Digital: Navigating through eCommerce Business Challenges with Agile Analytics

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MANILA, PHILIPPINES– Whether businesses are ready or not, many have unexpectedly faced the challenge of adapting quickly, shifting most or all of its operations to digital channels. Quite often, many businesses take the first step and establish their digital presence but fail to plan for what’s next.

As part of the NUWORKS Innovation Delivery Loop, data and analytics fuel the iterative process of the whole eCommerce system. This reinforces that monitoring performance across the digital transformation journey is not just a one-time thing. Consistent data collection and analysis helps businesses not only survive but also thrive given the long road towards economic recovery because it unlocks the answers to the questions like: how can you translate interest and inquiries to revenues? What keeps your competitors from encroaching on your customers? Where are the potential growth opportunities? Are you building a loyal customer base, or are they buying because they simply have no other option?

Consolidating Data & Insights Across Several Domains

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For several years now, marketers have recognized the non-linear way customers make purchases online. The journey can be very complex as they explore and evaluate product and service options repeatedly across multiple touchpoints before they even decide to check out (if they even do so). This reality makes it more challenging for businesses to accurately measure performance and consistently deliver delight across different stages of the customer experience especially when operating in silos.

Businesses must realize that agility applies not only for platform development but also for data collection and analysis. This means not limiting your business to segmented data from 1 or 2 platforms and instead utilizing insights across several domains, testing strategies and optimizing continuously in collaboration with different disciplines — precisely how the innovations agency, NUWORKS is structured. The agency’s in-house data analysts and eCommerce experts can assess digital drive-to-site efforts, customer flows across channels; monitor sales performance and efficiency in operations; and even develop customer relationships and retention as part of its NUWORKS Commerce Analytics and Consulting Services.

Scenario Planning Towards eCommerce Challenges

With the help of NUWORKS’ End-to-end Data Analytics, businesses can thrive in a data-informed culture that can scale their online store success or signal a pivot. The intent of the agency is to use data as a key input among multiple variables and ultimately build context to understand the deeper, inherent meaning behind customer behaviors. As Jeff Bezos of Amazon says, “You collect as much data as you can. You immerse yourself in that data, and then make the decision with your heart.” This approach has allowed NUWORKS to consider multiple solutions and practice scenario planning when challenges arise. If the data shows problems and poor performance, the agency is not paralyzed by the data-driven mindset that may just tell the client to immediately close shop.

While building its eCommerce capability scope with diverse client partners in the last three years, NUWORKS was able to formulate the key factors every business must review when faced with the three most common challenges affecting the bottom line.

Dealing with Low Traffic Conversion

When your online store is generating traffic and interest yet struggling to translate into sales, NUWORKS recommends looking at website design flow, product reviews, checkout process, payment options.

Website design and flow: When an online store’s user interface lacks clarity in any form, potential customers may be turned off from further exploring your product catalog. Customers can easily be impatient and unimpressed by eCommerce inefficiencies to the point of site or cart abandonment.
Product reviews: Inclusion of customer reviews in the product or service information can enable customers to arrive at the decision to purchase quickly.
Check out process and Payment options available: Once a customer makes a decision to buy and adds your product to their baskets, you’re not out of the woods yet. Having a poorly designed checkout flow, added costs such as shipping, as well as limited payment options can spell the difference between you and a competitor brand. Remember, ‘sales’ or check-outs without actually getting paid is useless.

If your brand needs help in identifying the barriers of your platform where there is risk risk of customer fall out, NUWORKS COMMERCE Web and Platform Analytics monitors traffic and measures the behavior of users as they arrive and exit your eStore.

Resolving Slow Revenue Growth

As with any store, revenue generation can slow down after its initial launch or generally during certain periods in the year. NUWORKS leverages on product, price and place in order to sustain the growth rate of its eCommerce client partners.

Products marketed and bundling options: Evaluating sales data can give insights on what your customers typically purchase together. These can open up opportunities to cross-sell towards check-out and increase basket size value.
Basket size: Tracking how much your customers are spending each time can inform the brand which discounts, promotions and SKUs to continue leveraging on to help arrest decline or maintain growth.
Location or Sales Channel Performance: Monitoring sales performance across different conversion channels can give context to which areas or platforms are most lucrative, or which ones possibly need more marketing support. Actions can range from providing customer incentives for using specific sales channels to restrategizing the role of each channel for each type of customer targeted.

Drilling down sales performance across each domain, coupled with an understanding of the eCommerce landscape and its consumer can also be provided by NUWORKS COMMERCE division through the Self-Service Performance Dashboard Design and the Customer Journey or Market Basket Analysis.

Addressing Low Customer Retention

Finally, businesses can also experience the influx of new customers through marketing efforts but fail in generating repeat sales. Looking at the eConsumer Decision Journey above, this means revisiting tactics applied on the Repeat, Loyalty and Advocacy stages.

Fulfillment Process and Delivery SLAs: Poor fulfillment services (e.g. long delivery periods, inaccurate or incomplete products delivered, lack of updates on deliveries) can cost a business repeat purchases. Having a frictionless fulfillment experience can become a competitive advantage in and of itself in the whole ecosystem of online purchasing.
Aftersales: Do businesses still keep in contact with their customers after the purchase is done? Not all do. Having this open channel of communication with your customers whether it’s via email, SMS or chat will not only get the businesses the relevant feedback for further improvement, but it can also help build customer loyalty in a landscape that is filled with generic storefronts and resellers focused on making a quick buck.
Remarketing Efforts: Remarketing can work wonders when businesses reach out to customers–not just those who purchased before, but even those who tried to purchase but did not continue.

Now looking for opportunities to habituate repurchasing and grow brand loyalty may seem daunting and time consuming for brands that’s why NUWORKS Commerce offers Customer Journey and CRM Services to do the analysis of cross-channel pathways for you.

Businesses can also encounter two or more of these challenges simultaneously throughout their operations. This may be the signal for eCommerce partners to step in and review the current eCommerce strategies and source of business among other factors. Brands can tap NUWORKS Commerce to recalibrate the online business roadmap, target segments and personas, and generate a clear view of growth opportunities and strategic imperatives that will fulfill your business KPIs when any or all of these issues arise. For inquiries on how to turn data into actionable insights, you may contact Patricia Bautista Saez, NUWORKS Client Services Director at pat.saez@nuworks.ph. Alternatively, you could also reach out via the Contact Us page.