
Measuring traffic source and volume to see if your marketing strategy is working
Measuring customer engagement and bounce rates to see where visitors drop out of the funnel
Tracking ecommerce metrics like LTV and conversion events
Google Analytics alternatives include:
Fathom: a simple, cookieless, privacy-focused ecommerce analytics tool
Adobe Analytics: an advanced analytics and business intelligence platform
💡Pro tip: Google Analytics carries somewhat of a learning curve when it comes to configuration (check out our GA glossary to make the most of its features), and the data only shows you what happens on your store (e.g. where visitors bounce)—you're still left wondering why. Instead of guessing why these actions happen, combine GA with Hotjar (that’s us!) with our official integration and get a front-row seat to the real behavior behind the numbers.
2. Hotjar
Hotjar (👋 hello!) is a popular digital experience and user behavior analytics platform used on over 1 million websites in 180+ countries. Hotjar’s free-forever plan tracks up to 35 daily sessions and includes five analytics tools:
Heatmaps: use click, move, and scroll maps to visualize where visitors pay attention and what they ignore
Recordings: watch individual session replays to see how visitors browse your whole store
Surveys: ask questions to learn why visitors convert or what’s stopping them from buying
Feedback: collect feedback to measure if key pages are working as intended
User interviews: get in-depth 1-on-1 feedback from current or target users
💰 Use Hotjar to grow your ecommerce store by:
Generating heatmaps to visualize where visitors click (or don’t): are they missing important CTAs?
Viewing session recordings to see why visitors bounce from product pages or the shopping cart: are they rage-clicking on broken elements?
Running a customer satisfaction survey (CSAT) to measure how happy customers are with their purchase experience and identify areas for improvement: does your business excel at customer retention and loyalty?
Hotjar alternatives include:
Contentsquare: enterprise-level digital experience platform with AI insights (and part of the Hotjar family!)
CrazyEgg: heatmaps, recordings, surveys, and A/B testing
3. Shopify Analytics
Shopify Analytics is the built-in ecommerce tool available to all 4.5 million Shopify stores. Shopify Basic users can access most Shopify Analytics reports for free; advanced and custom reports are only available on higher pricing tiers.
💰 Use Shopify Analytics to grow your ecommerce store by:
Monitoring quantitative ecommerce metrics like store sessions (i.e. traffic), online store conversion rate, average order value, and returning customer rate
Comparing the performance of different sales channels, including in-person if you use the Shopify Point of Sale (POS) app
Analyzing where visitors are coming from by region or social media source
Shopify alternatives include:
Better Reports: premium Shopify app for advanced reporting
Analyzify: premium Shopify app to integrate Google Analytics, Tag Manager, and Google Ads
💡Pro tip: extend the functionality of Shopify’s analytics data by adding a single line of tracking code and using Hotjar’s Shopify integration to see heatmaps and session recordings, and collect feedback from customers when they visit your Shopify store.
Analytics in action
You’ll get more valuable insights by combining traditional analytics with user behavior data. Hotjar heatmaps, for example, help you understand engagement metrics with accessible data visualizations that bring quantitative data to life.
Want to know why a page with a lot of traffic doesn’t convert? Use click and scroll maps to discover what makes people leave before buying, like when customers miss out on a key CTA that’s placed too far down the page.
Clicks recorded using Hotjar Heatmaps before and after the Dutch trampoline store Trampoline Plezier moved a CTA, resulting in a 50% increase in clicks
4. WooCommerce Analytics
WooCommerce Analytics is the free, open-source reporting and data analysis tool for over 7 million WordPress websites that use WooCommerce to power their ecommerce platforms. Its functionality is limited to sales analytics, but the tool is easy to customize, and reports can be viewed within the WordPress dashboard.
💰 Use WooCommerce Analytics to grow your ecommerce store by:
Viewing and downloading basic reports on your store’s products, revenue, coupons, taxes, and stock levels
Customizing the dashboard to show your most important metrics at a glance
Applying advanced filters to find your most valuable segments
WooCommerce alternatives include:
WooCommerce Google Analytics: free plugin extension to integrate GA with WooCommerce
MonsterInsights: Google Analytics plugin for WordPress
💡Pro tip: add Hotjar’s official WordPress plugin to your WooCommerce setup, and generate heatmaps and session recordings in a few clicks. Watching how shoppers navigate your store and collecting feedback from happy (and not-so-happy) customers helps you fix issues and deliver a better user experience for future visitors.
Analytics in action
Hotjar session recordings are effective for revealing customers’ online shopping patterns and other insights into how they engage with your site, beyond isolated sale numbers. Watching session recordings lets you avoid guesswork and gain concrete answers by capturing the real-time interactions of people browsing for products and buying them, or ultimately exiting your site before purchasing.
Promotional products store Totally Promotional did exactly that after launching a line of custom pens that weren’t selling well—they discovered through session recordings that visitors didn’t seem to understand the order process. Their design team used this insight to update their order form and add more information to avoid confusion, which led to a 300% increase in pen purchases.
5. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a data analytics platform with a free plan for up to 20 million monthly events. Mixpanel collects data on every customer touchpoint with your ecommerce business and integrates with data from other sources (including Hotjar! 🥳) so you can analyze all of your store’s metrics in one place.
💰 Use Mixpanel to grow your ecommerce store by:
Visualizing product analytics and customer insights with customizable and interactive reports
Tracking ecommerce metrics and KPIs, like product views and add-to-cart conversions
Building custom funnels to identify drop-offs and optimize conversions
Mixpanel alternatives include:
Glassbox: digital customer experience analytics
Amplitude Analytics: analytics tool for product teams
💡Pro tip: integrate Mixpanel and Hotjar via Zapier and track events in Mixpanel when feedback or a recording is collected in Hotjar.
Analytics in action
Collecting input from site visitors with feedback tools from Hotjar is a quick and easy way to uncover pain points your customers experience along their buying journey. Asking your visitors to leave feedback while browsing will point you in the right direction towards potential fixes that will improve your site’s online shopping experience, ultimately leading to more sales.
For example, UX/UI agency Turum-burum placed the Hotjar Feedback widget on an ecommerce client’s shop to identify usability problems and technical bugs standing in the way of conversions. The feedback helped them make changes that led to a 55% increase in checkout conversion rate.
6. Woopra
Woopra is an advanced customer journey and ecommerce analytics software with a free plan for tracking up to 500,000 actions/month. Woopra collects data on every customer interaction with your store.
💰 Use Woopra to grow your ecommerce store by:
Analyzing the customer journey (from marketing channel to conversion) to identify areas for improvement
Measuring trends and segmenting data to find valuable cohorts
Building real-time customer profiles across all touchpoints—including email campaigns, mobile app, and live chat—to find your most engaged customers
Woopra alternatives include:
Grow your ecommerce business with the right analytics tools
Use Hotjar Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys, and Feedback tools to see why shoppers convert or click away.
7. Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a premium analytics solution designed for online businesses generating between $500,000 and $5M in monthly sales. Prices start at $299/month, and, like Woopra and Mixpanel, Kissmetrics tracks customer-specific data so you can view actions by individual customers.
💰 Use Kissmetrics to grow your ecommerce store by:
Viewing your key store metrics at a glance (e.g. total sales, AOV, cart to purchase conversion rate)
Segmenting data into cohorts to find what big spenders have in common and how you acquired them
Analyzing the sales funnel to find drop-off points in the checkout process
Kissmetrics alternatives include:
Acoustic Insights: digital marketing experience analytics
Qualtrics: experience management software
💡Pro tip: Hotjar Funnels is another funnel analysis tool you can use to track your ecommerce conversion funnels, and the quantitative funnel data you collect is seamlessly paired with qualitative data captured by our other tools like Heatmaps and Recordings.
Analytics in action
If your focus is on conversion rate optimization (CRO), Hotjar Funnels is an accessible tool to track drop-offs and reduce ecommerce bounce rate. It’s particularly useful for identifying high-converting traffic: you can compare up to five funnels to assess performance by traffic channels, so you can better understand how visitors who convert reach your website and focus more on those channels to increase conversions.
8. Glew
Glew is all-in-one multichannel ecommerce analytics software with a free plan to track up to 20 metrics. Glew collects ecommerce customer analytics data so you can view how individual customers browse, shop, and react to marketing messages.
💰 Use Glew to grow your ecommerce store by:
Tracking ecommerce KPIs and metrics (like LTV and shopping cart abandonment rate) to monitor progress
Analyzing user behavior to find profitable segments and see how specific customers interact with your store over time
Measuring the performance of customer acquisition channels to determine the ROI of your marketing efforts
Glew alternatives include:
Adobe Customer Journey Analytics: cross-channel customer insights
DemandJump: marketing analytics platform to analyze SEO and marketing strategies
💡Pro tip: a particularly rewarding way to improve the ecommerce customer experience (and boost conversions) is to analyze the customer data you collect with tools like Glew alongside user behavior insights gathered by surveys and interviews—after all, your customers know more about shopping on your online store than you do.
Analytics in action
With Hotjar Surveys, you can poll segmented visitor groups and collect feedback centered around specific objectives such as traffic attribution, cart abandonment, or exit intent. Take things a step further with Hotjar Engage, which lets you conduct user interviews with key customer segments—speak to your own customers or explore new leads with users from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. Hearing what customers have to say, whether it’s written or spoken feedback, is guaranteed to uncover new shop features or product ideas you never thought of.
Go beyond traditional ecommerce analytics
You can generate as many colorful charts as you like, but numbers on their own will never speak to you like real customers do. There’s no substitute for reading genuine visitor feedback or watching a user session where a customer struggles to make a purchase.
That’s why we recommend pairing quantitative analytics data—like traffic stats from Google Analytics—with visual and qualitative insights from Hotjar to get a full view of the what and the why behind customer behavior on your store. Use the practical examples we present in the pro tips throughout this chapter to inspire you and get the most out of ecommerce analytics.
Hotjar helps you identify pain points in the customer experience so you can start improving UX and increasing conversions today.
