Choosing between ecommerce analytics tools isn’t just a matter of capturing as much data as possible — although accurate data capture is undoubtedly essential.
You must also consider how a tool analyses data and helps you turn insights into action. There’s the customer-facing aspect, too. Shoppers shouldn’t be bombarded with cookie requests because you’ve chosen a tool that isn’t privacy-focused.
Finding the right analytics platform can be more complicated than some store owners first think.
Don’t worry, though. We’ve got you covered. This article reviews five of the top ecommerce analytics tools and explains key factors to consider when choosing a platform.
What are ecommerce analytics tools?
Ecommerce analytics tools are software platforms that capture, measure and analyse data at every stage of the customer experience.
The right data analytics tool can help store owners and marketers to understand how shoppers behave on their site, which marketing channels are most profitable, and why customers abandon their carts.
Most tools boast a wide range of features to achieve those goals, including:
- Customer journey tracking to understand shopper behaviour
- Conversion funnel analysis to see why customers don’t convert
- Customer segmentation and cohort analysis for targeted marketing
- Heatmaps and session recordings to pinpoint UX issues
- A/B testing to improve conversion rates
- Marketing attribution to identify high-value acquisition channels
Ultimately, a good analytics tool will reduce friction in the customer journey, boost conversion rates and personalise shopping experiences.
Top five ecommerce analytics tools
Below, you’ll find a roundup of the five top ecommerce analytics tools based on their features, pricing and suitability for different types of stores.
| Ecommerce tools at a glance: • Matomo → Privacy-first, open-source, self-hosted • GA4 → Free, predictive, web/app blend • Adobe Analytics → Enterprise-grade, customisable • Mixpanel → Product analytics, real-time, user-friendly • Hotjar → UX insights, visual, no-code |
Whether you’re looking for a free option, a comprehensive tool or a platform that respects your users’ privacy, you’ll find a suitable solution.
1. Matomo
| Best for: Teams needing GDPR‑friendly analytics, full data ownership or deep customisation. |
Matomo is an open-source ecommerce analytics platform offering a comprehensive, privacy-first solution.
Matomo’s ecommerce analytics solution goes beyond simple web tracking to give you all the customer data and tools you need. Track every metric using heatmaps and session recordings to understand how shoppers use your site. Then take action with built-in A/B testing tools.
The platform’s open-source and privacy-focused nature makes it a solid choice for store owners who care about protecting their customers’ privacy.
Standout features
- Heatmaps and session recordings to visualise usability issues and frustration points
- A/B testing tools to optimise product pages or checkout flows
- Event tracking and goal funnels for conversion rate optimisation
- Custom reports and dashboards to turn data into insights
- No data sampling
- Ethical and privacy‑first
- No cookie banners required in many cases (if configured correctly)
Pricing: Free self‑hosted core version, or $29/month for cloud-based option.
2. Google Analytics 4
| Best for: Teams needing free, AI‑powered ecommerce insights across web and app. |
Google Analytics 4 is the most popular web analytics platform on the planet, with a broad range of features to support ecommerce stores.
Google Analytics excels at showing customer engagement and website traffic metrics. Clear dashboards and reports make it easy to determine who landed on your site, what they did, where they came from, and how they converted.
It’s a solid choice for first-time store owners looking for a free solution integrated with Google’s other products. However, be careful of the lack of data privacy and data quality. Google samples data when generating results, meaning your metrics may not be 100% accurate.
Standout features
- Purchasing tracking, including transaction IDs, revenue, shipping costs and taxes
- Product performance analysis to see which products are popular and how they are performing
- Conversion analysis to find drop-off points and areas for optimisation
- Dashboards that make it easy to track basic ecommerce data
- Native integration with Google Ads, Search Console, BigQuery, and Data Studio
- Free to use
Pricing: Free. (Enterprises that want more advanced features can use Google Analytics 360, where pricing is available on request.)
3. Adobe Analytics
| Best for: Teams that value predictive analytics and customisation over simplicity and affordability. |
Adobe Analytics is an enterprise-level platform that combines web, product, and predictive analytics to deliver real-time insights across channels.
For in-depth ecommerce metrics tracking combined with predictive analytics and advanced customer segmentation, Adobe Analytics is a solid choice.
It gives a comprehensive view of real-time customer behaviour thanks to customer journey analysis tools, marketing attribution and ecommerce performance tracking.
It could be a sensible choice if you already use Adobe Experience Cloud or other products in the Adobe ecosystem. However, this platform may be too complicated and cost-prohibitive for everyone else.
Standout features
- AI-powered prediction analysis identifying likely buyers, churn signals and customer lifetime value
- Attribution analysis across channels and multi-touch funnel analysis
- Detailed customer journey analytics and real-time data
- Predictive analytics come standard
- Native integration with Adobe Commerce for a holistic view of customer interactions
- Advanced cohort analysis lets retailers create detailed, targeted audiences
Pricing: Available on request
4. Mixpanel
| Best for: Product teams needing real-time behavioural insights, funnels, and predictions. |
Mixpanel is a product analytics platform focused on user engagement, event tracking and cohort analysis. It has a dedicated ecommerce analytics solution for store owners looking to find conversion bottlenecks and drive more sales.
Mixpanel is an intuitive ecommerce analytics platform that allows store owners to track user behaviour. It comes with a range of behavioural analysis tools, such as session recording and cohort analysis, to help identify and solve cart abandonment issues.
