Minning eCommerce insights from market analytics

When looking at the eCommerce market, and are looking to get your Shopify store to compete in the online retail space, you have to rely on a lot more than just Shopify Analytics to ensure you reach your target audience and get your digital marketing strategy to be effective. Your online store may be primed with an effective funnel giving you high conversion rates, but it is the market itself that has to be primed and tapped into to reach your eCommerce revenue goals. Here we will cover the mining of eCommerce insights to assist in your business goals.

Data fallacies

There are two data traps that end up making businesses fail when it comes to analytics and data, most times it is due to the fact that expectations that Google Analytics would reveal the path forward for your strategy, or the superficial metrics that would provide you Sessions and Traffic to your site and expect that superficial data will bring meaning to your business strategy in growing your business or tapping into the right audience with your marketing campaign.

Failure results from not digging into the analytics and being data-driven, in both understanding the data, or the lack thereof. When examining the data, trends in seasonality, impressions, authority, and getting into the different types of traffic and its sources, you have to then correlate, split out and prioritize the data that brings the most meaning on what drives it, and how to grow it. Successful Shopify store owners ask the following relevant questions to set goals in understanding their data and using their analytics to answer them:

• How is traffic influenced in reaching a landing page over time?

• Cart abandonment, where are people leaving their baskets in the checkout process?

• Did the features you recently implemented get measured before and after to quantitatively show an improvement?

• Comparing campaigns and their likelihood to purchase, FaceBook Ads vs. Email Marketing, which is more effective?

The latest version of Google Analytics, which most Shopify Stores are probably already using, allows you to compare different segments of your inbound traffic, can create custom reports, and can deliver insights to the questions mentioned above.

Edit Comparisons feature in Google Analytics

Within Google Analytics, Edit comparisons allow you to compare your various segments into reports. Users that have made a purchase vs. users that added to cart and abandoned them - that might reveal patterns to be able to make the latter segment in converting instead of leaving the site. This will complement your Shopify reports on abandoned cart users, where the insight is in the comparative analysis of where they originated from, use patterns on the site, and where in the process they left the site.

Expanding your analytics to dig further may include enabling enhanced eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics, this will track individual stages in the marketing flow down to specific products. Both Shopify's tools together with Google Analytics can give you very precise insights into the customer journey, and what might have put the user off in completing the purchase process.

Creating Custom Events in Google Analytics

Don't forget the micro conversions that lead up to your email marketing campaign in the registration to your site's brand and newsletter. This for example is a small step and lowers the risk for the audience to drop their email address but allows you to promote and directly market to them your news, products, and promotional events.

Generating a custom report in Shopify

For example, if you are curious about product returns, Shopify can provide you with custom reports on events that might be hitting your bottom line. Shopify is one of the most powerful eCommerce platforms in the market, and its reports can bring light to patterns within your user base.

Reviewing user patterns

There are Shopify Apps, such as Lucky Orange that can record and playback users navigating the online store. To improve your online sales, understanding what may turn away a customer from purchasing can be crucial in correcting it and getting that conversion. Users might drop off before they get to the payment gateway, such as shipping costs might be too high, and that may be the reason they stop and not finish the checkout process. Most eCommerce websites could use this tool, as it collects the types of conversion barriers in different groups.

Obtaining answers into action

Data-drive businesses can see decisions coming from the analytics by identifying the cause and effect of patterns and behaviors of the audience on your eCommerce store. While the Online store might be user-friendly, your Shopify theme might still have call-to-action issues in driving them to convert within your Shopify store. While you can start selling a popular product, the messaging, the promotion, the awareness, and the visibility of the product and its message all come into play on how users interpret your Shopify store's offering and are driven to take it into their basket to checkout.

Correlating multiple platform metrics gives you a much more independent view of what is truly happening in your Shopify store. This might require additional tools such as SEO tools in addition to Google Search Console for example. Comparing patterns, and explaining impressions vs. your organic traffic might require two different perspectives. Getting your eCommerce insight from a single source, much like your eye-sight, you will not get the depth of perspective you will need to get a solid understanding of the pattern you might be looking at. While search results are based on Keywords, it is the competitive landscape that continually shifts your traffic and position, where the depth in SEO for example is provided by the view of competition, your traffic is now compared through a different lens - allowing to better target and take action to improve your profile in authority, and marketability.

Conclusion

When it comes to data and eCommerce, the pond is deep and vast. Being able to see your business in the sea of eCommerce and how you can affect change with your target audience can be frustrating. Not only do you feel that some actions never see the light of the benefits intended, but also the data is hard to manage and keep up with. Sure you can add reports, but best of all, be organized in how you review your data.

1. Website Insights - see what your users are doing, and why they are not buying when they land and put products in their baskets.

2. Marketing Insights - see what shifts are going on in the market at the Macroeconomic level, and Microeconomic in your sector.

3. Product Insights - understand the supply and demand of your product in the market, and ensure that a SWOT is done to see that it is competitive.

When you think you have it worked out where cause and effect are being noticed, this is when you can start investing in the right areas, and also see the results of your decisions and efforts. If you need assistance or advice on how to set this channel, feel free to reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com