How would you feel if you were a Helmsman and your team just assumed that you’ll be alright during the submarine launch? No tests, no numbers, literally nothing.
Your team just assumed that because the sea is calm and you’ll be ok.
Believe it or not, most of the eCommerce marketers out there try out one after another random tactics until something actually works.
We believe you’re here because you understand “fake it till you make it” won’t work in the long run. Real success in the eCommerce business world takes place when there are trends, processes, and concrete figures that guide you throughout.
That’s what eCommerce Analytics is all about.
Business owners rely on it, to successfully launch their business and thrive in the marketplace.
Collecting good and relevant data can help you to understand the world around you, it can guide you and can also help you to make better decisions. By term ‘data’ we meant eCommerce data specifically.
If you’re a business owner, you must know data can either make or break your business.
Nervous? Thrilled? A little bit of both?
Totally understandable.
Today in this guide, we’ll dive deeper into the world of eCommerce analytics.
What is eCommerce Analytics?
Looker defines eCommerce Analytics as,
“eCommerce analytics is a key component of the digital transformation of businesses. It makes it possible to track the customer journey across omni-channel touch points and build a comprehensive view of what drives revenue. This insight informs better business decision-making.”
Although most of the analytics tools primarily focus mainly on onsite behaviour, however eCommerce analytics does much more than this.
Onsite, eCommerce analytics can tell you where the visitors are coming from, how much time they’re spending on site, which particular product has the most views, where they are spending most of their valuable time, to name a few.
In the grand scheme of things, this data can help you in understanding consumer behaviour and psychology.
Why do you need eCommerce Analytics?
Having any type of eCommerce analytics tool is essential if you want to successfully run a eCommerce business. eCommerce is not like placing bets on sports. To stay relevant and successful in the eCommerce industry, you should have complete knowledge of what your users are doing on your website to improve the user experience.
But here comes the main question, “what are you supposed to measure?”
Different analytics tools have different and specific measuring capabilities.
If you’re not tech-savvy you just keep it simple and track your traffic region, sources, most visited site page(s) etc. Or you can go deeper to find out the average time a user is spending on your store, which products they’re interested in, which particular product has the most searches, and much more.
Take a minute, sit back and think about your favourite brands. Think how smartly they have set up their eCommerce analytics to track your behavior on their site to find out what you’re actually attracted to.
AARRR metrics for eCommerce
To grow your eCommerce business, we believe the AARRR metrics method is the best way to do so. Most of the business owners often overcomplicate things and because of that they don’t get favourable outcomes.
Following the AARRR method will help you to understand those 5 things on which you must focus on if you really want your business to grow.
AARRR stands for
- Acquisition
- Activation
- Revenue
- Retention
- Referral
The term AARRR metrics was coined by Dave McClure, the world famous entrepreneurship guru. It is considered the system that ultimately leads you to success.
Now let’s discuss the 5 different components of AARRR.
1. Acquisition
To put it in simple words, acquisition is how you get visitors to your site. Most of the eCommerce businesses see their audiences coming from different search engines like Bing or Google, social media platforms, and paid ads.
Credits: Avinash Kaushik
No matter what acquisition strategy you’re following, it’s highly essential to track from where your users are coming from. Once you know that just invest more on the sources which are bringing most consistent traffic to your site.
2. Activation
When a visitor signs up for your newsletter or product trial, it’s called Activation. It means the wheels of the vehicle have started moving, and they have probably started taking actions that can lead them to purchasing from your store.
3. Revenue
Revenue is definitely the biggest manifestation of sales funnel ultimate success. In terms of eCommerce it primarily means placing an order. To improve the revenue conversion rate of your store it’s essential to make sure that the checkout process is absolutely flawless, clear and clean and mobile optimized.
4. Retention
If someone has purchased once in a while from you doesn’t guarantee they will come back to you again. That’s why retention analysis and cohorts is essential.
The term cohort analysis basically refers to the practice of deeply studying the habits or activities of a specific cohort. It’s more like a segmentation but it chiefly focuses on the acquired eCommerce data – utilizing the collected data to spot changes or patterns in customer behaviour throughout the purchasing journey.
As we strongly believe that retaining an existing customer is much easier than getting a new customer.
You must be asking yourself, “how can I retain my existing customers?”
Well, the answer is pretty simple. Keep track of your customers behaviour and try to comprehend what they require and demand for. Then customize your offers accordingly to increase the retention rate.
5. Referral
So now you have repeated customers, what now? How can you grow your business and take it to the pinnacles? Obviously through referrals!
Alexa Drake in her article ‘Why Word of Mouth Marketing Is So Effective’ stated,
“An overwhelming 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over advertisements.”
