With all of the data from these efforts residing in different places, how can you, as an online retailer, see the big picture? Retail Intelligence is the answer.
Retail Intelligence is the science of knowing all about your customer.Retail Intelligence is the process of working with your web team to integrate tracking information throughout your efforts. Whether it's a post on Facebook, a share on twitter or a campaign on Google, your efforts can be measured. Each time a potential customer clicks on your link, you can see which pages they view, for how long and whether they completed the checkout process or not.
The Goals
1. Which efforts are working?
No business can afford to spend time or money on marketing efforts that have no ROI. By taking a comprehensive view of each effort, you'll know which are worth your time and which you should dump.2. Anticipate your customer's needs/wants
Maybe you have a rock star product that many customers purchase alongside another product. How about setting up a follow up email to suggest it? Maybe a customer placed items in their cart but left before completing the checkout process. An email reminder a few days later might just be the prompting they need to complete their order.
These are just a few of the options for increasing sales and your customer's happiness. Excellent customer service is becoming a new equalizer in online retail. Those sites that have it, will succeed. Those that don't will be lost along the way.
The Metrics
So now you're wondering what efforts can be measured? The possibilities are as limited as your imagination. Here are a few we'd suggest:
- Social Media
- Email Newsletters
- Blog Posts
- Online Marketing Efforts (keywords, etc)
- Entry and Exit Pages
- Pages Most Likely to Convert
- Popular Products and Services
By bringing together the data from the varied sources of your efforts, you'll begin to see the story of your customer. Is he frustrated or happy with your website, products and services? Or, is there room to improve?
Armed with the story of your customer, you'll be better able to create an intelligent vision for fine tuning your operations.
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Retail Intelligence is a comprehensive information gathering process. If it's something you feel your online business could benefit from, we'd love to mine the data for you. Contact us to learn more!
