Data collection is important in your eCommerce strategy for many reasons. One of these is that you can offer your shoppers personalized experiences, which we know they are looking for. If your store is active, there is already data being collected. But the ways in which you are collecting the data could be optimized. So how can you collect data to drive results?
Ways To Obtain Data
Transactional Data
Transactional data are records from the point-of-sale system on your website. This can give you personal information about your customers, their purchases, payments and returns. This can let you know how popular products are, and give you indication as to how best to stock your inventory.
Forms, Surveys, Interviews
Adding forms at the checkout stage, or even a rating out of 5 options, allows customers to have their say. These digital surveys let you know how happy your customers are, and therefore what business improvements could be made. Using a chatbot is a great way to ensure 24/7 customer service, and hearing your shoppers’ needs.
Social Media
Social media data should not be overlooked in terms of importance. Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok all hold a valuable place in understanding your eCommerce store. This gives you data based on engagement (shares, likes, comments, responses), and can give you deeper insight into how your customers receive your brand. It can also help you understand more about the customers themselves.
Why Collect Data?
We have already highlighted some of the reasons that collecting customer data is important. Here are some reasons:
- Understand your customers better through facts
- Offer your shoppers relevant and engaging personalization
- Identify areas to adapt or change your strategy
- Predict how future trends will affect your business
How To Improve Data Collection
So now we know some of the ways that data can be collected, and why this is important, let’s look at how to optimize this strategy.
Identify Data Sources and Metrics
Which data you gather and analyze will depend on the result you are hoping to obtain from it. For example, your business strategy could currently be focused on:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Gaining new customers
- Creating relevant content
- Improving conversion rates
- Expanding social media presence
Depending on what your brand is currently focusing on, will affect the data you should be analyzing. Different data sources will show you different visions. Then understanding how to track these metrics and what they mean will create the right picture to start building new strategies from.
Segment Customers
Once you have enough data sources and understand the metrics, you should then place customers in different categories or segments. This can help create personalization at scale and can place your customers in understandable categories.
For example, these categories can be based on:
- Online behavior
- Preferences
- Interests
- Demographics
These can even be set over a certain time period. Then personalization can be offered at scale and without breaching any data privacy regulations.
Build Customer Relationships
Since there are so many restrictions and lack of clarity around data, it’s something that many customers feel unsafe with. In order to build and maintain better customer relationships, it’s important to be transparent about how you collect your data, and what you do with it. The more transparent you are, the more data they are willing to share, and the better your brand image.
Analytical Tools
Data collection can be enhanced by automated analytical tools. These tools can provide different services depending on your desired outcome. Some can tell you information about your visitors actions on your site:
- What sent them to your site
- How long they spent on site
- Actions taken on site
This can help you optimize your shoppers’ browsing experience. This data can also be gathered by surveys or feedback forms, often incentivized with a discount or something like that. Even data such as purchase orders, live chat messages and email exchanges can all be useful in optimizing data to suit your needs.
Keep Testing
Never forget to monitor, test and improve your data collection. It’s not a one-off system, it’s a long term strategy that will change and should be monitored. The way you are collecting and using data could change, and you should be adaptable to this. Depending on your desired outcome, strategies should be flexible.
Conclusion
Customer data is key to eCommerce success. By following these steps, you can improve your customer data collection and also the ways you use this data. Staying up to date with your analytics and what you are using the data for is key. If you implement these properly, you will see the positive effects on your business.