The Digital User Data Retailers Need to Track for Success
Almost two months into the shift that is seeing retailers invest more than ever into their digital tools, now is a great time to start talking about how to assess the customer insights these tools are giving you. Customer data can not only help you understand how your customers are finding and engaging with your products, but also improve how you interact and engage with them once they’re on your platforms. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available to you, so let’s break this down to the must-know details.
Demographics
Beyond the number of visitors, tracking the demographics of your site and app users reveals helpful info on who you’re reaching and serving. Your database of customer data should include demos like what country — in addition to regions and states — your buyers are coming from, as well as their gender and age range. Once you learn this info, it may help you diversify your offerings in new ways with additional seasonally-based merchandise or expanding into women’s or men’s clothing.
Referral Traffic
Driving people to your site through social media is meaningless if you’re not measuring the results of the campaigns. Your referral traffic helps you understand if you’re getting visitors to your online site through organic traffic (someone typed in your URL) or through outside sources like social media, affiliate traffic or through other marketing or public relations efforts.
Notifications
Notifications are helpful for your mobile app customers, who may download an app once for a purchase but forget about it. Since we want to avoid the app graveyard, make sure you are not only using notifications to bring customers back to the app but also tracking which messages lead to the most engagement. Notifications you should be using: abandoned cart, new items and flash sales.
Sales
One of the most exciting data points to track, in my opinion, is the link between sales and your digital tools. I specifically want to reference the success of Peet’s Coffee and how they used their mobile tools to drive sales. Based on their data, they knew that 40 percent of their customers were visiting the website from mobile devices. In order to take advantage of those on mobile, the Peet’s team used location data and individualized content to target sales for customers. Not only did they increase mobile traffic, they increased revenue by 142 percent.
As you grow your online presence, you will be able to use the data to make adjustments in your social media strategy as well as your product and service planning. What user data has proven most helpful for you? Let us know on social: @sandboxcommerce on Twitter.
Originally published at Sterling Smith.
