All online businesses generate large numbers of data. This data can include the product purchases, search hits, web page viewership, recommendation and site clicks, etc. Moreover, likes, comments and follows from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter; along with Pinterest pins, are also parts of this huge collection of data collected by an online business.
The reason for this massive collection is that consumers use the Internet in a variety of ways and from a number of different devices, each choosing their own preference. However, it makes it a very trying task for small businesses to measure all of this information to get some facts and figures regarding the business.
Larger firms and online stores like, Amazon and Target; have been collecting and calculating their enormous amount of data for years. New and small businesses however, need to move more cautiously, because they cannot afford to waste their resources on unimportant calculations.
Thus, small businesses need to make smart choices for data collection. Only those metrics that make an impact on the success and development of the business should be collected with the others being discarded to improve speed and efficiency of the web site.
Keep reading to find out how to determine which data is important and should be collected by small to medium online businesses.
The key metrics for Big Data analysis collection include:
Number of Visitors on the Website and the On-Coming Direction of Web Traffic
Online marketing can often be quite expensive for a company. Hence, you need to know exactly where to spend your money and how to get the best results out of it?
The key thing to remember is that your online business depends on its web traffic. Therefore, you need to monitor the visitors to your site and you also need to know which sources they are coming from.
Tools like Google Analytic can provide you with insights to your web traffic and its sources. If you create Customized Ad Campaigns and add individual URLs for them, you can even discover which links or ads led customers to your site.
Visitors’ Actions on Your Website
To determine which areas of your site attract more attention, you need to track the actions of your website visitors. This will tell you which areas are satisfactory and which need to be improved.
For instance, if you are seeing a lot of abandoned carts on your site, the problem could be that people are having problems with processing their payment details on the checkout page or maybe your company needs to make more efforts to assure the customers of its reliability.
Sales and Other Parameters
There is no better way to discover where your business is heading than by checking its sales. Your profit and loss margins, your income and expenditures, sales from promotional deals and offers, per customer expense of running and maintaining the online business; all these factors will help you in determining how profitable your business truly is and how successful it has been since its inception.
In accordance to the data collected, you can then initiate new promotions, marketing campaigns and more to attract more traffic to your website.
Collection of the necessary metrics of eCommerce will help in determining what needs to be done further to improve the business. So focus on only those aspects of your business that can actually benefit you in the long run.