Running an eCommerce website is not easy. Competition is fierce. We are sure you have had to ask yourself some difficult questions in order to move your business forward.
The good news is that a lot of data can be collected via your website. Collecting and analyzing this data effectively is the best way to ensure you make improvements.
With that being said, below, we are going to take a look at some of the different approaches you can use to gather and leverage customer data for your eCommerce website.
1. Use an online form to get data
You can use online order form templates to gather data about your eCommerce website. A web form is a document that is based online and used for surveys and other types of communications.
Companies utilize them for consumer communication by prompting prospects and visitors to input a number of pieces of personal data, such as any comments or questions they have.
You can use a web form for a number of reasons, including finding out more about what your customers think of your website.
This type of survey is an excellent method of data collection, enabling you to gather raw data straight from your eCommerce customers.
You will learn more about consumer demographics, and you can tailor special offers and your marketing approach based on your customers. This is an excellent way of enhancing your shopping experience, which can mean more sales and higher customer retention.
2. Website tracking
Your eCommerce website is going to be gathering all types of data for you on a consistent basis. Every consumer who lands on your website is leaving behind valuable data for you to assess, so long as you know where you should be looking for it.
You can discover what has directed someone to your store. For example, did they follow a social media link that you posted? Maybe they clicked through via a paid banner ad? This will enable you to discover which approaches are working best and which are not.
You can also understand how long consumers spend looking at different web pages, how many different pages they view before leaving your website, and much more.
This is data that your website host should be gathering already. However, with tools like Google Analytics, you will be able to assess it.
3. Categorize customers
Once you have gathered some data about your customers using the two methods we have already discussed, we highly recommend that you then use this information to categorize them.
The way you do this will largely be dictated by the products you sell. For instance, if you sell clothing on your e-store, categorizing customers based on their gender or age is a great approach.
This will help when organizing targeted marketing. Should you have a special discount event coming up on lingerie, for example, you will be able to send an email out to anyone who has shown an interest in purchasing lingerie as part of their account registration or in a survey.
4. Customer Registration
In addition to the options, we have mentioned so far, inviting consumers to sign up for your newsletter is a good choice. They can also register for an account with your online store. Both are excellent ways of capturing consumer data.
These registration forms can incorporate questions about age, shopping preferences, and anything else that is relevant and can help you to get a better understanding of your customer demographics.
You can also encourage consumers to sign up for your loyalty programs. Not only can these help in terms of persuading consumers to shop with you again in the future, but they can offer highly valuable data regarding your customers’ shopping habits, for example, their average basket spend, and how often they return something they purchase from you.
5. Transactional data
You can also leverage transactional data to improve your eCommerce website. Transactional data is gathered whenever a consumer makes a purchase via your eCommerce site. It includes information regarding payments, purchases, and returns so that you can evaluate and discover which products are performing the best and what payment methods are preferred by your consumers.
You are also able to assess the keywords that customers utilize when searching for the items they ultimately end up buying, whether or not they used a voucher code or coupon code, and how many different types of products they viewed before they made their ultimate decision.
All of this data can help you to give your customers an improved shopping experience in the future. You can also get an understanding of what ended up convincing your customers to make a certain purchase so that you can tailor your shopping experience in the future.
6. Marketing Analytics
You can also enjoy valuable consumer data if you assess the response to your marketing efforts. Advertising platforms, backend platforms, and email marketing tools should be able to give you a broad assortment of data that you can use.
You should be able to investigate your emails’ open and click-through rates, so you can determine what types of emails are enjoying the most success amongst your target demographic. This knowledge is powerful because you will know what sort of emails to concentrate on in the future whenever you run another campaign.
Adverts can provide even more data points that will give you knowledge about which adverts people engaged with the most, when people engaged with them, and even whether or not the consumer was browsing on their smartphone or the computer.
7. Offer incentives to get your customers to hand over data
A powerful way of boosting your marketing efforts is by offering incentives to your customers in return for their data.
Examples here include vouchers, discount codes, and special prize draws. These sorts of incentives are a great way of encouraging people to sign up for your newsletters or take other types of action that will result in you being able to capture valuable data.
The most popular reason why customers are willing to share their data is in return for an exclusive discount on a product they like.
Other reasons why a consumer may be willing to share valuable data with your company include being able to find products easier and quicker, receive personalized product recommendations, receive back-in-stock alerts for the items they want, and resolve issues in a hassle-free and quick manner.
8. Track cart abandonment rates
Last but not least, another valuable kind of data that you should be gathering for your eCommerce store is the shopping cart abandonment rate.
You can decipher this by finding out how many people placed items in their shopping basket yet did not complete the checkout process.
Many people end up adding items to their shopping baskets while browsing online and then they do not complete the purchase. It is important for businesses to delve into these figures because you want your shopping cart abandonment rate to be as low as possible.
If your rate is high, this indicates that there is something that is stopping people from completing their purchase, for example, high shipping fees.
By assessing which items people are viewing before they leave the site, you will also be able to discover whether or not the issue is associated with specific products. For example, it could be that you are one of the highest-priced retailers for one of the items you sell online, and so people go elsewhere to find a cheaper version instead.
A lot of businesses like to entice people back in by sending out email discounts to anyone who has left something in their shopping basket. If you send an email to someone offering them a further 10% off the total, it may remind them of the items they were looking at and encourage them to go ahead with the purchase in the end.
Gathering and leveraging customer data for your eCommerce Site
So there you have it: some of the different approaches you can make the most of to gather and leverage customer data from your eCommerce website.
There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing the approach that best suits you. It all depends on the nature of your business and the type of customers you are serving.
Nevertheless, we would recommend using a number of different approaches and integrating them so that you can get the most reliable and impactful data to move your business forward.