Big data is the vast amount of information flowing into businesses every day. It comes from countless sources and in a variety of formats, including digital, text, images, audio clips, and more. The flow never stops either.
This data is extremely valuable to businesses, especially in the e-commerce space. It helps guide decisions on everything from inventory and customer service to marketing and website optimization.
What does big data look like in e-commerce?
Social media posts, online and in-store purchases, smart plugs and devices in the home, phones and tablets, streaming services – the list of sources providing big data is almost endless.
But despite the variety of sources, big data can generally be divided into two ways: structured data and unstructured data.
Structured data is data that is generally easier to collect and analyze. This includes information such as credit card transactions, bank statements, retail sales information, customer demographics and inventory. Any data that can be easily stored and managed using traditional data processing methods, such as spreadsheets or databases, is considered structured data.
There is another type of data that is harder to classify, but equally valuable. Emails, social media posts and comments, photos and videos, text messages and WhatsApp chats are all considered unstructured data. What they all have in common is that they require more sophisticated techniques to process and analyze.
Both types of data are invaluable as they help businesses make informed decisions that improve performance, enhance customer experience and positively impact the bottom line.
A variety of tools are available to capture and analyze all this data.
- Software such as customer relationship management (Customer Relationship Management) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) capture and analyze data.
- The script crawls the website to extract information.
- Application programming interfaces (APIs) can retrieve data from third-party sources.
- Internet of Things (IOT) devices such as wearables and smart speakers such as Amazon Echo automatically collect and transmit data to the cloud.
- Mobile devices capture information such as location, usage statistics and user-generated content.
- Monitoring tools analyze social media pipelines for trending topics, mentions, and sentiment analysis.
There are as many ways to capture big data as there are sources of big data. Businesses pick the method that best meets their needs.
E-commerce brands are well-positioned to leverage big data, whether collected from their own sources or elsewhere, to optimize their performance.
- A customer’s purchase history can help guide personalized marketing efforts, product recommendations, and even inventory management.
- About customer demographics and Psychological Statistics Help segment your audience and develop targeted marketing and offers that resonate with recipients.
- Sentiment analysis comes from Your own call center datasocial media channels and review sites can reveal customer satisfaction or pain points and determine which products are popular (or not).
- Search data information can help guide SEO strategies, content creation, and even product improvements.
- Customer experience data from emails, call recordings, and chatbot interactions can help identify recurring issues and opportunities for improvement.
For today’s e-commerce companies, harnessing the power of big data is non-negotiable. This is critical to success.
But doing it alone is impossible. Here are some of the most widely used tools to help e-commerce businesses understand and use big data to stay competitive.
Google Analytics Probably the most well-known tool for people who manage websites. With it, you can track website traffic, user demographics and behavior, and conversion metrics. All this data can help you understand how your website visitors interact with your website. It also identifies areas that can be improved to improve website performance.
If you are running an e-commerce website Shopping, then Shopify Analytics is the tool you should use. It provides detailed metrics on store products, inventory, orders, and customers. It’s easy to use, comes pre-installed, and takes just a few clicks to view reports that help you make informed decisions.
pivot point is one of the best Marketing Automation Software Tools Available today. It has some very impressive data analysis capabilities that can help process and understand marketing messages. It will help you drill down into your qualified leads, identify campaign wins, and find areas for improvement for better advertising results. HubSpot can also help increase website traffic through website performance analysis. The best part is that HubSpot has a free version, so even the smallest ecommerce brands can take advantage of this feature.
picture is a powerful tool that can process hundreds of thousands of data points and transform them into easy-to-understand and usable visual reports. It brings all your data sources into one centralized space to produce charts, infographics, dashboards, heat maps, timelines, and more. It also has a very easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface that is intuitive even if you are new to data analysis and visualization.
If you are a small e-commerce business just starting out, a smaller but still powerful tool is Cruvio. It allows you to design custom analytics dashboards, add your own KPIs, and create custom filters so you can drill down into the data as needed. You can also set conditional alerts to keep you informed of unexpected changes or developments.
These are just some of our favorites data analysis and visualize tool. For e-commerce businesses of all sizes, there are countless questions at every stage of growth.
