How to evaluate your Shopify store's traffic sources

It’s 2 p.m., and Ellen Casey hears the familiar “ding” from her computer. As she looks up, she hears the “cha-ching” of the cash register follow shortly after.

Ellen smiles. That sound from Lucky Orange’s real-time alerts never gets old.

Since installing Lucky Orange on her Shopify store in July 2019, Ellen has seen her store thrive. The customized real-time alerts play audible sounds whenever someone triggers a tag, such as adding a product to their cart or checking out.

These alerts are just the beginning of what Ellen loves about using Lucky Orange.

Watching people live on her website helped Ellen spot ways to improve her user experience. However, it was analyzing where those sales are coming from, such as from Facebook ads or organic search, that helped her optimize her paid and organic search marketing efforts.f

Finding Lucky Orange in the Shopify app store

Ellen launched Avocado Zinc in early 2019 after perfecting her natural, organic and Australian-sourced sunscreens. According to the Cancer Council of Australia, two out of every three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer by the time they are 70.

Ellen’s sunscreens provided the sun protection people need without the heavy white residue commonly associated with sunscreens. Even though she knew her product was high quality and would be well received, that didn’t mean it would be easy to sell.

Shopify provided the best commerce platform to sell Avocado Zinc, but that alone wouldn’t be enough. She needed an app to help make her website user experience the best it could be and evaluate which traffic sources provided the best ROI.

In the Shopify App Marketplace, she was intrigued by Lucky Orange. With hundreds of five-star ratings and an impressive array of features, it was the best fit for her needs. In addition, the seven-day free trial didn’t even require a credit card.

Ellen decided to give Lucky Orange a try. Installation took less than a minute, and data started pouring in.

Within the first day, Ellen could see value from Lucky Orange. As she explained, “Lucky Orange has been the best and only app I use."

Using Session Recordings and Dynamic Heatmaps together

Ellen used Lucky Orange in three ways:

1. Using real-time alerts, she was able to hear an audible sound for what tags mattered to her. She set it up to play sounds whenever a new visitor came to the website, added a product to their cart or completed a purchase.

   Ellen said, “It’s helped me keep track of the traffic on my online store, identify where the traffic is coming from and the real-time recordings of each website visitor have helped me to identify what my customers are looking for.”

2. Heatmaps and session recordings helped Ellen see exactly what customers experienced on her website. For Ellen, this new capability blew away her expectations.

   She said, “I can’t believe I could now watch the website traffic live in real time and watch their every move on my website. This visibility is crucial in identifying what improvements you can make to your website to make it more friendly for user behavior, how to make the products more desirable and ultimately how to promote more sales.”

3. Filtering heatmaps by source, she could understand where her sales were coming from and evaluate how different traffic sources performed. Ellen turned to scroll maps and other heat maps to inspect which sources, especially paid sources, to determine if they were under- or over-performing.

As a result of her efforts, Ellen was able to maximize her ad spend and customize how visitors and customers used her site differently. She could evaluate advertising and marketing channels to know which ones were successful and when to walk away.

Conclusion

Within six months of using Lucky Orange, Ellen saw her growth take off. She’s able to clearly see what customers do, not to mention eliminating poorly converting traffic sources. With Lucky Orange, Ellen has new opportunities she would have otherwise missed.

Do you know your top traffic sources and how they are performing?