Harnessing Web Analytics Tools to Increase Online Sales
Launching a functioning ecommerce site is an impressive feat, but for seasoned business owners this is only the opening move. In order to maintain the all-important sales growth needed to succeed, companies must dig into a wealth of data to complete customer behavior analysis and spot essential sales trends to preserve momentum.
Luckily, in today’s digital age, e-commerce platforms like WordPress have made connecting and using web analytics tools a breeze for businesses. Uncover how business owners can utilize digital analytics tools to increase online sales and improve revenue.
Understanding Sales Trends to Increase Online Sales
Being confronted with numerous pieces of data can paralyze companies with information overload. However, the first step to using data effectively is drilling down, cutting out the “fluff” information, and focusing on the useful nuggets. Data like Total Sales, Bounce Rate, Adds-To-Cart, and Average Order Value are isolated pieces of information often referred to as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs can be looked at over a long period of time and in comparison with other products to discover larger sales trends and perform useful customer behavior analysis.
Evaluating sales trends can help businesses gauge inventory levels to predict restock dates or learn which colors/patterns are most popular. Customer behavior analysis can assist owners in determining how their most loyal band of shoppers behave and interact with the site. Most importantly, evaluating data can also uncover issues faster, such as ineffective pages with high bounce rates or a problem in the checkout flow causing cart abandonments.
The Best Digital Analytics Tools to Explore
WooCommerce Analytics
For companies using WordPress, WooCommerce is a popular and highly selected platform to integrate for online businesses. Being such a highly-used platform, they offer specific web analytics tools like the WooCommerce Analytics dashboard. WooCommerce Analytics provides a comprehensive overview of sales activity and customer behavior and can even measure the effectiveness of paid and organic marketing efforts. This dashboard is a great starting place for small to mid-sized businesses looking to begin diving into data.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) may be the most universally recognized of all digital analytics tools. As such, Google Analytics can seamlessly integrate with almost any sales platform. GA can also create business reports as simple or robust as companies desire. While GA can show sales data, it can also track advanced customer site behavior, leading to more informed sales funnels and seasonal trend spotting.
Payment Platform Analytics
How to Implement Digital Analytics Tools to Your Strategy
Integrating web analytics and customer behavior analysis into the daily business strategy will help companies see growth and progress.
Try the following steps to get the most out of the data:
- Review Regularly: Analytics are only helpful for those using them! While it may seem uncomfortable at first, establish a regular cadence to review performance changes. A great place to start is week-over-week comparisons for immediate shifts in performance, or quarter-over-quarter windows to spot larger sales trends.
- Define Objectives: To prevent data analysis from becoming overwhelming, set clear objectives from the start. For example, dive into analytics to better understand core customers or use analytics to find out which products are selling fastest. Going into data with intent can help establish clear action plans.
- Test and Learn: While data is extremely important, it is not a be-all end-all. Mine nuggets of information and spot possible trends, then use those tidbits to guide larger A/B tests and see if they prove true over larger testing periods or when applied to marketing efforts.
How Payment Plugins Can Build Your Business
To use data analytics accurately, it is important to have all tools integrated correctly and seamlessly into the site. Correct integration is key to tracking KPIs, especially on WordPress and WooCommerce.
Payment Plugins can help businesses quickly install key payment merchants like PayPal, Stripe, and the Braintree payment processor onto their WooCommerce sites. This means not only a smoother checkout process for guests but also an extra source of revenue and checkout data directly from the payment gateways themselves.
