Ecommerce businesses are tirelessly searching for new ways to reach more people and improve customer experiences. But a powerful solution could possibly be available at their fingertips, and many are either unaware or don’t know how to leverage it.
Data is steadily becoming the new frontier of competition and innovation in eCommerce.
With 74 zettabytes of data generated by the end of 2021 (1 zettabyte=1 trillion gigabytes), there’s plenty of data that online stores can use to boost their business. Here are 3 effective ways to leverage data in eCommerce –
- Creating Buyer Personas
According to a study by IBM, almost 90% of the marketers agree that personalized customers experiences are critical to their success. However, 80% of the consumers believe that the average brand fails to understand them as individuals. Creating buyer personas could help change the statistic.
Marketers can collect, compile, and analyse data from multiple sources and divide it into segments for creating buyer personas. These are comprehensive profiles of ideal customers to improve decision-making and ensure that marketing initiatives target every audience segment adequately.
The buyer persona and journey map above offers an excellent overview of how online stores can approach this strategy to better understand their customers.
- Predicting New Trends
Product trends change swiftly in the e-commerce world. For instance, while air fryers are currently selling like hotcakes, it might be something else in the near future. Knowing such trends in advance could be a gamechanger for any online retailer. And it is now possible to accurately predict “the next best product” with the help of demand forecasting solutions.
These tools can identify trends and patterns in sales data to estimate future demand. It can enable online stores to maintain adequate stock levels, generate higher revenue, and gain a competitive edge. Short-term and long-term demand can be forecasted at a micro or macro level to predict the future and keep up with the changing trends.
For instance, a simple demand forecast for air fryers suggests that their market size will continue to grow well into the future.
- Boost Customer Service
Finding and converting new customers is challenging for smaller online stores. But after making the first purchase, their chances of doing it again are considerably higher. In other words, instead of selling your products to a new customer, you are 60%-70% more likely to sell to existing customers. And repeat customers are vital for any business as they spend up to 67% more than new customers.
The quality of your customer service plays a critical role in boosting customer loyalty. Ecommerce businesses can collect an extensive range of data and build it into their CRM strategy to improve customer service and satisfaction. Some of the data points they can consider are-
- Website cart abandonment rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates
- Customer satisfaction survey results
- Customer service response times
- Overall social sentiment
Leveraging Data in Ecommerce
There are several ways for online stores to leverage data for improving their operations. Moreover, there’s also an extensive range of advanced analytics software and tools to help businesses make sense of their collected data. But as data now plays such a critical role in the eCommerce landscape, it’d be wise to trust only the experts.
Experienced digital marketing professionals can help online stores explore the possibilities and create custom data-driven strategies that are equipped to deliver the best results.
