You probably pretended to be a spy as a child, sneaking around your house, trying not to be seen, while taking notes on the activities of a suspicious sibling or parent. Maybe you learned that your sister the vegetarian ate bacon when she thought no one was looking?
But even if you had ninja-level spy skills as a child, this might not be enough to help you learn about your customers' experience with your eCommerce business.
Fear not.
Analytics Tools
Google Analytics leads the pack when it comes to spying on your eCommerce business, though there are other tools that can show you how your customers are interacting with your brand, like Clicky; Open Web Analytics and Heap.
Regardless of the analytics tool you choose, you must extract data that you can use to make decisions regarding customer experience.
What can you learn about your customer’s experience from an analytics tool?
A worthy analytics tool will keep track of your eCommerce conversion rates, showing you useful statistics about the customer experience, like:
- The percentage of your customers that buy something
- The amount of your average sale
- How many times a set of products was part of a transaction – so when customers bought product X, product y and product Z together
- The most popular method of payment
- How many customers arrived at your site after making an organic Google search
- How many times a customer immediately bounced from your site
Remember, when you observe that a trend is happening on your site, perhaps three products that are frequently being purchased together, you can use this data to make suggestions to other customers. Or if the data tells you that customers initially select PayPal as a method of payment, but then exit and use a credit card, you can take steps to make using PayPal easier.
An abandoned shopping cart is a huge opportunity
Did you know that about 4 trillion USD worth of products is abandoned in electronic shopping carts each year? And that Business Insider predicts that 63% of these sales can be won back?
Tracking abandoned shopping carts and their contents is a smart thing to do: Your customer did not complete their purchase for some reason, but it could have been due to a simple distraction. If you send a follow-up email, reminding your customer that they left a fabulous silk scarf in their shopping cart, and make it easy for them to click back into the sale, your customer will feel appreciated, and you might make a relatively easy sale.
Your incoming traffic panel, on your analytics dashboard, is your new BFF
What moves can you make, now that you have data to inform your decisions? If most of your customers are flowing from a social media platform to your eCommerce site, for example, you can invest in bolstering your presence on the originating site. Or, if they click away from your eCommerce site immediately upon being asked to sign up for your newsletter, you can change the timing and manner of that request.
One last thought
Technology and data are best friends, the more you know about how technology is being used in eCommerce to track the customer experience, the more data you will have access to.
At eShipper, customer experience and the buyer's journey is our number one priority. We always make sure that every single shipment is given the utmost care with the customer in mind. We offer several technologies to keep the customer informed and to make the eCommerce shopping experience a smooth and pleasant one. Contact us to see how we can help bring your customer experience to the next level!
