How Ecommerce Companies Use Analytics To Convert Customers Online

Living in the digital age has provided us with more opportunities than ever to start a business from the comfort of our homes.

For many people, this has seen them transform their lives—and the lives of those around them—by creating online ecommerce websites.

The main purpose of these websites is to handle commercial transactions completely electronically over the internet, completely eradicating face to face interaction between customers and business owners.

The accessibility of this business venture means that ecommerce companies have sprung up in almost every industry you can think of in the last decade or so.

With that being said, it can still be difficult to find information about how to grow your ecommerce website.

A big part of that involves investigating your web or mobile analytics, but many ecommerce companies and business owners are reluctant to do this.

Even if they do analyze their analytics, many ecommerce companies do this poorly through a lack of education and awareness within the industry as a whole.

You might think we are trying to personally attack you with this statement, but we only want to help you by giving you real-life examples of how they are done well.

But first, let’s delve into how so many ecommerce company owners analyze their analytics poorly.

How NOT To Analyze Your Analytics If You Want To Convert Customers Online As An Ecommerce Business:

 The main thing that ecommerce company owners do wrong when it comes to analyzing their analytics is letting themselves get overwhelmed by the amount of analytics there are to observe.

With free tools like Google Analytics providing us with all the information we need—and more—about our businesses, it can be difficult to pinpoint what exactly we need to be paying attention to if we are to convert customers online.

One great way around this is to use web analytics services, who can analyze the information and provide you with a detailed report that shows you the information you need to pay attention to if you want to create conversions in plain English.

Another thing people do in the ecommerce industry especially looks at a very small amount of data.

This can be useful for newer ecommerce companies, but it is limiting, as it doesn’t provide you with potential trends in your business.

This will, in turn, limit your growth opportunities as it may be more difficult to determine what products—if any—that you are creating are resonating with your customers.

We do understand that especially in the beginning, not every ecommerce company will be in a position to hire someone else to look at their analytics.

That’s why we have provided the warning above what you definitely shouldn’t be doing.

We also thought we’d gather information from some big names in the ecommerce industry to help you understand how these company owners use analytics to convert customers online.

 Michael Shih, POD Millionaire:

One popular ecommerce business option, especially for those looking to create a company by themselves, is print on demand.

This involves creating designs, or outsourcing your design obligations to others at a small cost, and adding them digitally onto many different products that people can then purchase.

One of the reasons why this ecommerce company venture is extremely popular is because it can be seen as semi-passive income, but as Michael explains in this interview, converting customers is far from a passive task.

Before Michael Shih had even launched his first project, he had started reaching popular niches with passionate audiences.

Using the ‘audience insights’ tool, he was able to see just how active that niche was.

This analytic allowed him to work out where the worthwhile niches were, and also helped him to avoid creating products and launching a business that focused on a niche without much popularity.

From the get-go, this would have increased his possibility of converting customers online through the use of analytics, and this was before he’d even launched his first product!

From what he learned about analyzing niches early, Michael had to say: ‘when we have a good product, and we put that in front of a passionate audience, we can get engagement straight away. [And sometimes] this also leads to sales.’

To find out this information, Michael has used analytics user engagement data, allowing him to understand what products make customers interact with his website—and how they do this.

This information has helped him to create more winning products that have increased his profit margins and made him more than $1 million in a single year!

Mike Vestil, Shopify Store Owner:

Mike Vestil is a Shopify store owner who was able to build his Shopify store from nothing to $1.5 million in revenue in just 12 months.

He runs a successful dropshipping website, where he advertises and sells products he finds from wholesalers for a higher price, offering direct delivery from the manufacturer to the customer who purchases it.

This is an extremely popular ecommerce business model to go into because it’s relatively cheap to start, but that doesn’t make it easy to use analytics to turn traffic into sales.

In fact, a lot of this business model—as Mike Vestil confirms—relies on predictive analytics, which Kyros Insights explains as being a form of analytics that allows a company to understand how customers think, and predict a member’s behavior in the future.

In his first month, using predictive analytics to answer questions like when people were most likely to make a purchase, and what strategies worked best to restore member engagement, Mike Vestil was able to make almost $6000 in sales from a single product in his first month.

After this, Mike Vestil turned all his attention towards his Shopify store and the in-depth analytics that provided him with information about his customers—both new and returning ones.

By understanding their behavior in depth, Mike Vestil was able to adapt his strategies and increase investments in ones that were already working, to maximize profits and help him become a millionaire in just one year.

Summary:

As you can see from the examples we have provided above, analytics is an incredibly powerful force when used correctly by ecommerce companies.

They can turn a company from failing to get off the ground to an overnight success when used properly, so what are you waiting for?

It’s time to go and look at your analytics in-depth and see what more your ecommerce company could be doing to convert customers online.

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• Buying and Selling to Your Social Media Network – What It Means for Ecommerce
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