#6 Advanced Statistics
We’ve successfully come to the end of our Out of the Jungle: Product series. For our last volume, we decided to take a look at Advanced Statistics, and specifically how being able to interpret and understand complex analytics can give you a real advantage over the competition. Be ready to get your hands dirty with us today as we dig deeper than ever!
High-Level Analytics
Data analytics is an area which, if mastered, will provide major competitive advantages to store owners. Analyzing business results is the alpha & omega of being successful. It doesn’t matter how much time you spend working with PPC systems and social media — if you don’t get to the core of things, you can’t expect to make lasting changes. Having a good grasp of such statistics allows you to take advantage of integrated data-driven marketing and can give you the ability to track your return on investments.
Granularity
When evaluating business results and planning further steps, there’s an important principle for you to keep in mind: granularity. Everytime you review a product, consider looking at it from various perspectives. You can check your products’ performance according to categories, brands, suppliers, or all of these in combination! When it comes to different segments of product analytics in particular, you should try to get as granular as possible with your data. So, why not combine more segments when checking your revenue, margins, AOV, number of orders and sold products? We aim to give business owners the opportunity to go one deeper when it comes to putting their data into practice and acquiring insights that will help them optimize their campaign and sales strategies.
For Advanced Statistics, there are many ways to organize your data and make it work for you, . A big part of this is the ability to easily customize the segments and metrics you want to track so you can set up a chart to suit your needs. You can also choose a combination of metrics (revenue, margin, number of products sold, etc.) for selected segments, depending on what you are interested in. Below are several examples of what these combinations might look like.
| Tips & Tricks |
Products + Variants (+ number of products sold)
Let’s take a closer look at a random product: in this case, a shirt with cuddling pandas. What types, sizes, colours, styles, materials are being sold? What if the female version, size M, colour white, with short sleeves, made of cotton is your top product while other variants of the same product have never been sold? (E.g.: male version, size M, colour pink, with long sleeves, made of cotton.)
Products + Categories (+ revenue + number of products sold + discount)
Let’s use seasonal categories to give you an example: a category “summer beach apparel” isn’t performing as planned according to your marketing campaigns. Investigate the product’s details before you start discounting the whole category and you may discover that there’s one particular product within this category that sells like hot cakes! Also, you can set up the discount option and check how it affects your sales.
Variants + Categories (+ average gross margin per product)
By combining the two granular approaches described above, you will be able to uncover not only which products are flying off the shelves and which are collecting dust within a category, but also which particular variants are following the same pattern.
Products + Variants + Brands (+ revenue + number of products sold)
For example, let’s say that Nike is the most important of your brands as it’s very popular and generates the majority of your revenue. When you look at your stock, you find out you lack some Nike apparel while you seem to be oversupplied with other products of the same brand. Then you should turn to your analytics — what if it is just shoes, hoodies and T-shirts that sells? Why fill your stock with irrelevant Nike items like caps, socks, pants, and jackets since these aren’t in demand at all?
Products + Suppliers (+ number of products sold + margin)
You may find that even though you have a great relationship with a supplier, a solid contract with them, and have experienced quality service, that the products they supply you with only end up catching dust in your warehouse — and even worse, you can’t get rid of them! Maybe it’s the right time to consider going with a new supplier.
Products + Brands + Suppliers (+ number of products sold + orders)
Maybe you have already have a supplier who you’re hoping to drop because they’re products have proved to be difficult to sell. However, when you check all the products under their brand, you may find some of them do generate revenue. It might help to simply revisit the conditions of your contract so that you can fill your stock with those pieces that are in demand.
This way you can mix-and-match among several segments, and it opens up a variety of possibilities. A granular analysis will clearly show you all the interconnections that are not as obvious at first glance and help you truly understand a product’s performance. It can also reveal which products are selling and which aren’t as popular within segments in your store — be it a variant, brand, category, or supplier — or all of these segments at once! So, check your advanced product statistics to review your results from last month and take advantage of those hidden correlations so you can ensure you have your stock filled with products that are in demand.
We hope you enjoyed reading these articles as much as we enjoyed researching and sharing these data with you. We’ll be releasing a complete eBook version of Out of the Jungle: Product series for you to download soon :) If you’re interested, shoot us an email!
