Ecommerce Analytics: How to Use the Power of Data To Grow Sales

If you don’t know where you are at the moment, how can you expect to get results?

You can’t make sales if your only attempt at ecommerce marketing is unsuccessful.

Good strategies require careful pre-planning. Businesses that are successful learn from past successes and test new ideas to make sure they have a brighter future.

It all boils down to ecommerce analytics. Analytics allow you to dig deep into historical business data and forecasting for future business information so you can make the best decisions for your company.

What is Ecommerce Analytics?

Ecommerce analytics involves the collection of data from all areas that impact your store. This data can then be used to understand shifts in customer behavior or online shopping trends.

You can ultimately make smarter decisions if you base them on data. This should lead to more online sales.

Ecommerce analytics can cover a variety of metrics related to the customer journey such as acquisition, retention, conversion, advocacy, and discovery.

 

Source: PayHelm for BigCommerce

Types of Ecommerce Analytics

There are many types of ecommerce analytics you can use to help you plan your marketing strategy and stay ahead of the rest. Let’s now take a closer look at the most common types.

1. Audience

Data analytics that applies to your audience is the best place to start. This will provide you with detailed insights about your audience’s demographics, such as. This will give you an in-depth insight into the demographics of your audience, i.e., their gender, age and income as well as where they live and what language they speak.

This data, along with audience data, should give you information about the devices your audience uses. Is your audience primarily accessed from their desktop or mobile phones? If the latter, are they more likely to use Apple or Android devices? This will give you valuable insights into the traffic patterns to your online store so you can tailor your marketing efforts.

Ecommerce business owners have the option to modify shipping options or advertise based on their audience.

This will allow you to rethink your topics and the way that your marketing content is displayed on different devices. This is where data about your audience’s sessions and the technology used to make this possible comes in handy.

Learn more: 

Magento Pos

Shopify Pos

Bigcommerce Pos

Woocommerce Pos

Netsuite pos

MSI

2. 2. Acquisition

Data relating to customer acquisition is another type of ecommerce analytics you can use to propel your business forward. This data is extremely valuable as it will reveal how visitors found you online, and how they arrived at your site.

You can learn more about which online marketing channels bring the most people to your site by using acquisition data. You’ll also find out which channels drive the most sales or conversions.

It’s also possible to see which online marketing channels work best and which ones don’t.

• Are most of your visitors coming from social media?
• What number of website visitors are your email campaigns bringing in?
• What is the conversion rate for blog posts?
• Are paid ads the best way to reach your target audience?

These data can be crucial in helping you understand which marketing channels are most profitable for your business, so you can decide where to focus your resources.

“PayHelm has been an invaluable resource in researching different data points in our day-to-day operations and sales performance.” We are also now able more precisely tailor a compensation plan for our sales associates.” — Dan Pritcher (Co-owner), Eagle Mountain

3. 3.

Information on the behavior of your customers is another type of data that you should be considering. How do people behave once they land on your site?

• Which products are customers most likely to buy?
• What percentage of your visitors leave your site immediately, rather than exploring it?
• Which page should people first click?
• What marketing content does the viewer click on?
• What products are popular but not very well-sold?
• What average time do visitors spend on your site?

These questions will help you understand the current usage of your website so that you can determine the average journey people take when they interact with your online store.

You should examine the page loading times of your website if you notice that many visitors don’t scroll through your inventory, or they leave quickly. Could it be that your website isn’t loading fast enough?

Users who leave a page quickly indicate that they haven’t found what they were looking for. This could indicate that the business type they are looking for is different from what they expected. It could also mean that there may be an issue in the keywords you use to target your marketing campaigns. It could also mean that your content is too complicated.

Behavior analytics will enable you to identify the areas of your store you can improve to increase engagement and conversion rates.

4. 4.

Conversions have been mentioned a number of times. This is yet another type you can use to propel your business forward.

• What happens when online users become customers?
• How do online users convert into actual customers?

These are the questions that you need to be asking when it comes conversion analytics. This is an important part of your marketing strategy.

There are many things you can learn when you dig deeper.

• What is the average time it takes for a user to become a paying customer?
• Are customers more likely to convert once a month or multiple times a year?
• Are customers more likely to purchase items from your e-store after one visit? Or do they need to return several times before buying?
• Are customers more likely to repeat their purchases?
• How many customers abandon their shopping baskets rather than convert?

This information can be used to improve your marketing messages and help you to engage customers and users.

You should also be aware of factors like the average revenue that your store receives for each transaction. What is the average amount of items your customers purchase in a single transaction?

This information is crucial because it allows you to determine which discounts and offers will be most appealing to your current customers.

“When we first started BigCommerce, we realized that the critical data we needed on a daily basis was not available or in an accessible format. We needed to be able to view daily sales volume, as well as product and order details, and to make informed comparisons. PayHelm allows us to find any data we want and export robust reports to help us make informed decisions about marketing and procurement.” — Tad Roberts (Co-Owner & President RC Hobby Experiment).

5. 5. Paid Marketing Activities

You should also consider your paid marketing activities, in addition to the above four analytics. This will allow you to calculate your ROI for different paid marketing campaigns.

