to help your business compete against brands large and small ... actually segment their customer data - so if ... tools
Winning at Ecommerce Why Your Odds Should Be Better Than Winning At Blackjack
Running an ecommerce business without the right data can be a lot like spending a night in Vegas… you find yourself amid thousands of games dealing with noise, lights, and other distractions - while staring at the vast amounts of chips and money that sit on the tables around you.
The odds are stacked against you It’s a simple fact in online retail that mega-brands like Amazon and Walmart employ entire departments and big dollars toward understanding big data. Once they have it, they then leverage it to make customers feel like they’re receiving personal recommendations each time they visit the site; bombarding them with email; and using retargeting to stalk them across the web. Meanwhile only 20 percent of all online retailers actually segment their customer data - so if you’re not in the 20 percent you could get
left behind. So how do you gain the upper hand? Most ecommerce teams need the ability to leverage data, and use it to know their customers. However, most of the analytics tools available today are made for data analysts and people whose passion in life is to string together queries and work in pivot tables to pull the right set of numbers. ! | WINNING AT ECOMMERCE 2
Your team needs user friendly data on demand to help your business compete against brands large and small in noisy, crowded marketplaces while earning the loyalty and recognition of your target audience. Next to your ecommerce platform - selecting the right commerce intelligence solution for your brand can be one of the most important strategic decisions that you make…
Bet on a sure thing: your data There’s no shortage of buzzwords that can define the goals of your digital marketing campaigns. Customer-centricity, social media optimization, personalization, omni-channel presence, the list goes on. The top ten commerce sites convert about 23 percent of visitors into buyers during every session that a customer initiates with their site. Meanwhile, the rest are lucky if they convert five percent of site visitors into customers.
The most successful online retailers aren’t succeeding on brand recognition alone. Today’s top online marketplaces win customers by making the most out of understanding what their customers want and how they behave online. For example, Amazon is so well optimized for returning visitors that 66 percent of its sales are repeat purchases, and most businesses are content with just half that number of loyal customers. It’s a competitive world. And the best online brands use data to optimize every transaction they receive - after all it's not fashion that drove ModCloth’s online success story - it’s data.
The odds are stacked against you
The top ten commerce sites convert about 23 percent of visitors into buyers during every session that a customer initiates with their site.
Meanwhile, the rest are lucky if they convert five percent of site visitors into customers.
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The importance of making “data-driven” decisions is a phrase many merchants have heard, but few know where to begin.
When it comes to big data,
where do you start? How easily can you analyze your store’s data? Does your team need querying languages (SQL,Hive,Pig), scripting languages (Python, Matlab), statistical languages (R, SAS, SPSS),
a spreadsheet (Excel) team of analysts, and technical data analysts to respond to what’s trending on social media, or even this morning’s marketing campaign performance? Your business is affected by marketplace demand - how quickly can you respond if sell through rates decrease? The importance of making “data-driven” decisions is a phrase many merchants have heard, but few know where to begin. Their main focus is simply keeping their store running. It begs the question, what data should I be looking for? And how do I use that data to make the right decisions about
my customers, my merchandise, and marketing?
Why isn’t Google Analytics enough?
Google Analytics can be a powerful first step for many online businesses. However, for merchants, tools like Google Analytics requires time in setting up reports, and focuses on the wrong information, such as page views. Google Analytics doesn’t really tie your customer’s actions to actual revenue, and barely scratches the surface of the type of data that fuels growth.
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That data may provide a snapshot of how the business website is performing in retrospect. But, looking backwards can only get businesses so far. In short, the data offered by today’s most wellknown tools isn’t tailored specifically to the needs of ecommerce professionals. Meanwhile another popular option, Adobe Analytics, requires a reporting team to set up and then extract the data merchants need to run their businesses. Most business intelligence solutions require IT intervention to track and manage data. When was the last time you asked yourself the questions should I use Variables versus SAINT to analyze my data? To most business users those terms are foreign, and the questions they’re asking themselves on a day-to-day basis are far more straightforward. For example, what is going to drive revenue for my area of the business, and how can we improve customer engagement to drive conversions?
