Big Data And E-Commerce: Making The Most Of New Insights

Featured article by Dheeraj Juneja, CEO and Founder of Loginworks Softwares

The e-commerce market is growing, averaging a 250-percent increase per year. However, just 8 percent of all product page traffic converts to sales — in other words, it’s still a challenge for retailers to move past the research stage and convince users to “buy now.” One way to improve e-commerce is through the use of big data. Here’s a look at how you can leverage new insights to boost your bottom line.

Personalization

Online consumers want to know that their business is valuable to your company. This means more than the occasional discount coupon or targeted email — if they contact representatives, there’s an expectation that transaction histories and previous complaints are common knowledge. Big data can help empower this kind of surface personalization by collecting and integrating this information with CRM and other forward-facing systems, but this is just the first step. For example, online marketplace Etsy is now using big data to personalize the buyer shopping experience, subtly curating products to help shoppers find what they’re looking for more quickly. Senior data engineer Chris Bohn puts it simply: “Too much choice is sometimes no choice.” By personalizing the experience, companies can increase total sales.

Pricing

Static pricing is no longer an option if you want to stay competitive. What was a fair price a week ago may suddenly be unreasonable if other companies in your market niche drop their cost on a specific item. Big data fills a critical role here by drawing from multiple sources — such as competitor pricing, regional preferences, sales and customer actions — to zero in on the right price for the person and product being sold. By using data to dynamically adjust prices in response to emerging market conditions, you can establish a reputation for best-in-class value.

Prediction

With the e-commerce market evolving, it’s crucial for your company to understand not just current sentiment, but to have some idea of the trends and products that will drive buyers in a week, a month or even a year. This is one of big data’s key strengths, the ability to aggregate disparate information and provide the basis for long-term decision-making. By analyzing both current and past purchase histories in combination with social data and customer service interactions, it’s possible for big data solutions to provide a glimpse into the future of your e-commerce effort and help you prepare for the next stage of its development. This might include mobile-enabled purchases, live chat or even a redesign of your web presence.

Protection

Big data can also help protect existing assets. For example, big data can be used to improve supply chain management by keeping track of critical information — such as stock amounts, warehousing, transportation, shipping and returns — in real time. This gives you an accurate, continuously updated view of your supply chain and helps prevent overstocking or underspending. Big data solutions can also be configured to detect internal company fraud such as missing inventory, unexpected overages or false returns. While it’s important to grow your brand through better customer service, it’s just as critical to ensure you’re not losing money on the back end.

Big data comes with big benefits for e-commerce: Personalization, pricing, prediction and protection can both improve your sales and protect your assets.

Author Bio

Dheeraj Juneja is CEO and Founder of Loginworks Softwares, which specializes in Data as a Service (DaaS) for big data needs. Some of Loginworks Softwares’ services include data mining, web scraping and e-commerce data. Juneja has more than 16 years of experience in information technology. Prior to Loginworks, Juneja was involved in core projects for distinguished IT companies Dell Services (previously Perot Systems), eMobilo and Value Research Online. Connect with Juneja on LinkedIn.