Despite massive growth over the last decade, e-commerce appears to be on the rise. As more brick-and-mortar stores close, we see more businesses opening online or moving their operations from a physical to a digital presence. In a world where everyone is busy, and consumers expect more from retailers in terms of price and availability, e-commerce stores seem ideal.
Whether you already have an online store or plan to open one this year, keep in mind that you will face stiff competition. As a result, you must find ways to stand out from the crowd. Using big data is one way to do this while also increasing your e-commerce conversion rate.
With today’s technology, there’s no excuse not to use numbers to better serve customers and grow your business exponentially. Here are some quick and easy ways to use big data today.
- Offering of More Personalization
- Reduction of Shopping Cart abandonment
- Boosting of Customer Service
Offering of More Personalization
For starters, one of the best ways to use data is to personalize customer experiences. Use analytics and other data about your customers’ shopping habits to personalize their browsing and purchasing experiences.
Studying how consumers shop with you for various reasons and touchpoints can help you better understand what content, products, services, specials, and processes they want. That means more sales conversions for you.
For example, you can use client data to reward their loyalty. You’ll know what they buy, where they shop, when they shop online, and more after they shop with you a few times. Customize product suggestions (e.g. through a “If you like this product…” function or specific email offers), newsletter content, shipping services, and so on.
Reduction of Shopping Cart abandonment
And as an e-commerce business owner, you probably get frustrated when you look at your shopping cart abandonment rates and wonder why so many people add items but never checkout. While this is a normal part of online shopping, you should always be looking for ways to reduce abandonment rates.
Big data can help a lot here. The data can help you identify the most significant issues turning shoppers off.
You may be able to help people with one major issue or multiple issues. If you address these issues — either by changing your site’s functionality or by offering shoppers incentives to convert — you should immediately see an increase in sales.
Boosting of Customer Service
Customer service is just as important, if not more, than in a traditional brick-and-mortar store. As a result, any way you can improve consumer support will help you increase sales.
You can use big data to improve customer service by learning more about your clients. You’ll learn more about who they are, what they want, how they found you, and other vital information. Using this data, you can improve their experience with your brand at each touchpoint along their shopping journey.
Your team can also keep track of customer questions via social media, email, or phone, which can help you better explain processes or products on your website (e.g., at night time if most of your customers are online then).
A lack of service, information, or product availability can also be determined by analyzing shopping cart behavior and marketing and sales results.