When developing your ecommerce website, it’s imperative that every decision you make is designed with the customer’s best interests in mind. After all, if their interest is not converted into a sale, the business won’t have a future. Therefore, introducing ecommerce analytics should be considered an essential ingredient in the recipe for online success.

The following guide will answer all of your key questions on the subject, including but not limited to;

• What is ecommerce analytics all about?
• What data will ecommerce analytics provide?
• Why should your company use ecommerce analytics?
• How can your brand implement ecommerce tracking in style?
• How can website analytics drive future business decisions?

Boost Reporting delivers comprehensive web analytics and ecommerce tracking that can transform the future of the business through smarter marketing and improved client experiences. 

What is ecommerce analytics?

The term ecommerce analytics covers a range of processes that focus on collecting data in relation to the digital marketing strategy and how users interact with different marketing channels, as well as your website and webpages. The information can follow the entire customer journey from discovery and the first interaction all the way through to repeat visits and long-term brand advocacy.

Ecommerce tracking tools can subsequently be used to spot trends within consumer behaviors. This can range from general habits shown by all users to those that only appear across certain browsers, devices, demographics, and traffic sources. 

Why is ecommerce analytics so vital for modern marketing?

We live in a world where consumers have a wealth of information at their fingertips. It only takes a few clicks for them to drag up background information about the brand along with customer reviews. Likewise, they are able to run price comparisons very quickly to see whether you deliver the best service and value for money.

And they will too, as is underlined by the fact that 86% of consumers admit to being influenced by reviews. If they are going to use data to their advantage, you must too!

Ecommerce analytics allow your business to place added emphasis on the marketing strategies that perform well while simultaneously identifying areas of improvement. Utilized correctly, ecommerce analytics will allow you to;

• Improve the user experience for all users,
• Ensure strong performances across all device types and browsers,
• Build a website that is ranked better by search engines,
• Gain a deeper understanding of the consumer journey,
• Know when, where, and how users interact with the site.

The global value of the ecommerce sector is set to surpass $6.3 trillion in 2024, but consumers are increasingly educated about how to get the best value. And they will only work with the brands that provide it.

In fact, over 80% of consumers will happily pay more for a better consumer experience. Given that a growing percentage of interactions – including those conducted by prospective offline leads who are conducting research before visiting your store – are conducted online, embracing the power of data is more crucial than ever. And it must cover all facets of your digital marketing strategy, including on-site and third-party elements.

What future decisions can be driven by ecommerce analytics?

When powered by the right ecommerce analytics platform, ecommerce tracking tools can be used to gather an extensive range of data relating to the user’s visit to your website as well as the interactions with the other platforms. This includes but is not limited to;

• The webpages that they visit and social channels that they interact with,
• Where they came from (web links, PPC ads, organic search, etc.),
• How long they spend on the site or how frequently they interact with channels,
• Which pages lead to conversion and which have high bounce rates,
• Any contrasts between desktop and mobile users.

Ecommerce analytics can cover the website, business app, email marketing, and social media shopping channels (such as Instagram shopping) to create a more consistent result across the brand’s entire online strategy. Some of the key decisions that the data can subsequently influence are listed below:

General web performance

Knowing that the website performs as expected is one of the most reassuring outcomes of all. While you can conduct all the in-house testing you like, the results will be limited. Only the data provided by real users will tell you whether the website is performing as it should. You will be able to check a range of key performance indicators ranging from site speed to bounce rate. If consumers aren’t responding in the intended manner, something will need to change. From the content to site navigation and CTAs, you can subsequently implement a range of changes using ideas like A/B testing.

Product development and management

Research shows that 66% of products fail to make it beyond the two-year mark. In many cases, companies make decisions based on today’s trends. Using data-driven customer insights across all channels will identify changing consumers mindsets. When this info is combined with industry insights, you will know what products people are ready to buy along with the pricing models. Furthermore, you will be better positioned to optimize your product portfolio by clearly seeing which items are selling or not. This will help streamline the order fulfillment process, particularly when integrated with automotive tech.

Marketing strategies

It’s one thing to think that your marketing campaign will work wonders. Sadly, even the best marketers have hits and misses. By collecting valuable data across all channels through a dedicated ecommerce analytic platform, it is possible to remove the guessing. This ensures that marketing budgets (and time efforts) are invested primarily on the highest-performing ads. When tracking consumer habits from interaction off-site and on-site, the road to conversion can be streamlined too. Internal promotion reports, order coupon reports, affiliate coupon reports, and product coupon reports will give valuable insights.

Up-selling and cross-selling ideas

It is commonly accepted that remarketing to existing clients is easier than recruiting new ones. Data-driven opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell are now better than ever as you can track what products people are interacting with and use the habits of other clients to make suggestions. Many retailers now use “customers who bought X also bought Y” tactics. According to Forbes, 35% of Amazon’s entire revenue is made courtesy of its recommendations engine. Your marketing strategies and ecommerce tracking can take it to the next stage with tools like cart abandonment emails.

