How to Maximize the Use of Data Analytics for Your Online Business
We always hear about how data is becoming increasingly important. However, enormous amounts of raw and unstructured data don’t have value. This is where data analytics comes in. Data analytics has changed every industry, particularly online businesses and e-commerce. Companies can leverage data analytics for data-driven decision-making, reduce costs, and stay on top of market shifts. Despite this, many online businesses fail to maximize their multiple data streams. So here are some steps you can take to fully reap the benefits of data analytics for your online business:
Learning data analytics
As mentioned above, data analytics allows companies to arrive at data-driven business decisions. However, this cannot be achieved without business leaders fully understanding the insights.
Management consulting firm Navigate’s Phil Schmoyer told the CIO that even when hiring an analyst, you should still be knowledgeable in data science and involved in planning data collection and interpreting the data. But this requires learning the basics of data science. Most of the online tools used currently are intuitive and will help professionals digest a wide range of information. Each one will often also come with a tutorial. Platforms like Udacity and Dataquest provide tiered data science learning programs even for smaller business owners. This allows users to grasp the different aspects of data science.
Professionals already with online businesses also need to know how data can be collected. Over 800,000 students are taking data analytics courses on Udemy, and the most popular tutorials include using Python and Excel to gather important information. And most of these students will already have flourishing online businesses – they want to increase their skill set to help them make more informed decisions. Leveraging data analytics for your business requires a strong knowledge foundation to optimize its use properly. Learning online is the quickest and most cost-efficient way to get up to speed.
Enhancing Customer Profiling
Data transformation in e-commerce provides insights and innovation necessary for growth. This means opening up new and relevant data streams to optimize insights. Deduplicating your customer base list is just a baseline. To add value, you should enrich your information with third-party tags and data to discover cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. Email sign-ups and social media integration can help deepen and segment your customer profile. Most social media profiles currently include meta tags, geography, job titles, industry, and other behaviors that can supplement your customer profiles. Data analytics enables you to recognize high-value customers and improve sales conversions.
Improving Customer Experience
The overall customer experience determines retention and brand loyalty. Some businesses tend to emphasize data collection and not data analysis. It’s not about how much data a company collects but how it utilizes it. Data analytics asks the right questions for the best answer to strengthen your customers’ connection and site. For e-commerce, that should always be “Is the customer satisfied with your product/service?” In our post on the ’10 Tips For Effective Competitive Intelligence Gathering’, we explained how best to avoid copying your competitors. Find out how to provide a better journey and add value to your customer’s needs through your data. As online markets continue to grow, employing effective data analytics will soon make or break a business.