5 ways small stores are using big data in e-commerce
Small e-commerce stores may feel overwhelmed by the idea of incorporating big data into their daily operations. The key to success is identifying the areas where big data can have the greatest impact.
Here are five things to focus on first.
1. Inventory management
Every e-commerce business owner knows that keeping your inventory stocked is crucial to success. You want to keep enough inventory to avoid selling out or stranding unwanted products.
Big data can help you with inventory management in many ways.
RFID tags and IoT sensors can help track inventory levels. You can tie this information into your e-commerce platform. This means that when customers shop on your site, they will have up-to-date information on how much of that item is in stock and available for purchase. You can also set up automatic reordering when quantities fall below a specified threshold so your inventory remains replenished.
Historical sales data from the POS system can help identify top-selling and underperforming items. Similar tools fast miner Provides predictive analytics that can predict future demand trends. You can use this information to make informed restocking decisions.
Dynamic pricing is another area where big data comes into play. everything Top e-commerce platformLike Wix and Shopify, there are built-in automation features for dynamic pricing. When your prices automatically adjust based on customer demand (or lack thereof) and other factors, you’re less likely to have inventory management issues.
2. Personalized shopping experience
The customer profiles you have from past purchases, browsing history, and user preferences are a goldmine for implementation Personalized marketing. You can propose recommended projects, create audience segmentationand develop highly personalized marketing promotions.
targeted and Automated email campaigns Can be sent to a specific section in the list. These can be customized to the specifics of each segment, resulting in more interest and higher sales.
Repeat visitors to your site can see suggested items based on past purchases or expressed preferences. Amazon does this very well, as do many other well-known online retailers.
But it’s not just about the big players. Your ecommerce platform will often provide built-in features or plugins that you can install to enable such functionality for your website.
You can also use tools built into the social channels you use to help generate targeted ads that resonate with your customers. Facebook Ads Manager, Instagram adsand TikTok Business Edition All of these provide this and rely on big data to do it efficiently.
3. Customer service improvement
Keeping your customers happy is really important. It’s much easier to get another sale from an existing customer than to find and nurture new ones.
There are many big data tools that can enhance the overall customer service experience, either directly or by providing you with the data you need to improve your processes.
Zen platform It is such a tool. It is a widely used customer service platform that compiles data from all e-commerce channels (email, chat, social, and phone) and synthesizes it into easy-to-understand reports. Among other things, this enables you to quickly identify common customer inquiry topics and fine-tune customer support to resolve them.
Zoho desk is another popular choice. It gives you insights into how well your customer service department is doing and where improvements can be made to improve performance. It also reveals customer satisfaction through sentiment analysis. This is another way to solve common problems and increase satisfaction.
You can also use big data-driven, AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to further enhance the customer experience. Quickly answer common questions without human intervention. This means assistance is available 24/7, allowing your website to provide customer service around the clock.
4. Website optimization
Build an e-commerce website is the easy part. You need to fine-tune it for optimal performance and the best customer experience.
However, you can’t fine-tune if you don’t understand the data.
Tools like Google Analytics and Crazy Egg are a great place to start. These tools help you understand how customers interact with your site, which pages they visit most often, which pages they avoid, how long they spend on each page, how quickly they exit the site, and more. All this data is powered by big data analytics.
Armed with this information, you can optimize your website layout and design. You can also add more content your visitors want and eliminate the content they ignore.
There are countless other tools that rely on big data to help you understand and optimize things like user experience (content square, Mixing panel) and user journey (Salesforce Journey Builder).
All of these are valuable options to ensure your website performs at its best.
5. Prevent fraud
E-commerce fraud is real and has a significant impact on every company’s bottom line. Big data can be very helpful in automating fraud detection and prevention efforts.
Similar tools SAS Fraud Management and risking Analyze common transaction patterns and monitor site activity to detect anomalies. When potentially fraudulent activity is detected, transactions can be flagged and declined before fraud occurs.
These tools rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop and run algorithms based on past fraud experiences to help predict and thwart future fraud attempts. When e-commerce businesses implement such tools, fraud is significantly reduced.
