Why all online businesses do not succeed? Well, there is a list of responsible factors.
The most common factor that makes success impossible for your business is wrong marketing. Some marketing campaigns in eCommerce turn out to be beneficial for the business but there are also times when strategies don’t give desired results.
This is the reason why marketing analytics for eCommerce is vital. Understanding analytics gives you facts, statistics, or real numbers that you need for the success of your business.
Using and understanding analytics is like knowing well in advance what your customers will search or look for. To achieve the desired results you need to know the measure of your present performance. How well are your strategies working?
This is where eCommerce analytics and brand analytics come into the picture.
Higher sales and revenues require a well-built plan which considers all parameters. Businesses should analyze their past strategies through eCommerce analytics to make further decisions in the right direction.
This article will be your guide in understanding how eCommerce analytics is an integral part of an online business, the types of eCommerce analytics, its benefits, and best practices.
Let us understand what eCommerce analytics is?
eCommerce analytics help you to understand consumer behavior and buyer psychology to run a successful eCommerce business.
eCommerce analytics is a collection of data from all the sources that have an impact on your online store. The metrics that are collected from various sources help businesses know who their consumers are, where they are based, their preferences, and a lot more.
The data that is gathered in the process of eCommerce analytics is used by businesses to make data-driven, strategic decisions and bring more revenue to the company.
A lot of eCommerce tools generally focus on on-site performance, eCommerce analysis is a lot more than that. It includes various metrics like the journey of a customer starting from discovery to retention. eCommerce analytics is a definite key to growth.
Metrics of eCommerce Analytics
Moving ahead, let us now read about the types or the metrics of eCommerce analytics that are generally used in the marketing analysis for eCommerce and help you make the right data-driven decisions.
1. Audience
eCommerce analytics that gives you insights into your audience is one of the most vital types of brand analytics. This will give you detailed information about the demographics of the customers, which includes parameters like their age, income, social status, gender, educational background, occupation, what locality is based on, and their language preferences. These valuable insights help businesses in creating user personas.
Not only that, but audience-based eCommerce analytics also helps businesses with information related to their devices. What device is the customer using, is it an Android or an IOS device and are they accessing the online store from a mobile or a desktop- these are also the types of questions audience-related eCommerce analytics solves for us.
The right kind of audience data allows eCommerce companies to make changes and provide an experience that best fits their customers.
2. Acquisition
Another type of metric that is important for eCommerce businesses is acquisition. In laymen’s terms, the acquisition means how did your users get to know about your eCommerce store or how did they land on your store. A lot of online businesses see their visitors coming in from sources like Google, social media networks, paid advertisements, etc.
It is substantial to measure which source is guiding the highest customers to your website. While you are researching the acquisition metrics, you will find out which marketing channel is giving you positive brand analytics and what channels are driving the highest number of conversions. Google Analytics helps us with great acquisition data.
When talking about acquisition metrics, here are some points you should keep in mind.
CTR – Click-through rate– Click-through rate depicts the percentage of users who click on the desired link to the users who viewed the social media creative or the email.
CTR can be calculated by- Total number of clicks/total impressions*100
CPL- Cost per lead– The cost per lead means the average cost of generating one new user for the business.
CPL can be calculated by The total amount of money invested in a marketing campaign/number of leads generated
CPA- Cost per acquisition– How to understand analytics in terms of CPA? This metric helps businesses understand the average cost of acquiring a customer.
CPA can be calculated by-Total money invested in the campaign/Number of clients who made a purchase
This data is very pivotal and helps you understand a lot about your brand analytics in general.
3. Conversion
Now that you have data about your audience and how you acquired them, the next step is trying hard to convert the users into customers. It is essential to know how the users are behaving when they come to your website.
To gather this data, ask yourself a few questions like how easy it is to convert a user? How many customers are making repetitive purchases? Are the customers abandoning sales? If yes, then why? And many more questions depending on your nature of business.
These details will help you make your sales experience better and effectively engage with your customers. When talking about conversion you must keep in mind metrics like-
Sales conversion rate means the number of users who come to your online store and make a purchase. The sales conversion rate can be calculated by the by- number of conversions/total number of visitors or users.
Average order value (AOV) is the average amount of money spent by one customer on the website. It can be calculated by revenue/number of orders.
4. Retention
For positive brand analytics, the retention rate of companies should be strong. Retention is a vital metric in the marketing analysis of eCommerce. Like it is very wisely said, retention of customers helps businesses pay dividends in the long run.
Sources also state that, if businesses increase the customer retention rate by 5% the profits go up by 25% to 95%. The retention metric in eCommerce analytics helps businesses know if they’re moving in the right direction. If not, they can make changes accordingly.
These are some of the very few metrics that businesses must look into when they are studying eCommerce analytics for the marketing analysis of eCommerce. And this brings us to the benefits that eCommerce analytics has for businesses.
Benefits of eCommerce Analytics
1. Understand your consumer psychology
Customer preferences and expectations are changing rapidly. An eCommerce business must understand its customer’s needs. ECommerce analytics helps businesses understand consumer psychology and buying behavior.
They also help us with data relating to their age, gender, occupation, income which helps us as eCommerce businesses figure out what our customers want, how much they are willing to pay, their preferences, etc.
Understanding consumer psychology and having a customer-friendly approach should be one of the top priorities of eCommerce businesses.
2. Monitor the website performance
Your website is the face of your eCommerce business. Your company website needs to keep functioning smoothly at all times. eCommerce analytics help you monitor the website performance too.
How fast does your website open up, how many unique users did you attract in a specific period, what device are your majority of users choosing, how many users actually went to the cart and then abandoned a sale- these questions can be answered through eCommerce analytics. Information like this helps businesses monitor their website performance and understand their brand analytics.
3. A data-driven product development
Online marketplaces have exposed customers to more choices than ever before. Through eCommerce analytics when the preferences of the users are collected, it can aid companies in developing products that fit their needs.
4. Cross-selling and up-selling
The eCommerce data gives us a lot of detailed insights into the target audience. If used and studied well, eCommerce companies can use the data from their brand analytics to cross-sell and up-sell products to their existing customers.
As reported by Forbes, it costs five more times to bring in a new customer to the business than to sell your products to an existing one. Make the right use of eCommerce analytics and see how it works for your company. In cases like this, retargeting the existing customers can make a lot of difference.
5. Creating a personalized customer experience
Modern consumers are likely to make a purchase when websites offer customized experiences. At present, customization and tailor-made are the keys to excellent user experience. Using eCommerce analytics will help brands figure out the needs and preferences of the customers and show personalized product recommendations to increase sales conversions.
6. Having an engaging user experience
Good customer experiences have a great impact. eCommerce analytics track how much time the customers are spending online, what marketing features are they attracted to, what kind of creatives are they tapping on. The results help businesses provide a better customer experience and deliver a better service in general.
7. Integration with eCommerce platforms
Many eCommerce analytics tools like Google Analytics and Clicky have integrations with eCommerce platforms that help them in gathering data. This integration makes it easier for eCommerce analytical tools to have access to various reports and real-time data which can further lead to better analysis. Having the right integration will also eliminate manual input saving a lot of the company’s time.
Final thoughts
If you want your eCommerce business to flourish well it is very important to understand and make use of brand analytics to make data-driven decisions. Creating an engaging user experience, driving in higher sales and the smooth functioning of an eCommerce business has to be backed by strong eCommerce analytics and proper study of all the metrics. Remember, understanding eCommerce analytics is the secret to eCommerce success.
