The art of sale has shifted from traditional sales in a physical shop to an online platform. Even without a physical salesperson at a physical store, there are numerous ways you can make sales personal and grow them efficiently. To do so, gather and analyze data using eCommerce analytics.
In this article, you’ll find out more about the different stages of eCommerce analytics and useful techniques to help you grow sales.
What is eCommerce analytics, and why is it important?
If the question is how to grow sales using data, the answer is eCommerce analytics. eCommerce analytics is the process of gathering and interpreting data from online businesses.
s data comes from all aspects of the business and is related to customers, their behavior, and their preferences. When businesses use eCommerce analytics, they can predict future demands and respond efficiently.
The best way to gather data is through digital marketing metrics. These metrics monitor and compare the results, progress, or inhibition, allowing you to take corrective measures.
While gathering data with eCommerce analytics tools, you’ll get a comprehensive overview of your online sales. You’ll find out more about:
- Your buyer persona,
- How your customers behave while using your website,
- The obstacles on your website that cause customers to leave,
- What makes your customers return to buy from you again, and
- How to incorporate the acquired data into your ad campaigns.
Get to know your buyer persona to grow sales efficiently
Using eCommerce analytics to find out more about your buyer persona is a wise decision. When you know exactly the type of person who buys your product, you can tailor your marketing/sales approach for them and grow sales more efficiently.
Not only will you grow your sales, you’ll learn how to create compelling campaigns, how to organize your website better, where to place your ads, and who to work with when it comes to influencer campaigns. All of this information will help you deliver the right content to customers who most commonly buy your products.
Google Analytics is a free tool that identifies your website visitor demographic. With this tool, you can discover the age, gender, and occupation of your buyer persona.
You can also learn which device they use most often to visit your website. For more information, check out the 3 key metrics in Google Analytics that can help you grow your sales.
Channels that lead to your website
eCommerce analytics enables you to find out how your customers learned about your shop. For example, it identifies whether most of your customers come to your website after an email campaign or due to social media content or ads.
Once you know this information, adjust your campaigns accordingly, focus your interest on the channel that brings most of the customers to you, and eventually grow your business using content marketing.
If you learn that customers come to the website mostly through recommendations, consider introducing a referral program. A referral program is beneficial for both your new and old customers and helps you to expand your network.
B2B businesses use email as their preferred channel, for example, due to an amazing ROI of 30-40 times for each dollar that they spend.
Behavior analytics
The next stage after hearing about your products and website is visiting the website itself. It is crucial to know how customers behave when they visit your website. This gives you insight into the possible downsides of the website design.
With behavior analytics data, you will learn:
- Where customers mostly click on the page,
- How much time they spend reading the content, and
- What draws their attention the most.
The data you obtain through tools regarding the behavior of your potential customers can significantly improve your sales. If people usually leave the website at the checkout option, then the checkout portion of your website may be too confusing.
Revise the steps necessary to complete the order to simplify the process. Then, monitor the metric to see whether there is a lower percentage of people leaving the website when they almost made the purchase.
Another common issue affecting behavior analytics is the responsiveness of the website, which needs to be impeccable for customers to make purchases.
If potential customers leave the website soon after they found it, perhaps they are not your target audience. To improve this aspect of your site, review the keywords on your website.
With the right keywords, you can reach your buyer persona and not those that are not your target audience.
The process of conversion in eCommerce business
The goal of every eCommerce business is a high percentage of conversion, i.e. the number of customers who visit your website and make a purchase. To increase the conversion rate, you need to know what drives potential customers to turn into returning customers.
This drive can be a fantastic website that is easy to navigate, with a simple checkout process. It can also be social media marketing and the spot-on content you deliver that contains a call to action.
Or it can be the result of personalized emails directed to your customers. Sometimes it is the upsell and cross-sell that functions best when products that are often purchased together are on a discount.
Analytics tools will tell you all of this and show you where to focus your time, energy, and money to improve these aspects.
Retention rates
Retaining customers is more financially efficient than gaining new customers, although both are the priority of an online business. Gather data about returning customers to take the right steps to keep your customers coming back.
Find out the current rate of returning customers for your website.
Similarly, learn about the percentage of customers that never return to the website. Make a questionnaire that allows customers to share why they continue shopping from you or why they do not.
Accumulating data enables you to keep track of your customer behavior and helps you grow your sales more efficiently.
Is paid marketing always ideal for your eCommerce business?
When done right, the answer is undoubtedly yes. However, do not expect that paid marketing will achieve all of your desired results.
First, you need to know your buyer persona so that you target the right people. If you are considering paid partnerships with micro-influencers choose carefully; make sure to find micro-influencers who align with the image you hope to curate for your brand.
Once you start the paid marketing campaigns, monitor their progress and note how much money you invested versus the percent of ROI.
Start growing your sales with the help of eCommerce analytics data
eCommerce analytics is the science behind every successful eCommerce business. Always keep buyer persona at the forefront when interpreting data through analytics. Act upon the results and improve each segment of your business until you are satisfied with the sales level, and then begin the process over again.
