Master the Right Metrics to Ace Digital Commerce
Varun Chhibber
Client Partner- Banking, Financial Services and Insurance at Tata Consultancy Services
In the pursuit to increase the sales, it is of utmost importance to not only keep track of the metrics but it to have the most appropriate metrics in place. The metrics should help you quantify the impact of the website on sales, conversions, consumer behavior and help you identify latent opportunities of improvement. Without the tracking of the relevant metrics you will never be able to ascertain the true impact of your efforts and will be missing on the crucial data which can help you optimize the whole customer experience!
Effective metrics are required to minutely analyze each functionality, new initiatives, effectiveness on various devices, opportunities to capture new segments etc. With the avalanche of information it is quite possible that many a times we are not tracking the essential data we need to make important business decisions. The first step in this direction is to identify the right metrics and the most crucial data points to regularly keep tab on the health of your website.
The data which needs to be collected should answer the three most important questions for you:
- What are the most critical opportunities for enhancement?
- What is the quantifiable impact of the website on the sales figures?
- What is the impact of the eCommerce implementation on the other channels?
The process which we need to follow to master the right metrics is depicted below:
Milestone 1: Ascertain what needs to be measured
The first step is to comprehend what we can measure and what needs to be measured. We need to collect data around Website, Usability, Consumer experience and cross channel behavior.
Milestone 2: Establish the most crucial metrics
The identification of metrics will depend on what suits the business purpose the best. Some of the most crucial metric categories usually seen are- Awareness, Usage, Consumer experience & Impact.
- Awareness- Customer awareness, employee awareness, Traffic changes over a period, App downloads etc.
- Usage- Site conversion, Page views, Cart abandonment, bounce rate, Path analysis etc.
- Consumer experience- Net Promoter score, Site availability etc.
- Impact- Cost per order, Sales changes over a period etc.
Milestone 3: Gather the data points
Once we have established the list of the shortlisted metrics, the next crucial step is to effectively collect the data. Tap in to the various sources such as third party analytics solutions, internal data sources which business analysts could mine & consumer surveys which provides you first hand invaluable insights into the customer behavior.
Milestone 4: Create easy to understand Dashboards & Reports
The final step in this journey is to make use of all the crucial information that has been gathered and provide it to the business in the form of actionable insights. eCommerce team needs to create easy to comprehend yet useful Dashboards & reports which could be used as a quick check by the business. Additionally we can contextualize to suit the needs of each department and spread the eCommerce awareness across the organization which will help you get the much needed support for future eCommerce initiatives.
Treading this journey carefully will enable organizations to make decisions with sound reasoning & data points placing actionable insights at their fingertips and will enable teams to benchmark against the best across industries in today's hyper competitive digital world. So go ahead and discover the right metrics for your eCommerce business!
This Blog was originally posted on Infosys Blogs.