How to Implement Omnichannel Analytics: A Story of Plumbing Online Store

“The omnichannel analytics is like a spinner. Everybody wants to get it but doesn’t understand exactly why. Because that’s a trend in the digital marketing world” said one of our clients.

Actually, we were discussing that many people asked our client how to build omnichannel analytics because they also wanted it. However, nobody thinks what’s the point. Does it bring profit? How to work with received data?

We’ve collected the insights about constructing the omnichannel analytics from our clients. Definitely, in each case the scheme will be custom. That depends on peculiarities of business processes, advertising budget, skills of data processing and other factors.

In this post, we’ll embrace the implementing of omnichannel analytics based on the experience of our client, plumbing online store.

This case study demonstrates that analytics can be adopted only with a clear goal and knowledge of how to work with received data.

At the end of this story, you get the bonus — 3 schemes of constructing an omnichannel analytics from the elementary to advanced.

Backstory

Our client is plumbing online store Kabinka.kz. It has been working for 4 hours on Kazakhstan market. However, their sales have increased significantly just one year ago. Buyers stopped being afraid of purchases over the Internet.

When the sales grew, it became necessary to analyze their sources. There was crucial to allocate the advertising budget in favor of most effective marketing channels.

Goals and Tasks

The following goals were assigned for the web analytics:

• get comprehensive data on customer journey before making purchase;
• calculate the profit from different marketing channels;
• measure ROI of advertising channels, conversion rate, cost per acquisition and cost per call;
• distribute call center volume by time of the day;
• test new advertising channels;
• allocate marketing budget.

Solution and failures

1. Call tracking

First, top managers and marketers tracked the inquiries from all the channels:

• online chat;
• email;
• online purchases;
• phone calls;
• сallback widget.

It was easy to track first three channels due to goals in Google Analytics. However, it wasn’t clear how to track call conversions. Calls represented 30% of the total number of all inquiries. Therefore, the analytics inaccuracy was 30%.

So the question was how to keep track of sales over phone. The managers had the opportunity to set up goals in Google Analytics for Thank You Page (this page displays after a contact form submission). But their clients rarely purchased through the cart, they preferred to make phone calls to clarify information about the product. Of course, Google Analytics didn’t display this kind of transactions.

First solution and failure

Kabinka.kz decided to activate the call tracking. However, that service didn’t provide structured and systematized information. Organizing the data took a lot of time. Eventually, the company changed three call tracking services until the appropriate one wasn’t found.

This online store wanted a call tracking service to meet following requirements:

• structured and clear reports;
• opportunity to export data to Excel or Google Spreadsheets;
• opportunity to create custom reports;
• opportunity to integrate with omnichannel analytics platforms and CRM systems;
• opportunity to activate phone numbers for substitution;
• prompt Customer Support.

2. Integration of call tracking, CRM, and business analytics system

Challenge

Of course, goals in Google Analytics allow to track advertising sources customers were coming from. But how to learn about if these customers made a purchase?

Goals for any online conversions can’t precisely guarantee that users buy the product.

Second solution and failure

Thus, the company took a decision to integrate analytics platform with call tracking and CRM system.

First, they integrated call tracking with CRM system. They became disappointed because managers expected to receive systematized data and pop up windows with information about callers. But instead of this, they got unstructured data. Managers didn’t have a clue how to work with this information.

When kabinka.kz activated Ringostat, the analytics inaccuracy was reduced to 5%. However, the company still was interested in the collection of all received data in the one place and omnichannel analytics. That’s why the integration of Roistat end-to-end business analytics system and Ringostat call tracking service became the best solution. Owing to this, the company was empowered to gather all data from the CRM system, advertising platforms, and its website.

Moreover, presently kabinka.kz has access to complete data, such as a lead acquisition cost, geographical location of callers, lead generating channels (SEO-optimization, Google Adwords). Marketers are now able to understand the whole customer journey towards making the purchase.

Unexpected Conclusions

Omnichannel analytics helped kabinka.kz improve their business process. Originally, this company had the remote call center. By using call tracking and listening to phone calls, managers clarified that this call center wasn’t effective and sales reps weren’t interested in good results of this online store. Also, top managers understood that the full-time job of call managers wasn’t a necessity because expenses on the work of sales reps in night time weren’t profitable.

Bonus: 3 ways to construct an omnichannel analytics

Elementary way

1. Install Google Tag Manager.
2. Activate call tracking service.
3. Set up inquiries tracking on email.
4. Import data on costs into Google Analytics with BI platforms (Owox BI, MixData BI).
5. Import data on revenue into Google Analytics (You need a help of software engineer. This task requires about 2 weeks).
6. Visualize data with Google Data Studio (It’s not necessary. You can use Excel as well).

Advanced way

1. Install Google Tag Manager
2. Activate call tracking service.
3. Import data on costs into Google Analytics with BI platforms (Owox BI, MixData BI).
4. Configure data streaming from Google Analytics to Google BigQuery (You may also use Owox BI or MixData BI).
5. Import data on calls to Google BigQuery with Owox BI or MixData BI.
6. Import data from your CRM system to Google BigQuery. The software engineer can help you with it.
7. Visualize data with Google Data Studio or Microsoft Power BI.

The way of constructing the omnichannel analytics depends on many factors such as business topic, region, level of competition, advertising budget and your skills of working with analytics data.

For example, if you work in the real estate market and the call acquisition cost is about 300 dollars, the advanced way of omnichannel analytics will be profitable for you.

But if your company has 2–3 sales reps and the call center volume is low, you may dispense with expensive advanced tools and construct an omnichannel analytics in a very simple way. That won’t require huge expenses.

You need to activate Google Analytics and call tracking service, then create a table for manual filling out by your managers. You can have any fields in the table but the most important ones are the operator code and phone number of the caller. Also, sales reps may specify order status, add comments etc.

Then data from Google Analytics and filled table must be integrated by phone number (thanks to Core Reporting API + formula = importrange) and transferred to another table. You may visualize that in Google Data Studio.

Here’s the scheme of integration of data.

Here’s s an example of table with integrated data.

Visualization in Google Data Studio:

Sum Up

Get most out of omnichannel analytics. That’s never enough to look at the cool graphs and diagrams. You won’t improve the results without clever approach and decisions based on this data. If you doubt your competency regarding analytics topic, hire the expert and don’t stop learning. In the end, the goal of any analytics isn’t the creating cool reports but boosting the profit.