There are many chances your customers have friends & family who might be interested in knowing what you are offering and believe us nothing is better than a powerful referral from a friend or family member.
There are several referral marketing tactics that you use to improve the growth of your eCommerce business.
Must-have eCommerce analytics tools
As we are familiar with the fact there are hundreds of thousands of analytics tools available. Finding the right one is just like looking for a needle in the haystack. However, we believe it’s not necessary to get hold of all of them if you have the following 4 tools:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Hotjar
- Conversific
Each of these tools are stellar and essential if you want effective growth of your business. Now let’s discuss them into further detail.
1. Google Analytics
Often labelled as THE BEST analytics tool and we totally agree with that. Google Analytics – a popular product of Google, comparatively easy to use and free.
To put it in simpler words, Google Analytics helps business owners to truly understand their customers. The extensive analytics features of this tool paints a crystal clear picture of the overall performance of your website.
According to W3Techs, 52.9% websites across the internet use Google Analytics which signifies it’s one of the most commonly used analytics tools.
Getting started with Google Analytics is pretty straightforward.
Just go to the website : https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/
Once you are redirected to the site, it will walk you through all the features in the typical Google style. You’ll also get the guide on creating goals, installing tracking codes, and not to forget how to read all the displayed data.
At first, it might look pretty overwhelming and daunting, but after sometime you’ll definitely get used to it.
Plus Point : It’s highly customizable, thus making it a highly attractive option for many.
Why do you need Google Analytics?
If you want to know who visited your site? Where do your live customers live? Which page(s) are performing poorly on your site? How long visitors are staying on your site? How many leads on a daily basis are converted into customers?
You need to have the Google Analytics tool. It will give you detailed answers of all your queries and much more.
2. Google Search Console
Standing at #2 of the must-have eCommerce analytics tools list is another popular product of Google – Google Search Console.
It’s a completely free tool that allows you to check how Google views your website and give insights on how you can improve organic presence. It helps you to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website’s presence in Google Search results.
It provides you with intuitive analytics that you can easily use to figure out which queries bring visitors to your site so you can optimize your site accordingly.
Why do you need Google Search Console?
If your website is your bread and butter, it’s necessary it must be healthy as it can directly affect the growth and success of your business. A healthier website ranks higher, drives more organic traffic, and generates higher revenues. Plus, it’s a completely Free tool so you really don’t have to worry about losing anything.
3. Hotjar
Next on the list we have Hotjar- website heatmaps & behaviour analytics tools. It’s one of the most popular tools that helps in understanding the behaviour of customers on a website.
Regardless of whether there are numerous analytics tools available out there, Hotjar stands out among them as it visually represents the actions of customers via heatmaps.
The heatmaps you see on Hotjar helps you in clearly seeing scroll heatmaps, click heatmaps, move heatmaps, and share and download heatmaps. Having such a clear visual representation of a user’s actions, interests, and intentions is certainly pretty useful.
Why do you need Hotjar?
If you want visuals of interpretations of all your customers’ data, Hotjar is the tool that you must invest in. The heatmaps it shows helps in understanding what’s exactly working for your customers and what’s not.
In this way you can take necessary steps to improve customer experience to boost your business growth effectively.
4. Conversific
We believe all that hard work you put into data acquisition goes in vain when you cannot use it properly to make sound business decisions.
Use Conversific, a popular analytics tool that simplifies all the acquired data and helps you in taking right actions according to it rather than just staring at it. It’s a new kind of analytics tool for WooCommerce & Shopify that facilitates you not only to optimize your traffic but also conversion, gather better insights, and bring in more sales.
Why do you need Conversific?
Even though Google Analytics is THE BEST analytics tool but figuring out everything about it takes time. With Coversific, you can keep all your essential metrics in one place. The user-friendly dashboard helps you in keeping all the crucial data in the right place.
Unfortunately, it’s not free like other eCommerce analytics tools we have discussed so far. The pricing plan starts at $29.00 per month. However, if you’re not sure whether you should invest in it, just try the free trial version before you purchase it.
Key Takeaways
As we know, the rise in eCommerce is fueling digital competition and it has become more fierce than ever. We firmly believe analytics can help you to deeply understand your customers to stand out among your competitors.
The eCommerce analytics metrics and tools we have discussed above signifies why eCommerce analytics is essential for a business to thrive in this highly competitive industry.
We hope this guide will help you understand the importance of analytics and how you can use the right tools to build your business empire.
If you’re a WooCommerce B2B store owner and want to enhance your productivity, then B2BWoo is the best option for you. It’s a one-stop-shop for your every essential WooCommerce B2B eCommerce integrations.