All results are measurable and web analytics plays an important role in this fact. We tell you what it is and what are the recommendations for using these metrics in e-commerce.
Web analytics is defined by Daniel Waisberg and Avinash Kaushik, in their article ‘Web Analytics 2.0: Empowering Customer Centricity- Part II’ as “the quantitative and qualitative analysis of website data to continuously improve the online experience of users. (and potential customers), translating it into the desired results.”
This means that just as there are quantitative measurements, there must also be a qualitative complement to understand all user behavior. Diego Millán, Director of Performance at Indexcol, explains that some of the tools, such as Google Analytics shopify spy tool, must be used in parallel with heat maps, session recordings or click maps. “We combine both to find out what is happening and why.”
By measuring each action of our visitors, we discover insights that lead us to make holistic decisions to make relevant changes and increase profits. Is your strategy giving the expected results?
Ramiro Parias, Digital Marketing consultant, explains that all the results are measurable with respect to the actions carried out. “Today everything that is done on the Internet is feasible to measure, and therefore [you can] control the Return on Investment (ROI); the metrics allow us to know the effectiveness of the work done.”
As measured? After making a diagnosis and establishing goals, “it is important to carry out a measurement strategy to determine the success of your marketing efforts and thus measure the fulfillment of your business objectives,” explains Diego Millán, Indexcol’s Performance Director. To better understand it, here is the structure you should implement and an example of a measurement strategy:
Your company’s business objective is to sell products online. One of the goals to meet this goal is to build a database for email marketing. Knowing this, one of your KPIs can be cost per lead. Likewise, you must determine the metric of this KPI, in this case, it must be greater than $5.00 USD.
Now, the cost per lead is part of something called the KPIs. The Key Performance Indicator (KPI) are the parameters that determine the scope and social engagement of your brand or company, towards the fulfillment of business objectives.
Ideally, for each business objective there should be one or more goals, to then look at the KPIs and determine their metrics. Keep in mind the previous steps so that your measurement strategy meets the stated business objectives.
WEB ANALYTICS IN E-COMMERCE
Electronic commerce marketing, or e-commerce, ” is the act of generating knowledge to your Buyer Person about a product or service and leading him to make the final purchase decision from your web portal, [with the ultimate goal that you increase your sales].
In Colombia, the growth of digital transactions between 2016 and 2017 was 24% with $54.3 billion pesos, according to a report from the e-commerce observatory and MinTic. This figure, in addition to indicating exponential growth, suggests that your brand must stand out from the rest.
That said, e-commerce is growing more and more and they need to differentiate themselves from the competition; for this, different variables must be measured and strategic KPIs established.
E-commerce are 100% visual businesses. You must display your product in an attractive way so that it increases traffic to your portal and converts visitors into buyers. It is very important to know the behavior of users, as explained by Ramiro Parias, Digital Marketing consultant, to know what actions to take in order to optimize the website.
Parias adds that with the help of web analytics “the number of visitors [to the portal] is measured, almost in real time, and the actions carried out by them on the website. In this way, it is known which sections are more important than others and the number of interested subscribers is also controlled to convert them into leads and, later, into customers, [all with the ultimate goal of increasing sales]”.
It is impossible to talk about this and not think of an example of a successful e-commerce measurement strategy. Oscar Martínez, e-commerce Manager at Stanley-Black & Decker, states that the importance of analytics in an e-commerce is to deliver the brand promise to the digital buyer in an online sale.
“Stanley-Black & Decker’s e-commerce strategy has been based on financial, logistics, marketing and pricing strategies, in order to get out of purely digital indicators such as CR (Conversion Rate), Funnel, CTR (Click Throught Rate), abandonment rates during payment and even ROAS (Return Of Advertisement Spent).
Because? Because although they require our full attention due to their importance, sometimes they do not allow us to identify other equally necessary elements to move the business in the direction we want and achieve the scale necessary to consolidate it profitable and sustainable over time.”
Martínez also comments that for Stanley-Black & Decker it is very important to measure Delivery Lead Time, Handling Time, returns, withdrawals and guarantees, among others, to have a complete understanding of user behavior. This way it will be much easier and more feasible to measure the actions that are being carried out to achieve the business objectives.
“An additional recommendation is to accompany any indicator with some context, because it allows us to clearly understand the terrain on which we are building the strategy and accurately measure whether the actions were successful” recommends Martínez.
The context in the growth metrics, for example, shows if our results are above the category or competing brands. It is usual that many e-commerce during the first years have strong triple digit growth that does not mean much if it is below the industry or the category”, comments Oscar Martínez.
WE CONCLUDE
We summarize in six points the importance of analytics and its implementation in e-commerce:
1. Web analytics will help you answer the big question: is your strategy delivering the expected results? When you measure the actions of your Buyer Persona within your website, you can know if what you are doing is giving results or not.
2. Always keep business objectives in mind and it will be much easier for you to know what to measure and how to make a more accurate interpretation of the data. Leverage every metric and make better digital decisions.
3. E-commerce in Colombia is growing exponentially. That is to say that, like everything, it will have to differentiate itself from the competition and the only way to do it is to measure what does not work and change it.
4. The objective of your e-commerce will always be to sell, therefore, you must deliver your brand promise to your user with each click that it generates.
5. Accompany any measurement indicator with the current context of your brand to accurately understand the situation your e-commerce is facing.
6. Do not forget to measure each action you take with web analytics to meet your goal, to sell.