Personalizing experiences

Consumer demands continue to evolve at a rapid rate. Perhaps most tellingly, though, they want to align with brands that make them feel valued. Personalized experiences are key to facilitating this idea. Ecommerce analytics will help you see what content, pages, and ads grab their attention. Meanwhile, automated triggers that send email marketing streams or personalized ads can work wonders for the marketing strategy. Triggers could range from email sign-ups or clicking a particular social media post ‘shop now’ button to their birthday. Again up-selling based on their past purchases is a great tool.

What results can be gained through smart ecommerce analytics?

Understanding the areas where data-driven decisions can be made is one thing, but it’s only worth using your ecommerce analytics platform if you have set the right goals. When used to its full potential, the information gained from web analytics and other ecommerce tracking tools can help you;

• Create a better UX for the consumer, which will increase the likelihood of conversion,
• Improve organic visibility as search engines rank sites that provide the best UX,
• Save money by no longer investing time and money into ineffective campaigns,
• Get a clearer image of client needs, including contrasts between demographics,
• Streamline the path to conversion for quicker sales from new and returning clients,
• Put an end to the threat of losing leads due to poor ecommerce experiences.

Around half of businesses believe that ecommerce analytics help them make smarter decisions, and that doesn’t account for the fact that many fail to use the processes correctly. It can almost certainly boost your customer experiences, brand awareness, and bottom line. 

How to use ecommerce analytics throughout the consumer journey

To gain the full benefits of ecommerce analytics, companies should look to integrate them into all aspects of their marketing strategies. This should cover every stage of the relationship between the business and the client. The process usually covers five key phases; discovery, acquisition, conversion, retention, and advocacy.

Discovery 

The first challenge facing any business is to get people to visit the site. Using an advanced ecommerce analytics platform allows for integrations with social media and email marketing strategies to gain a deeper insight into how many people have seen the content. Meanwhile, demographical data and device data can allow you to create consumer profiles for different audiences. 

Checking the Reach, Impressions, and Engagement across all channels is a great starting point. When combined with tracking the traffic sources for your website, the habits of your leads will be clear.

Acquisition

The Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) metric is easily one of the most important. After all, there is little point in getting a user to visit your website if it costs you $100 to do it for $50 of sales revenue. However, the acquisition sections of your ecommerce analytics dashboard can cover several key metrics including the two below;

• Click-through rate (CTR): the number of people who see an ad and then click it. This is worked out as a percentage.
• Cost per lead (CPL): this is the cost of the campaign divided by the number of leads it generates. The same as CPA, but for leads.

Tracking data at this stage of the consumer journey will provide the data needed to improve the efficiency of your marketing strategies across all platforms, thus bringing more leads and sales in a cost-effective fashion.

Conversion

Standing out from the crowd and getting people to consider purchasing your products is a breakthrough. However, those successes mean nothing without the subsequent conversion. For your commercial endeavors to perform at the desired rate, you should be eager to track several key features at this stage, such as;

• Sales conversion rate: the number of conversions divided by the number of visitors to the website or webpage.
• Average order value: the amount of money each customer spends, which is calculated by dividing revenue by the number of orders.
• Cart abandonment rate: the number of people out of all started orders that do not complete the purchase. This is worked out as a percentage.

The data gained here will help you determine whether your product pages and transaction pages (orders and payments) are performing as they should. And if not, you can update them to improve the conversion rates and reduce abandonment levels.

Retention 

The value of loyal customers is clear. As well as being easier to win over, they spend 31% more money. When retaining clients, you will want to track their customer lifetime value (CLV) metric. This is essentially the amount of money they will spend over the course of every order they make. 

Knowing the average CLVs can help you forecast overall revenue by keeping all retained customers in one group of your ecommerce analytics dashboard. You can also use the data to work out the customer retention rate over a period of time to create more accurate predictions.

Advocacy

Ecommerce tracking shouldn’t only worry about the direct interactions with a customer. It should consider their influence on friends and family. Advocates are customers who actively spread the word about your business. Newsletter subscribers, loyalty schemes members, and affiliates are all likely to fall into this category. So tracking the numbers for those features is vital.

Crucially, you must look to determine the Net promoter score (NPS). Each customer can fall into one of three categories – active promoters, passive customers, and detractors. Identifying active promoters will help you leverage success through their advocacy efforts, which boosts awareness and conversions without additional marketing efforts on your behalf.

How to get more from ecommerce analysis

If you are planning to use ecommerce analysis, you must use it well. After all, 50% of businesses fail in the first five years. The probability of suffering that fate will be greatly reduced with the right approach to data and ecommerce tracking.

Using an advanced ecommerce analytics platform allows you to integrate all channels into one database with ease. This can cover sales from your store, Shopify, social media stores, as well as ads across multiple channels.

As well as understanding the numbers and knowing what KPIs you want to focus on, it’ll be important to ensure clear communication between all relevant team members. Consistency across all marketing and client-facing interactions will be vital. Ultimately, the most significant data metrics will vary greatly from one business to the next, but some of the key reports include shopping behavior reports, checkout behavior reports, and sales behavior reports.

Perhaps the most important step, though, is to partner with an analytics team that allows you to track every piece of data you could ever need while easily analyzing information from the dashboard. Take the first steps to finding yours by calling Boost Reporting today!