E-commerce: What to Track and Why: Four Brief Analytics Profiles
A mountain of data and no time to analyze it is a familiar predicament for most catalogers, and the advent of e-commerce analytics has only piled the mountain ever higher. Several online and multichannel merchants offered their Web analytics strategies during a panel at last week’s Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco. Following are several analytics questions thrown out by the panel’s audience and the answers provided by the merchants.
Q: What metrics do you need to build an accurate purchase history?
Adam Silverman, senior manager of e-commerce, The Wet Seal: First, recency, frequency and monetary value. We need to know the difference between a casual shopper and a regular.
Tom Rath, CEO, Rock Bottom Golf: We’re a bit of an odd ball. We track dexterity and handicap, because we need to know if customers are right- or left-handed, as well as how well they play, in order to know what golf equipment to market to them.
Pinny Gniwisch, executive vice president of marketing, Ice.com: We focus on personas. We have our Sara’s, women who purchase 12 to 15 times per year and whose conversion rate is very high. We also have Davids, who buy once or twice a year, with low conversions and high average order values. These typically are gift buyers.
Q: What are you testing today and how does it impact site design?
Daniel Cotlar, chief marketing officer, Blinds.com: We do the best job testing e-mail campaigns. We test subject lines and the impact these have on open rates and click-throughs. We want to see how these things trend over time. But we don’t want to become 100 percent better at one thing; we need to become 1 percent better at 100 things. That will drive the most conversion, the most sales.
Q: How are you staffing metrics and analytics?
Gniwisch: We have two people who are focused only on reporting and analytics. Our software allows us to funnel the traffic to our site and create A/B tests and see which versions are working better. The analytics team sends out reports every 20 minutes, so we can work on the fly.
Rath: This is the biggest area for us to invest in. It’s been part of our marketing department, but we’re looking at adding people just for analytics.
Cotlar: We’re in the same group. It’s part of a small marketing group, but it won’t be that way for long.
Silverman: We have one full-time analyst who’s looking at every aspect of the products. But we have found there’s more than that one person can handle. We do have far more data than people to analyze and test that data. But if you don’t have the people to analyze all the data, just look at a few places that might make a difference. You don’t have to look at everything, but you have to focus on a few things if you want to improve.
