In an era where customer loyalty is fleeting and attention spans are short, data has become the new gold. Ecommerce businesses utilize this precious yet largely untapped asset to offer personalized deals that grab users’ attention and prompt purchases. Industry giants like Amazon and Alibaba are recognized as pioneers due to their use of tools like eCommerce analytics to gain invaluable insights about their customers and the web.
Consider the scale:
Global eCommerce sales amounted to $1.55 trillion in 2015. By 2019, just four years later, Statista forecasts that sales will more than double, hitting $3.4 trillion.
To clarify, a trillion dollars is a thousand billion dollars. That’s a substantial amount of money. On one hand, eCommerce has garnered significant attention, and tools like eCommerce analytics and CRM have only accelerated its growth. Technology is omnipresent and transformative.
Analytics are a hot topic at every tech event. When applied in e-commerce, they aid businesses in becoming more efficient, customer-centric, and targeted. Let’s delve into why this term is currently making waves.
Brands are becoming more accessible to customers.
Did you know the Royal Bank of Scotland didn’t always have smooth sailing? In 2008, when its emphasis on sales and empire-building landed it in debt, UK taxpayers had to rescue it. The company chose to concentrate on its customers, a significant shift at that time. They achieved this by assigning 800 people to their “Personology” team, which falls under their analytics department.
This team monitors each customer’s journey across channels, customer touchpoints, and beyond. If a customer neglects to withdraw cash from the ATM, they’ll receive a text message. Instances like these illustrate how brands map a consistent, omnichannel customer journey, aiding them in predicting the next best action or offer to satisfy their customers.
Companies gain valuable insights.
While customer data is critical and invaluable, analytics delve much deeper. A business must invest where it counts. Previously, marketers would launch a “spray and pray” campaign and revel in the success (if it materialized). Now, they have a plethora of options for allocating their finite budgets.
Ecommerce analytics encompass information from Google Analytics, search and social analytics, paid advertising analytics, and more. When integrated into eCommerce data analysis dashboards and user-friendly tools, you can see how the different elements begin to align. Where gaps exist, the marketing department is poised to fill them with data. Obstacles are opportunities, and opportunities are chances to generate sales and retain customers.
Think, Act, Achieve
Since most data is displayed in a standard layout, or “analytics dashboard,” marketers can now view numerous statistics simultaneously. Marketers can now examine elements like purchase funnels, acquisition costs, and lifetime value to identify their strengths and areas of improvement.
Customers may linger longer on product page A, but promptly exit upon opening product page B. Teams can determine the cause of this behavior with tools like A/B testing and rectify issues like overpriced products, slow-loading pages, and more. Once they implement the modifications and reassess customer behavior, they have a higher probability of achieving conversions (purchases, campaign page engagement, email clicks).
It’s a powerful marketing instrument.
As businesses transition online and experiment with content and eCommerce, their growth will hinge on their effective utilization of tools like analytics for data modeling and integration.
Case in point:
Consider Amazon’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods. Amazon is a colossal online store that leverages its extensive platform and insights on customer usage to entice people worldwide to repeatedly shop from it. With Whole Foods in their portfolio, they will apply their understanding of customer behavior in stores and data from point-of-sale systems and supermarket logistics to orchestrate a unified, omnichannel sales experience.
In summary, eCommerce analytics can be employed independently or in conjunction with offline analytics to maximize its potential as a marketing tool.