Successfully running a business requires the balancing of several unique skill sets. From overseeing inventory to monitoring sales performance and customer service, owners need to make decisions able to propel operations in the right direction.
Did you know that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience? Insights like this are essential to capturing a loyal target audience.
However, many business owners do not understand the importance of customer analytics software to the success of their companies. Have you ever wondered how best to acquire all the data needed to help grow your business? The answer lies in using e-commerce analytics tools.
Every business can benefit from powerful customer analytics software able to uncover customer sentiments and paint a clearer picture of their needs. Making the right business decisions depends on the tools used to conduct daily operations and customer data analysis. This article will explain how the best tools for e-commerce work, why they’re needed, and how to use them.
What is E-commerce Analytics?
E-commerce analytics refers to gathering essential data from your online store to help form data-driven decisions and skyrocket your online sales. With this strategy in operation, you can easily understand changes in customer behaviors and fluctuations across the market. These insights can help businesses to make prudent decisions that enhance overall growth.
To successfully apply this strategy to business operations, reliable e-commerce tools will be required to collect data. Using insight tools, relevant data about
Inventory management, cart abandonment, user experience, and market trends can allow businesses to adapt offerings to real-time adjustments and evolving market trends.
Now that you understand why you should conduct customer analytics, you’ll need to find the most appropriate tools for the job. Below are some of the best customer journey analysis tools currently available that can be used to facilitate and enhance well-informed business operations.
Optimizely
Optimizely has been professionally designed to create a personalized customer experience and enhance the online shopping process. It has various features geared towards fast data visualization that can typically be performed in a few minutes. Optimizely focuses on A/B testing and optimization to create an authentic shopping experience for all customers.
Also offered is a no-code editor enabling business owners to conduct A/B tests and identify critical areas across websites that may benefit most from changes. Customer data can be collected to identify where processes are succeeding, with further options to experiment using chatbots and checkout flows to minimize cart abandonment cases.
Experimental features and full-stack options can be purchased separately, allowing customized deployments to suit specific needs. Provided business owners know what they want from this tool, they’ll find it pretty easy to understand and operate when analyzing trends.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most popular and reliable customer analytics software tools used to analyze customer data and inform conclusions. The software offers incredible data insights at no cost, providing a significant starting point for e-commerce businesses of any size.
GA even comes with an additional feature, Google Analytics Enhanced E-commerce, enabling business owners to deploy advanced data analytics methodologies. With Google Analytics, e-commerce traffic can be tracked to evaluate the number of people visiting sites as well as the location of the traffic source, producing valuable insights into customer preferences.
Google Analytics offers analytical programs to uncover cart abandonment rates, webpage bounce rates, and general engagement metrics. With this data, key improvements are easily understood and can be used to increase overall conversion rates. In layperson’s terms, Google Analytics offers the insights required to skyrocket e-commerce sales.
Supermetrics
This is an advanced e-commerce analytics program dedicated to helping business owners import data and display values in a customizable manner. Supermetrics can import data from numerous sources such as social media pages, Shopify stores, SEO, and email tools to compile reports that can aid decision-making.
After collecting relevant data, you can quickly identify the campaigns contributing to your business's success while also listening to what consumers say about your brand to identify the key areas that need adjusting. Supermetrics can be set up to automatically refresh data and schedule emails continuously, ensuring that e-commerce reports are delivered on time.
Supermetrics is an automatic tool meaning the software won't need to be monitored by dedicated staff. The device can refresh and collect data from multiple sources and analyze information to extract valuable insights, helping to address customer needs and inform broader business operations.
Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is ranked as one of the most sophisticated e-commerce tools offering advanced data visualization options. It's ideal for e-commerce marketers requiring access to various features to make data analysis easier. The software can be used to highlight the average revenue generated from every customer as well as check on site-wide conversion rates and cart-to-purchase numbers.
Kissmetrics enables you to analyze the behavior of every customer and identify the best channels to use when targeting specific audiences. With a reliable grasp of these aspects, business owners can quickly increase conversion rates and generalized revenue generation.
Utilizing data collected from Kissmetrics can also help optimize email campaigns, social media strategies, and other forms of digital marketing, with additional A/B testing options used to enhance processes within marketing campaigns. Remember that all marketing strategies should be informed by clients' needs to manage each step of the customer journey.
Matomo
Matomo is an incredible e-commerce tool that can be an alternative to Google Analytics, especially when dealing with technical subjects. If you require total control over your data, Matomo is tailor-made to suit your needs. This tool is designed to integrate almost any e-commerce site and can easily view and analyze all common e-commerce KPIs.
With Matomo at your disposal, business performance can be analyzed based on the number of sales recorded over a specific period. These data insights allow business owners to manage necessary customer touchpoints and streamline all business performance features.
Conclusion
E-commerce customer analytics software can be used to analyze and locate solutions to common customer problems. Many integral business aspects can be addressed, ranging from the client experience to existing marketing campaigns. When functionality needs to be streamlined, reliable tools must be used to address client needs and facilitate business growth.
However, before choosing a tool best suited to your business needs, thought must be applied to customer expectations. A wide variety of analytics tools are available, so business owners must ensure they understand which metrics will be most valuable before making a final choice.
