How Ecommerce Stores Can Use Retail Analytics to Boost Sales
Ecommerce is completely changing the retail world. Over half of Americans say that they would rather shop online than in a physical store. That’s a huge shift in consumer habits, considering that online shopping was still a novelty for many people only a decade ago. Even though ecommerce retailers continue getting a larger share of their respective markets, there’s now lots of competition in the online space. This makes it necessary for ecommerce stores to utilize all tools at their disposal to stay ahead of their competition. Here’s how ecommerce stores can use retail analytics to boost sales.
Get a Better Understanding of Customers
You’ll have a difficult time finding success in the ecommerce world if you don’t know your customers. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be on a first-name basis with them (though that probably won’t hurt your sales). It does, however, mean that you need to intimately understand your customer base. How old are they? Where are they from? What time of day are they visiting your ecommerce store? These are all useful, consumer-based retail analytics that are necessary to generating conversions. If your ecommerce provider doesn’t provide the tools necessary to track demographic, time-sensitive, and locational data, sign up for an analytics program that can give you this key information.
Search-driven Analytics
There are few new innovations to the data world more promising than search-driven Analytics. Essentially, search-driven Analytics allows users to synthesize structured data into qualitative graphs and documents through an input similar to Google’s search bar. Instead of searching for results online, the search-driven Analytics engine puts together the various parts of your inquiry into a usable form. There are two reasons why search-driven Analytics can be extremely beneficial to ecommerce retail analytics:
- Get Results Faster: Most in-depth data analysis requires a lot of work. It often takes weeks for most businesses to get the results from their analytics team. Search-driven Analytics cuts down that time, as you can get answers right away.
- Foster Collaboration: Search-driven Analytics doesn’t require a lot of specialized training. This means all your employees with sufficient permissions can quickly run integrated data analyses to solve issues that they otherwise might not even pursue.
Design More Effectively
The layout and design of your ecommerce store (basically, your website) can sometimes be as crucial as your inventory in terms of sales conversions. Certain features are more effective when placed in one area versus another. It’s important that you can analyze how your customers are interacting with your site, in order to make more informed decisions about design. Luckily, there are now ecommerce retail analytics tools that allow store owners to do exactly that. It’s now possible to track how people are using your site, not just what pages they visit. This is invaluable information for determining the best way to build your ecommerce store.
Market More Effectively
Marketing is crucial to the success of an ecommerce store. This is because absolutely no one will ever find an ecommerce store that doesn’t effectively market to its potential customers. Many people think they have the answers when it comes to online marketing. However, nobody knows better than data. The most profitable ecommerce stores know that analytics is key to finding and retaining a strong customer base. Cluster analysis is one of the most important methods for segmenting market groups. It’s also essential that you keep track of how many conversions you get per dollar spent on marketing. This can sometimes be hard to quantify; but specialized ad links can at least help keep track of direct sales.
No matter what you’re selling, your ecommerce store needs a data strategy. Consider these ecommerce retail analysis tools for your business.