The winning hand Merchants need analytics and business intelligence focused on commerce that they can access on demand in order to make decisions that drive the day-to-day success of their businesses. For example, most analytics solutions don’t give users top level access to whether Pinterest or Facebook drives more revenue per visit, or about what products they should bundle to achieve a higher sell through rate. As an online merchant you may have only a few unique offerings, or you could offer thousands of individual SKUs - but you shouldn’t have to wade through a sea of excel sheets and reports or have to wait on technical and data analysts to spit out the information you need to take action. Having improved, real-time visibility into what it is a particular customer likes – or even where they came from – can make all the difference in knowing which products to offer which customers or whether there are any opportunities to bundle additional products in order to increase the value of a sale. It’s something the likes of Amazon or eBay can accomplish with a great deal of accuracy and repeatability. But they also have the resources to apply the appropriate amount of dollars and staff members to get the job done.
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Data is NOT for everyone, but answers should be! Although taking the time to rapidly understand individual customers’ interests, buying habits, and browsing patterns seems like a luxury only available to the top tier of merchants, new tools have emerged to help level the playing field. Techniques that seemed out of reach in the past are becoming available today, but it demands merchants approach the problem with the business user in mind. The industry is trending toward solutions that enable business users to self serve, and interpret their data in a way that helps them do their job better. After all,
to compete and win, brands need a solution that can help them be radically customer-centric so they can connect the right customer, with the right offer or product, at the right time. The right analytics tool should present all of the information you need to grow your online business in one place - and deliver it in a way that let’s you take action and go from 0 to 60.
Do you need a new analytics solution? Based on lessons learned from working with more than 80,000 merchants including GE, Nasty Gal, and Bliss - we’ve created the following checklist to help you decide if your users need to adopt a new commerce intelligence solution. • Do you need a team to support your team when it comes to setting up reports and reviewing data? • Has anyone on your team ever misinterpreted your store’s performance because they were looking at the wrong data? • Does it take more than 60 seconds to analyze your ecommerce data, and make decisions to put that data into action? • Does your solution require customization to develop reports, and then ongoing development work to keep your data flowing? • Do the concepts of learning how to use syntax, or the nuances of using variables versus SAINT seem prohibitive to getting your data? • How easily can you tie your customers’ actions to revenue?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you need to revisit how you approach your commerce analytics.
Services at a glance
MERCHANDISING
MARKETING
ORDER HISTORY
CUSTOMER DATA
PURCHASE FUNNEL
FINANCIAL
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Conclusion It’s hard to find new customers, and even harder to get those customers to keep coming back. More than two out of every three visitors who put something in their shopping cart end up leaving before making the purchase. With tools like Jirafe you can easily gain a better understanding of why customers go somewhere else, what other items they might be interested in, and tailor offerings to build loyalty and earn more repeat business. Analytics, and the use of big data to drive flexible, responsive commerce, aren’t necessarily new to the retail industry. But up until recently, anything beyond simple website performance metrics and pay-perclick ad campaign results has generally been out of reach of the business user because they don’t “speak data”. That’s all begun to change in recent years. A good solution should help replicate the business analytics efforts of a major retailer without disrupting your ability to take action and drive revenue, and without the need to beef up your staff. It should also enable you to bring transaction data to the forefront, helping paint a clear picture of inventory, demand, up sell opportunities and whether there are any roadblocks keeping customers from completing their purchases.
ABOUT JIRAFE Jirafe provides more than 80,000 merchants with daily insight to grow their revenues. Our product was built on best practices learned from analyzing more than 425 million shopping experiences and the daily purchase behavior of more than 65 million shoppers. We provide emerging brands like Tuckernuck, Dolls Kill, and Diamond Candles with enterprise class ecommerce solutions that they can grow with. We also provide larger merchants such as Nasty Gal, Nikon, and GE with a high performance, targeted ecommerce solution to manage their business. To learn more about how Jirafe can grow your business visit www.jirafe.com.
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