By 2040, 95% of all purchases will be made online. In regular terms, twenty years may seem like a long time. But this shift from brick-and-mortar to online stores won’t be sudden – it’s happening as we speak. For businesses operating today, the time to start strategizing for the long-term is right now. Hence, Ecommerce Data Management plays a crucialrole in the growth of online businesses.
Big data analytics is a huge part of this change. If they are to stay relevant and competitive, modern-day online retailers should start establishing their own frameworks for collecting, analyzing, and using large chunks of data to their advantage. Competitors are already doing it. Why aren’t you?
Here’s how data management can help your eCommerce business grow.
- Start Making Informed Strategic Decisions
You cannot launch a startup with no business plan, and you cannot run a business with no long-term strategy. But before you can develop a sense of direction for your online store, you must first feel the pulse of customer behavior and market dynamics.
Using big data, your company can become proficient at:
- Predicting trends
- Optimizing prices
- Forecasting demand
Thanks to trends forecasting algorithms, the world’s leading brands are ready to offer the best and most exciting new products and experiences one shopping season ahead of everyone else. Any small business can become trendsetting by doing the same.
When paired with price optimization and demand forecasting, these algorithms are powerful enough to turn niche players into the biggest names on the market.
Through demand forecasting, eCommerce data management allows you to beat all competitors to the market. Price optimization, on the other hand, makes your products competitive even before they hit your online store. Data makes you farsighted and savvy.
And all that can be done months, even years ahead of schedule.
- Better Experience = More Happy Customers
With everything being available at the click or swipe, modern-day consumers are more interested in paying for the story behind the product. Many prefer the retailer who treats them the best, while others put their money on a specific feeling, culture, or mood. This is why brands, not products, rule the eCommerce world.But giving your customers exactly what they need and expect is not easy.
Tugging at their heartstrings requires getting familiar not only with their purchasing habits, but also with their mindsets, opinions, and lifestyle choices. In fewer words, today’s eCommerce requires audience targeting techniques that are driven by big data.
Only with advanced algorithms and eCommerce data management methods will you be able to offer a high level of personalized service that today’s online shoppers expect to see, including both product recommendations and seamless customer journeys.
- Eliminate Bounce Rates and Product Returns
Speaking of customer journeys, we must not forget that the experience shoppers have with their favorite eCommerce brands starts at the first touchpoint. Numerous factors in online shopping help shape the delicate B2C relationship.
However, customer service plays a key role in this. A few years ago, Gartner predicted that 89% of businesses would compete mainly on customer service. In between two brands with the same products, the majority of customers will choose the one with better, faster, and easily accessible customer support team.
What does data have to do with customer service, you ask?
Today’s customer service doesn’t include only post-purchase support. It also covers pre-purchase guidance and real-time shopping assistance. On many eCommerce websites, customer services reps are using customer data to sell products via live chat.
This data-empowered trifecta – guidance, sales, and support – proactively eliminates bounce rates and product returns by making sure that leads are captured and converted on-site while returning customers are treated with personalized service.
The more your reps know about their customers, the better.
- Optimize Workflow and Generate More Sales
In one way or another, ecommerce data management drives sales. Aside from demand forecasting, personalization, and data-based customer service, all of which lead to better sales opportunities, big data also unlocks greater operational efficiency. This allows online retailers to grow both internally and externally.
Behind the closed doors of an online retailer’s headquarters, big data management has the ability to help teams optimize their day-to-day processes – inform and track marketing campaigns, finance, IT procurement, and logistics, just to name a few.
Allow us to give you an example:
According to one success story by the Back Office Pro Team, a provider of outsourced eCommerce data management services, professionally managed order processing has increased the order of a US-based online retailer for a whopping 300%!
- Increase Your Online and Payment Security
43% of cyber attacks target small businesses, and online shops are an easy target. Not only does a lack of basic cybersecurity measures puts the financial future of your company in jeopardy, but it also jeopardizes your customers’ personal information and money. Losing the data they’ve entrusted you with will result in a trust crisis.
eCommerce businesses can no longer survive without smart online and payment security protocols. Big data management contributes to this as well – without reliable defense systems in place, you won’t be able to protect your customers’ information.
Collecting and analyzing large amounts of data isn’t enough. You also need to know how to store and protect them.
All successful ecommerce companies tap into big data to provide a better, smoother, and more convenient shopping experience to their customers. And by doing that, they are one mistake away from what happened to Facebook in 2024.
Conclusion
Oh, and one last thing.
Big data is not easy to capture and understand. Customer preferences, market fluctuations, and big trends are only bits of raw information that don’t make any sense until they are properly analyzed. That’s why eCommerce data management makes all the difference.
If you don’t have the time, expertise, and tools to establish effective in-house eCommerce data management practices, it may be better to outsource it to professionals. Don’t look at it as an extra cost. However you use it, this kind of insight always pays off.
