Data analytics presents a means to gain a competitive advantage in retail, drawing on data collected from ecommerce ,and then analyzing the data through bespoke or commercial analytical platforms.
Data collection is drawn from loyalty cards, customer surveys, footprint analysis, the Internet of Things and so on. These data points bring cloud computing, analytics, and people together with the aim of improving the performance and productivity.
In large firms, retail companies can digitize processes, transform business models, and improve performance and productivity, while decreasing waste based on predictive quality analytics, and attempting to predict consumer trends and preferences.
While many companies use Google Analytics to develop ecommerce solutions, alternative systems, such as Microsoft’s PowerBI can deliver a greater array of analytical elements. PowerBI is focused on interactive visualizations for its business intelligence capabilities.
As an example of data analytics for ecommerce development, the company Brainvire implemented reports in a client-side .NET (client-side web technologies include HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) and Python-based application using a customized methodology. Python is now one of the most popular and widely used programming languages in the world. Python is regarded as object-oriented (that is, based around data) as well as a high-level (easier for humans to understand) programming language.
The project focus was to assist a retailer with dealing with their unstructured data. The data was considerable but meaningful insights could not be drawn; hence, there was a need to set a proper structure to understand customer behavior.
Once established, the data analytics services provided by PowerBI has an initial focus on delivering labor cost analysis with respect to sales to determine labor expense and profits based on sales per store. This business intelligence later enabled digital marketing strategies to be constructed, tested, and implemented.
Outside of these core tools from Google and Microsoft, other commercial packages are available. Forbes, for example, presents an objective overview.
Such platforms also enable the retail firm to collect metrics relating to the performance of different outlets or employees, or to look at market share coupled with demographic data from different locales for the assessment of online activity.
Metric, in the business context, refers to a measure for quantitatively assessing, controlling, or selecting a person, process, event, or institution. When used correctly, metrics should be used to drive improvements and help businesses focus their people and resources on what is important.
In the ecommerce space, examples of metrics include the sales conversion rate (such as the percentage of visitors who make a purchase); electronic mail opt-ins; the sales rates associated with promotions; consumer life-time value; revenue traffic; mean order values and shopping cart abandonment rate.
