Ecommerce analytics: what it is and what metrics to measure

Surely you have found that you have dozens of new followers on your social networks, but no recent orders on your website commerce inspector. That is why today we will learn how analytics for ecommerce will help you to know what you really need to monitor to take your business to the next level.

Although with the arrival of new followers, new sales will be generated in the future, it is also important to pay special attention to review the metrics that will bring us the greatest benefits.

Forget about vanity metrics. They are interesting, but they are not relevant, they are actually statistics. The right ecommerce analytics will tell you if you are on the right track.

What is analytics for ecommerce?

Ecommerce analytics is the process of gathering and interpreting information from all areas that affect an online store to understand consumption patterns.

These trends often include customer behavior, demand, purchases, and engagement, and allow companies to make data-driven decisions to improve marketing, sales, and revenue strategies.

Analytics uses metrics that quantify various activities throughout a customer’s online shopping journey, from brand discovery to repeat purchase. By studying these areas, companies can improve retention rates and customer satisfaction.

Every company must know in depth what its target audience wants. The best way to do this is to collect information about the consumer that describes their pain points and preferences.

However, online retailers need a sophisticated analytics process to translate the data collected. Otherwise, the company is left with vast volumes of raw, incomprehensible data.

Importance of analytics for ecommerce

There is a fundamental idea that you must understand before you start reviewing the data of your web page:

Data alone, no matter how comprehensive or varied, is useless. The key is knowing how to extract real information from them.

Here’s an example: imagine you notice that the bounce rate for different browsers is 60%. However, one of them, say Firefox, has 91%.

The figure by itself means nothing, but it certainly hides a very important detail: it is possible that there is a design and usability problem in Firefox that is causing visitors to bounce.

The job of web analytics is to observe what is hidden behind that information to notice the problems to be solved or the positive aspects to be improved. Once you understand all of this, we can move on to the types of metrics to track and avoid.

How to choose metrics for a better analysis of your ecommerce

You can’t have too much of a good thing; It’s normal to get excited when you see Facebook or Twitter likes and retweets.

The problem is when we focus all the analysis on those metrics that mean nothing more than a pat on the back. This type of metric is known as a vanity metric in the ecommerce field. These are some examples:

• Number of Twitter followers.
• Number of “likes” on Facebook
• Number of visits to your website.
• Number of clicks on the description of your products.

These social media metrics look amazing on paper, but they don’t add any value to your ecommerce analytics. What is the use of knowing the number of visits to the store, if we do not know where they come from or the percentage that end up buying?

On the other hand, there are metrics that really interest us. The actionable metric calls because:

• They help us make decisions.
• They have a clear cause-effect relationship.
• We have influence over the cause.
• They are relevant to our business.

We already know that “vanity metrics” are dangerous and that what we really want to analyze is the information that gives us real value. So let’s find out what those metrics are.