With the internet and technology pervading every nook and corner of the world, e-commerce is on the rise. Estimated to be $4 trillion industry by 2020, it’s no doubt that many brick and mortar stores are now selling online. E-commerce is a competitive landscape; just having an e-commerce website is not enough anymore.
To stay ahead of the game, the three most important points to consider are:
- Your reach to your targeted customers
- Clicks converting into purchases
- Data analysis to boost sales
The first two points, ‘reaching out to your targeted customers and converting the clicks into purchases’, you can work on effective digital marketing strategies, sales funnel strategies and pricing & offer strategies. While for ‘analysing your customer data to boost sales’, you will first need to ensure that your e-commerce site captures the data correctly and in real time.
What can the right data analysis do for my business?
With the right data, you can make insightful decisions for your e-commerce and devise strategies to increase sales.
For example, the data collected could help you identify where your most sales are coming from? Is the high- ticketed product also the highly sold product? How many returns have you had? How do your sales vary from last week, month or a year ago? Which month was the highest selling period? The data help you make decisions regarding your inventory levels, your cash collections, your sales revenue forecast and your customer acquisition cost etc. These metrics like sales, cost, stock levels etc are essential to boost your sales growth.
How can we capture the right customer data?
Capturing right and correct customer data is important to understand customer’s buying behavior. Understanding your customer’s behavior on your site, you can tailor strategies to convert their clicks into purchases and also increase the lifetime value of your customer.
These valuable data are captured easily by e-commerce plugins dedicated to ‘data analysis’.
Which data Analytics Plugin is right for my e-commerce site?
There are many data analytics plugins out on the market that propose to make data analysis easier for your business. Some analytics plugins are free while some are available for a one-time fee’ or on a subscription basis.
Google offers its Google Analytics tool for free but it can be complex and time-consuming to analyze especially if you don’t like getting bogged by irrelevant metrics Other plugins provide you with extensive details that can sometimes leave you exhausted and lost. Trust me, “more is not always good”. It’s not about the ‘quantity’ of data but the ‘quality’ of data. Quality data that makes sense to your business and based on which you can actually take measurable steps to improve your business.
Another thing to remember is that there are analytics plugins that transfer your data to third-party hosts (plugin vendor in this case). Thus, deciding which plugin to buy and install can be quite confusing.
Questions to consider while choosing the right analytics plugin for your e-commerce site:
- What are the data analysis matrices offered by the plugin?
- Is the Analytics Plugin free, one-time buy or subscription based?
- How many licenses can be purchased for the quoted price?
- Does the number of customers served determine the price of the plugin?
- Does a third party have access to my data?
- Is the plugin scalable?
- Does the company offer analytics plugin offer prompt and reliable customer service?
Essential Plugins’ recommendations when choosing Analytics Plugins are:
- Does the Analytics Plugin provide data on these basic matrices?
- Sales by Day, Month or Specific Time Period
- Total Sales by Products
- Total Orders by Products
- Sales by Country, State
- Total Sales by Payment Gateways
- Order Status
- Is the Analytical Plugin Free, One time buy or Subscription based?
Most of the Plugins offer Free Trial, which is a good way to ‘try before buy’. Depending on your needs you can either pay the one-time fee or opt-in for subscription basis. However, it pays to calculate One-time fee vs Monthly fee because sometimes you can save extra dollars by paying up front rather than on a monthly payment plan. - How many licenses can be purchased for the quoted price?
In case you run multiple e-commerce websites, it is good to check whether you require separate licenses or you can use one license across the websites. - Does the number of customers served, determine the price of the plugin?
Some plugins have ‘total number of customers’ as the slabs to price the plugin. Eg, 300 customers for $49, 300-1000 customers for $79, 1000 Customers and above for $129. Plugin without such restrictions is preferred because then you are not affected by the uptime and downtime and cyclical nature of the business. Eg Swimming costumes that your e-commerce site sells could have over 1000 customers for 2 months in summer with no or minimum sales during winter. - Does a third party (plugin vendor in this case) have access to my data?
Your data privacy is important. It is best that no third party has access or can use your data for any purpose. Therefore, choosing a plugin that allows you to manage your own data without having to transfer to the vendor website is the better option. - Is the plugin scalable?
If your business increases its products & offerings and as a result, the number of customer increase drastically, does the plugin support this? Will there be any extra charges to upgrade?
Choose a plugin that is built to allow for your business growth. Nothing is worse than having a plugin that crashes every time or loads poorly due to increasing online traffic or data. - Do they offer customer service promptly?
Yes, once the plugin is embedded in your e-commerce website, it becomes as seamless as part of the website that you don’t even remember that it’s actually a plugin. This is the beauty of plugins. But in times when you run difficulty in loading the data or find weird looking charts, you might feel relieved knowing that your e-commerce website is supported by an expert team when you need it.
Why choose Woocharts as your Analytics Plugin?
Essential Plugin’s analytics plugin-WooCharts is designed specifically for WooCommerce. It gives you all the required analytical metrics to boost your sales. It is a one-time buy but with the customer support service for throughout lifetime. The best thing, your data are yours to keep. You don’t need to share your confidential data with us. What’s more? Today, we are giving it away for just $19.95 instead of its actual cost $49. Click here to download our 7 Day Trial Version for Free.