Suppose you want to figure out why there's a shift in customer behavior and a change in the online shopping trend. In that case, you must opt for data from eCommerce analytics—a process of gathering and analyzing information from different verticals within your brand that directly or indirectly impact your online store. Not only does it help you make more informed decisions, thanks to the valuable data, but it also gives you a competitive edge.
Studies suggest that eCommerce stores that use statistical information reported a 40.38% increase in revenue after three years of choosing data analytics to formulate strategies.
Understanding the need for eCommerce analytics
In broad terms, eCommerce analytics is a way to get a sense of your existing and potential customers. To better understand them, you need to look at many other factors like your site's bounce rate, keywords that pull in more customers, where the customers come from, among others. It is a whole bunch of essential information that you as a business owner will need, and with more customers, your data load will only intensify. But it would help if you remember that this data would give you insight into your customer behavior.
Meanwhile, when looking for a higher conversion rate, data from eCommerce analysis is a sound strategy to have a competitive advantage.
The evolution in consumer demand and technological advancements catapulted global eCommerce sales in recent times. According to a report, the number of people buying goods and services online is expected to touch the 2.14 billion mark in 2021, up from 1.66 billion global digital buyers in 2016. And over the next ten years, the prominent drivers of success will be those who understand the customer preferences and tastes.
49% of respondents say that analytics helped them make better decisions in another survey. In comparison, 16% said it enables them to make strategic decisions, and only 10% said it helped them improve relationships with customers and business partners.
Having an analytics tool for a successful eCommerce business is pretty much a given. Integrating the information from analytics tools will also work wonders for your brand. But if you're unable to pay heed to the minute analysis, you're letting go of the valued data that could've helped you thrive in the eCommerce world.
However, 51% of brands still said that "measuring and reporting on how eCommerce is performing as a distribution channel" is challenging.
How eCommerce analytics helps brands?
It helps you understand where your customers are coming from -- like analytics of traffic, traffic sources, and search keywords tell you what's bringing customers to your site.
It helps you know when customers are converting and when they're bouncing from your site. In addition, this data keeps you in the know to figure out ways to improve the conversion rate.
Analytics lets you store and organize data about your customers and the sales, personal info, etc. Then, you can integrate this data with your eCommerce CRM.
It helps you with information that will help you find ways to improve customer experience.
Analytics provides you with the tools you require to process orders, streamline order-to-cash management and ensure everything follows a process for fulfilling orders.
How can Brands Use eCommerce Analytics to Boost Conversion Rate?
1. Product Page Optimization
A good product page is vital because customers become aware of the product and read other customers' reviews. When this page is not structured well, that spells trouble for your brand. Now, how do you figure out where the issue lies and how you can fix it? That's possible through product page optimization. It will collect the data gathered by customer actions and then analyze it for deeper insights. The end goal is to get a customer to buy a product rather than peruse it. Insights will highlight problem areas like bad page layout that doesn't guide the visitor or the call to action buttons that aren't prominently displayed or let the customer know what happens on clicking them etc. All such factors and more could affect the conversion rate.
2. Predictive analytics:
You should look through predictive analytics to better engage your customers and pander to their needs. When you analyze what your customers expect, you serve them better. The past purchases, preferences that'll give a sense about what they're likely to buy in the future. Predictive analytics ensures that your recommendations hopefully hit the mark.
3. Pricing analysis:
Unlike in the past, today, the willingness of a customer to pay a certain amount depends on the day, week, month, or year. Here is where the price optimization comes into the picture. It can pinpoint the best prices for customers that'll lead to conversions and promote the growth of your brand. You also know what drives pricing for every consumer segment with eCommerce analytics. And when you have this insight, you'll be able to discover the best price points at the product level rather than category level, and it'll enable you to earn optimal revenue.
4. Trend discovery
At times, it's not that easy to judge the market trend. Given the pace at which eCommerce is transforming, you need to match the speed it's moving forward. With eCommerce analytics, you will understand how your business is performing now and likely to perform in the future. Once you get an insight into that aspect, you will brace yourself to tailor market strategies that will keep your business profitable.
5. Improve your services
The ultimate goal of eCommerce analytics is to gather data to understand customers' pulse and provide services that meet or exceed expectations. Not only price and quality, but quality service will make the customer keep coming back to you. It would be wise to remember one size doesn't fit all in eCommerce. A report states that 80% of customers are likely to buy from a brand when offered a personalized experience. Using eCommerce analytics, you can predict the needs of different customers to provide better service and make improvements in required areas.
6. Analyze Customer Behavior
Analysis of data points like search patterns, customer interests, frequency of ordering, purchasing power, offers, and discount acceptance helps you launch effective campaigns, optimize profitability, and reduce the customer bounce rate.
7. Demand forecasting
An accurate forecast of customer demand is a great way to save costs. And how well you manage your eCommerce inventory will determine the longevity of your business. Knowing when to launch a product, where your products are, and when to repurchase can save the aggravation of order fulfillment. When you resort to insights from eCommerce analytics, you may get data that'll assist you in forecasting and planning inventories for the future.
8. Supply chain management
Earlier eCommerce businesses faced storage and warehousing woes all around the year to meet the requirements of customers with varied tastes. With the eCommerce analytics tools, you get to analyze shelf-life, patent, sales growth, and the earliest possibilities of removing a product from the warehouse after placing an order. With the optimization of the supply chain, you can make data-driven decisions. You'll get to determine what to store, how much to stock, and at what time during the year.
How to extract eCommerce data?
Based on the intensity of the project and your requirements, you can choose from the following data extraction options:
1. Building a customized web scraper: A customized web scraping tool according to your requirements will prove highly beneficial. Since the data collection depends on your business requirements, it crawls data quickly from the top organizations that function in the same niche as you. Without a lot of programming knowledge, there are several DIY tools that you can go for to get excellent results.
2. Opting for third-party scraping tools: You can pick various web crawler tools to extract product data from the eCommerce websites. If you are venturing into the domain for the first time, there are various third-party tools you can choose at purchase for premium solutions like the services provided by Datahut. Choose a plan on the basis of your requirements and move ahead from there.
Also Read: 10 Web Scraping Challenges You Need to Know
3. Choosing an API tool: It's the tool that is easy to integrate with other software products or scripts you're running. As long as you have a little bit of coding knowledge, web scraping APIs are excellent options as it is pretty less complex.
Wrapping up
E-commerce analytics take place throughout the customer's journey with the brand. And the insights provided at this time will help create an enriching experience, enable you to optimize customer experience, increase conversion rate, improve retention, and help with the acquisition part of the process.
Analytics will drive your brand forward by giving you a competitive advantage. You get to determine what areas are performing well and what require improvement. When you get a sense of these points, you are in a relatively better position to succeed in the industry.
Ready to transform your e-commerce brand with the power of data analytics? Contact Datahut to get high-quality e-commerce data for gaining a competitive advantage.
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