While Mixpanel offers a free plan, it’s limited in scope. Enterprise plans start at $20,000 per year.
Standout features
- Event-based tracking with granular control over how user behaviour is recorded
- Funnel and cohort analysis to measure retention, repeat buyers and conversion paths
- Visual dashboards and real-time behavioural insights
- Multi-touch attribution to measure marketing effectiveness
- Streamlined interface and intuitive dashboards make data analysis accessible
- Built to handle high data volumes and process billions of events monthly
- Seamless integration with other software platforms
Pricing: Free to use, capped at one million monthly events.
5. Hotjar
| Best for: UX teams needing fast heatmaps and session playback. |
Hotjar is a behaviour analytics tool that allows store owners to track shoppers’ interactions with their sites and experiment with ways to increase conversion rates.
Hotjar’s visualisation tools are one of the best to learn how shoppers browse your site. The platform has more types of heatmaps than almost any other provider, including:
- Click maps
- Heat maps
- Scroll maps
- Rage click maps
It’s an excellent tool for store owners who want to visualise how customers click, scroll, and interact. However, it doesn’t collect ecommerce data to the same degree as other platforms.
Standout features
- Heatmaps and session recordings to understand user behaviour
- Conversion funnels that track where users drop off during checkout
- Feedback polls and surveys to track shopper satisfaction
- User-friendly interface and intuitive design
- Highlights feature lets teams share key user insights
- Native integrations with Shopify and other ecommerce platforms
Pricing: starts from $39 per month. A limited free plan is available
What to look for in an ecommerce analytics tool
Whether you use our shortlist above or create your own, you’ll want to ensure your tool has all the necessary features.
Here are the most important ones.
Core ecommerce metrics tracking
First, your analytics tool needs a dedicated ecommerce solution that tracks key shopping metrics. The following are particularly important:
- Orders
- Total revenue
- Taxes
- Shipping costs
- Average order value (AOV)
- Abandoned carts
You can track all these and more in Matomo.
Check out our guide to the 7 Ecommerce Metrics to Track and Improve to learn more.
Custom reports
Every ecommerce store is different, so choose a flexible analytics platform that lets you create custom reports.
In Matomo, you can choose from over 200 dimensions and metrics, as well as different visualisations like bar, pie, and line graphs.
You can even automate your reporting by integrating Matomo’s Custom Reports feature with the Email Reports feature.
Customer segmentation
Even though you’ll want to collect information on every visitor, it can be helpful to learn more about audience groups.
Customer segmentation lets you analyse shoppers based on demographics, behaviour and other factors to create more targeted campaigns and encourage repeat purchases.
In Matomo, for example, you can create segments based on:
- Demographics
- Visit patterns
- Buyer behaviour
- Marketing campaigns
- Technology customers use
- Average order value
- Lifetime value
By using these segments to zero in on particular audiences, you can offer more value to your customers and gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Conversion rate optimisation capabilities
Conversion rate optimisation is the key to higher revenues, better return on ad spend and long-term customer retention.
But you don’t need to spend time and money on a dedicated tool. Choose an ecommerce analytics tool with built-in conversion rate optimisation capabilities to keep everything under one roof.
With Matomo, for example, you can:
- Use heatmaps to see how users engage with your site
- Replay website sessions to learn why users don’t convert
- Run A/B tests to experiment with different headlines, images, calls to action or page layouts
Matomo also measures the impact of your experiments on key ecommerce metrics and lets you implement changes based on statistically significant differences, not guesswork.
Marketing attribution
Marketing attribution assesses the impact each channel has on conversions and revenue. It helps you understand which channels drive the best shoppers.
Matomo makes it easy to understand which channels drive the most conversions and how much each is worth.
Marketing attribution in Matomo
To measure the impact of each channel across the customer journey, you can choose from several attribution models (last interaction, first interaction, position-based, etc.).
Without marketing attribution, you risk wasting time, money and effort on channels that don’t benefit your business.
Ecommerce platform integration
Make it as easy as possible to start by choosing an analytics tool with native integrations with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento.
Magento, for example, integrates with every major platform and numerous smaller tools, including PrestaShop, OpenCart, and Zen Cart.
Server-side tracking
Most ecommerce analytics platforms collect ecommerce data using JavaScript-based tracking. While this is largely effective, it can’t collect every interaction. That’s because ad blockers and other tools can block JS tracking.
The only way to guarantee you collect data on every shopping action is through server-side tracking.
Server-side tracking means that when a user interacts with your website, your backend server captures the event data and sends it to Matomo’s tracking API endpoint. This bypasses the browser and improves data accuracy, reliability, and privacy compliance. You control what data is collected, stored, and processed.
Data privacy and security
Some ecommerce analytics platforms — like Google — use the data they collect about your customers to power additional services like Google Ads and sell to other companies.
Matomo, on the other hand, was designed with privacy in mind. You can configure it to follow strict privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA. Using Matomo also means all of your valuable data is owned by you and you alone.
Privacy-first ecommerce with Matomo
An ecommerce analytics tool helps you understand customer behaviour, make smarter marketing decisions and drive growth.
With Matomo, you can do all that while prioritising your users’ privacy. Trusted by over one million websites, Matomo’s open-source software is the ethical analytics solution every store owner needs.
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