For e-commerce businesses, analytics data is the key to understanding their customer behaviour and then taking informed decisions accordingly. When you have the correct information through data analysis, you can make better decisions regarding your business.

Here, we’ll dive into the growing field of e-commerce analytics and discuss how merchants can use analytics in their business to make better strategies and thus boost their sales.

What is E-commerce analytics?

Ecommerce analytics can be defined as the process of collecting data from all the areas affecting your store & analysing that data to make smart decisions to drive more sales. It may include a wide range of data relating to the market trends, customer’s complete journey, seasonal trends, competitor analysis, site performance, and much more.

Areas of E-commerce metrics

1 . Audience data

The most important data comes from your audience. Try to gather maximum data regarding their demographics i.e. their gender, income, age, occupation, where they are located and what language they speak, etc.

In addition to this, this data should inform you of the different devices that your audience is using. Further, this data can give you great insights into how your online store is being accessed – do they mainly use mobile phones or desktops and by which device do they make the final purchase?

2 . Visitors Acquisition

To attract more customers to your store; you first need to know about the present customers. Who they are, and from where are they coming? Whether they are coming through social media, organic search or paid campaigns? Further, which social media is bringing more traffic or which ad campaign is working better? From which area of the world are they coming…

Once you get such details, you can target more such audiences and tailor your marketing to their needs. Different analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google search console offer a complete overview of different channels’ performance and goal conversion rates.

3 . Customer behaviour

There are a lot of queries which can be resolved by this data analysis. Some of them are:

• Once customers land on your website, what do they do?
• What source has brought them to your site?
• In what item people are taking an interest but not reaching the conversion stage?
• How much is the bounce rate? Which keyword they came searching for?
• How your funnels and E-mail campaigns are performing?
• At what stage of the funnel, customers are leaving?

4 . Conversion and Retention

Conversion is one of the most significant metrics in the world of e-commerce. You need to figure out exactly how the conversion took place and the factors involved. The more details you can gather, the better strategies you can make for more future conversions. The points which can be analysed are:

• Which Call to action (CTA) button worked for the final sales?
• Was it the first visit of the customer or how many visits it took him to reach conversion?
• How many customers abandoned their shopping carts?
• If you chase the customer who abandoned their shopping cart, by email, do they make a purchase?
• How many are repeat customers?

Once the customers have made the purchase, try to retain them by building a trust bond with them. Send them a personalised email with new relevant offers after some time and try to upsell. Further, Create a customer loyalty program and also nurture them on Social Media Channels.

The smarter you are with your marketing, the more success you will have. An e-commerce business is only as good as the customers it keeps. Building loyalty pays off in the long run.

5 . Branding through Customer Retention

You have to track the customer’s entire journey by data analysis at all the stages which are usually recognised as discovery, acquisition, conversion, retention, and advocacy.
When customers reach the “promoter” stage ie. after using your products, they love the products and they start referring or advocating your brand to their friends and connections. Then they’re just as important as a brand ambassador. When they reach this stage, it’s essential not to overlook them. The metrics for this stage make the difference between an average e-commerce business and a successful one.

Essential E-commerce analytical tools

• Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an analytics tool with many features and a globally trusted name. It’s a free Google product, relatively easy to use, and it’s considered one of the best tools for understanding your customers. With a well-rounded analytics experience, it covers everything from website performance to content and products.
It’s the ultimate solution with real-time analytics. You can always check your website traffic at any point in time and further on which page how many visits are there and at which time. From which countries and areas your traffic is coming, which ad campaign is performing well, etc. Further, it can give you more detailed reports by setting different parameters.

• Google Search Console

Google Search Console reveals which searches generate traffic to your site and alerts you about what needs tweaking on your website. Google Search Console’s tools help you measure page-wise, article-wise and keyword-wise website traffic and performance so that you can improve the weak areas of your site.

Apart from these free and widely used tools, there are a lot of other tools also in the market, which are even more sophisticated and detail-oriented. You can check out those tools also.

Best practices of E-commerce analytics

As your business grows, you become surrounded by more and more data coming in from different social media platforms and tools. If this data is used wisely, it can help you measure success, find flaws, improve your customer retention and thus skyrocket your sales. However, keep in mind to adjust the numbers for seasonal and other trends. Some of the techniques for the best usage of this data can be:

1 . Collecting scattered data across all platforms

In this era of digital business, everywhere data is being generated and this data is scattered across different platforms like Facebook ads data, Google Analytics data, Google Search Console data and Salesforce data. There are plenty of connectors for all the different data silos that will allow you to put all that information into one place. It saves time and makes data useful and enables you to generate more money out of it.

2 . Understand the numbers and act accordingly

Numbers don’t mean anything without the context, they need to be analysed and used properly. You need to know what is working and what isn’t and how to act quickly. Alerts on products, categories, and campaigns that are trending well will help businesses to be on the top of their e-commerce game.

If some ad campaign is not converting then there is no point in continuing it. Businesses must react to their customers’ behaviours and the trends in the market by actively monitoring the numbers and taking smart decisions. A timely response will always be the key to success.

3 . Dashboard automation and insight analysis

Once you are done gathering data, you can automate the tasks associated with reporting. Avoid mistakes by setting your reports to refresh automatically. A data-driven culture means less time for reporting and more time for the analysis and insights to make quick and better strategies.

4 . Competitor analysis

In today’s competitive world, it’s essential not to gather only your data but your competitor’s data also. Which products they are selling fast and how? On which keywords, they are ranking on top? How is their performance on social media? How are their ad campaigns performing? Their page loading speed in comparison to yours? Thus you have to keep your eyes open for any new changes and trends.

Let’s conclude

Having too many sheets with a lot of data on them will not help you unless you correlate these figures with each other. Further, you won’t reach any meaningful conclusion or decisions from that data if it is analysed in isolation. So one needs to keep the full picture in mind to analyse the data and make timely and wise decisions.