The nature of retail has changed completely with growing popularity of its new avatar e-commerce. As internet usage continues to mature, the B2C e-commerce market is set to grow from $1.233 Trillion to about $2.356 Trillion from 2013 – 2018 (eMarketer, 2014). This goes hand in hand with the evolution of BI Analytics which has greatly transformed the way we look at and perceive data; a far cry from those days when making sense of colossal amounts of information being generated was akin to searching for a needle in a haystack.
Accordingly, I have tried to highlight some major points how BI analytics can change the e-commerce landscape for the better thus, propeling the market to greater heights.
Advertising impact on target customers
Huge budgets are allocated for marketing and promotions by advertisers, but do they really yield results every time? Amazon, eBay and other big players have already initiated promotional offers for the upcoming Christmas season. In a largely fragmented market, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for your average online retailer to capture attention and compete with established players for limited advertising slots. Just imagine the amount of money that could be saved only if a retailer could visualize which campaign would yield best results for a certain timeframe and audience. The return on investment on advertising budgets would maximize.
Impact of product information displayed on the website
Analytics is an important criterion to determine the success of any product being sold online. Product information has to be precise and in accordance with what customers might be looking for. Again BI Analytics plays a vital role here as it helps us understand major features that customer search in their product evaluation.
Impact of navigation on customers
The need for navigation ease is very high in e-commerce sites and product classification is an integral part of navigation. Every product category in clothes is bifurcated into waist size, brand, color, design pattern and the like. Having a customer-friendly product classification with easy filters helps in better accessibility. The customer should not face any hassles while placing their orders. BI Analytics plays a vital role here in understanding how navigation of an e-commerce website should be designed to make it more effective for end customers. Understanding customer choices and preferences for a particular product online can be done only with efficient use of analytics.
Evaluate customer loyalty
Customer loyalty is an important criterion to evaluate the success of any e-commerce business. It is always difficult to retain customers and ensure the fulfillment of their expectations. Parameters like product discounts, quality, in-time delivery, and after sales warranty are major points which customer look forward from e-commerce Company. BI Analytics plays a vital role in helping to understand whether all these factors are taken care of to ensure customer loyalty.
Effectiveness of Digital Marketing strategy
SEO, social media, pay per click are major channels of digital marketing. For an e-commerce business, it is critical that all these media channels work for it. BI Analytics helps to understand the effectiveness of each SEO keyword and each social media message along with the success ratio of pay per click sales. Analytics help in the creation of some very effective customer-centric digital marketing campaigns and strategies.
To conclude, we will surely see a phenomenal growth of both e-commerce and BI Analytics together and this space does have a huge market potential. It is important for every e-commerce company today to take a fresh look on their BI Analytics plan and leverage it in maximum number of ways.