• What revenue have your social media ads generated?
• Are you able to generate more revenue than you paid for creating and promoting the ads?
• What amount of revenue have your pay-per click ads generated?
• What about your email marketing campaigns.

You will spend money on marketing campaigns that do not contribute to your bottom line if you don’t evaluate your current paid marketing campaigns.

 

Source: PayHelm for BigCommerce

Analytics are important for your Ecommerce store.

It is crucial to understand the importance of ecommerce analytics. Analytics are crucial because they allow you to make better decisions and generate the best results for your ecommerce store. We will show you how analytics can help you e-commerce.

Analytics: 5 Benefits for Ecommerce

1. You can measure the effectiveness of your sales and marketing campaigns

Ecommerce companies can use data analytics to measure the success of their marketing campaigns, improve decision-making and gain more omnichannel traffic. This information can be used to inform holistic marketing programs.

 

Source: PayHelm for BigCommerce

2. 2. Evaluate trends and patterns in data to forecast accurately

You can use Ecommerce analytics to gain a better understanding about how your business is performing and what the future holds. Forecasting can help you determine your sales goals, hiring goals, and ensure that the right products are available at the right time to meet customer expectations.

3. Optimize your pricing, up-sell, and inventory performance

You can get a detailed picture of pricing trends for each consumer segment with ecommerce analytics. This insight can be used to help you determine the best price points for each product, and not just at the category level. You will then be able earn the highest revenue.

4. Personalize your experience by using customer data

It is crucial to understand how customers interact with you business in order to determine what formats, content, and channels will appeal to your target audience and resonate with them. Ecommerce data analytics can help you position your products optimally and improve the buying experience for all your customers.

5. Data-driven insights can help you plan your strategy

Data analytics can also help you to improve your strategy. This will allow you to gain valuable insight into the market and industry so that you can identify key market trends and potential risks that you should mitigate.

There is a difference between Metrics, KPIs Analytics, Reporting and Metrics

These terms are often used interchangeably by many people, but they all have their own unique meanings. It is important to be able to use them all in harmony to achieve the best results for your ecommerce business.

This is possible only if you understand the meaning of each word. Let’s have a look at it:

• Metrics – A measurement standard is called a metric. Your bounce rate, for example, could be a metric.
• Reports – A report summarizes both current and past data. It focuses on what has happened.
• KPI – KPI stands to be a key performance indicator. KPIs can be used to measure success levels by comparing actual and forecasted data. This is how something happened.
• Analytics – Analytics are used to predict future performance. What can we do to improve?

Ecommerce Analytics Best Practices

You now have an understanding of the benefits of ecommerce analytics for your business. Now you need to ensure that you properly implement it so you can bring about success in your company. How do you achieve this?

1. All of your marketing data, which is spread across multiple platforms and channels, should be gathered

This can make it a difficult task as many businesses have data on multiple mediums. You will need to organize all your data.

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed. It’s normal. It’s normal. These are just a few examples of important information you might find:

• BigCommerce store
• Email providers
• Platforms for customer relationship management
• Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce Data
• Outbrain
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads

This list is unique to each company. The good news is that you can consolidate this data quickly and easily. You can pull data directly from any source into Excel or Google Sheets using a pre-built connector. This makes it much easier to automate the process.

2. Connect the dots between your customers’ numbers

Do not fall for the temptation to just gather data because you feel you must. You need a purpose. It is not enough to simply look at a sheet of numbers. This is where magic happens when you combine these numbers with your customers.

Although marketing tools can provide a lot of data, they are not designed for cross-channel reporting. You won’t see the whole picture if you look at the data alone. This is where mistakes and bad decisions are made.

Your marketing stack will grow larger. Having all your data in one place will allow you to see the behavior of your users and identify areas where you can improve.

3. 3.

Although it may seem simple, there are many online stores that fail to adjust their analytics for major industry trends, seasonality or other changes.

This approach requires that you don’t only focus on the current moment in SEO. SEO is a complex game. You can only see the micro-moments of data, and you will miss the bigger picture.

4. You should be watching your shopping habits closely

You can monitor a variety of key areas in this regard, such as sessions with transactions, session with checkout , sessions with add-to-cart, and sessions with sessions.

If you notice a sudden drop in flow it could be a sign that your checkout process is not working properly. It may also indicate that your website is slowing down. This is why it is important to monitor and analyze the flow.

5. Keep track of your product categories over time.

It is crucial to look at product details in order to track your sales and marketing efforts. You can track the performance of each product over time to identify your top revenue drivers. If you are looking to discover which products perform well and which ones don’t, this is the place to start.

You can dig deeper by looking at the sales performance of all your products in a particular category. You can identify the top-performing products that have the highest number of sales, highest revenue and unique purchases to help you determine which products your customers really love and which ones need more attention.

Wrapping up

This is it. Everything you need to know about ecommerce analysis and why they are so crucial for your business.

Data can help you make better decisions and drive your company forward. This will ultimately improve your bottom line.

This will allow you to identify which areas are performing well and areas that need improvement. It doesn’t matter how you measure it.