Some of the key drivers will be the increasing disposable income that has led to an improving purchasing power of people. The convenience of ordering products online on e-commerce platforms and retail stores will further stimulate market growth.

To meet this growing demand and understand its customers better, e-commerce businesses are increasingly investing in advanced business intelligence and analysis tools. This can provide insights into which products are moving fast, in which markets and how to improve their operations to service the customers better, maximize profits and gain a competitive edge.

3 Focus Areas

E-commerce analytics falls into three main areas:

• Data Visualization and Descriptive Analytics: Dashboards created using historical data of customer behaviour and sales records provide snapshots of all key metrics for improved decision making
• Predictive Analytics: Using churn prediction, market-basket analysis and the like, e-commerce marketplaces can predict the demand for products and design promotions to cross-sell and upsell for improving sales and customer engagement
• Cognitive Analytics: Video and images are analysed for product classification based on predefined parameters to quickly upload new products and avoid errors and time delays associated with manual intervention

Challenges and Benefits

For e-commerce platforms and online stores of retail outlets, an understanding of which products are moving, where their customers are coming from and what their customers are saying are very important.

When a product is performing well, they can boost it further by creating suitable marketing collaterals and also pair it with likely related products to increase the overall sales and growth.

A product which is not performing well will need equal efforts to promote and special offers and discounts to increase its visibility can be designed to improve its sales.

Based on geographies, retail businesses can also plan their campaigns for their stores in those locations and step up promotions for those geographies where they have a presence but not as many footfalls.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence can be used for cross-selling and upselling of related products. For example, when someone is purchasing a mobile, relevant accessories can be displayed to encourage customers to purchase a mobile case or headphones, and so on. When a customer purchases a particular model, they can be tempted with a higher model with better and more features.

Analytics can also be used to understand conversion rates from footfall to sales and the insights used to improve the conversions. Reviews, both positive and negative, are a storehouse of information on what works and what doesn’t.

Negative Review Analytics helps to build the product line with quality to meet customer expectations. Sentiment analysis allows the e-commerce players to build on their strengths, rectify their weaknesses and retain the unsatisfied customer.

For instance, in an e-commerce site, a particular bag was very popular but soon, negative feedback started pouring in. On analysis, it was discovered that the bag was still good but a flap that was added as a design element was made of a different material that did not last long as expected. This is valuable input for the e-commerce marketplace as well as the manufacturers to improve.

Competitor analysis can also be used to devise marketing and, more importantly, pricing strategies to improve the edge over business rivals. Marketplaces and FMCG can especially benefit from this.

Use Cases

Indium used sentiment analysis for a sports retailer where the reviews were analysed to understand customer perception and feedback of the products. Indium’s proprietary data extraction tool, Tex.Ai enabled extracting key phrases to gain insights on customer views. This helped the sports retailer improve on its design and customer service.

For an e-commerce aggregator, Indium used teX.Ai to automate product classification.

Chats with customers, either on chatbot or by a customer executive over the phone can be another rich source of insight into customer satisfaction levels. Using data extraction, the discussion can be analysed for what the customer needs, how it was responded to and if it had been concluded to satisfactorily. This is crucial in building customer loyalty and training the executives and the chatbots to ensure there is a closure.

Analytics can also be used for resource optimisation to reduce the waiting time of customers trying to reach a representative.

Indium Advantage

Indium Software, in its more than two decades of existence, has been providing holistic solutions on cutting edge technologies. It has carefully built a team that is a judicious mix of domain and technology experts.

Our e-commerce team can set up and run a marketplace from the ground up using the latest technologies including in-build analytics. It can also build solutions for analytics on existing platforms using machine learning and artificial intelligence. Strong solution architects, subject matter experts and expertise in analytics make Indium an ideal partner for e-commerce platforms and retail brands seeking to leverage the World Wide Web.

The post Analytics in E-commerce and Indium’s Expertise appeared first on Indium.

Sales through traditional retail channels had plummeted. Yet, his e-commerce channels – which were not his prime focus till now – were beginning to pay off. After all, his clothing brand specialized in using unique, comfortable fabric, a segment that was slated to grow with more people working from home!

The pandemic has now forced him to change his business model 180-degrees. The venture’s primary sales channel would now be e-commerce, not the other way around. He needed to execute on his Plan-B with a lot more focus.

While the company did have some online presence, the key was to embark on a full-fledged ecommerce-led transformation.

The company needed to deliver a world-class shopping experience online. It was a mid-size, fast-growing brand and a simple digital storefront wasn’t enough. It needed a flexible, customizable and scalable platform, and the product leader needed help and strategic guidance.

The clothing retailer needed enterprise-class ecommerce, complete with end-to-end solutions for data migration, secure API integration, firewalls, robust and secure billing system, SSL certification integration, and performance optimization.

In this post, we focus on highlighting key aspects that decision-makers need to look out for, as they gear up to upgrade their e-commerce presence. Of course, if you’d like the team at Indium Software to act as your partners and do the heavy lifting for you, we’re right here to help. But first, the details:

Step #1: Document your e-commerce strategy with this 10-Point Checklist

While as a product leader or founder, you may have an intuitive understanding of what you need, it helps to document the entire gameplan for e-commerce. It is crucial that you have answers to the following 10 questions:

1. Who is your target audience? Are you building a B2B or B2C business, or is it a combination of both?
2. Is it a marketplace? Is it a single-brand or a multi-brand play? Are you planning a combination of inventory and marketplace models? Or, is it going to be only one?
3. What about your business model? Are you offering subscription plans? How do you plan to use discounts?
4. What does your product mix look like? Is it highly customizable products or simple products that can be picked off the shelf or somewhere in between?
5. Finally, if you have a preferred e-commerce platform like Shopify or Magento or Spree Commerce in mind? Have you evaluated simpler options like Wix and WooCommerce? What about OpenCart?
6. Finally, if you’re looking for highly scalable e-commerce, you will need enterprise-grade products like Hybris, Websphere, Elastic Path
7. What is your UX strategy? What is your brand strategy?
8. Are you looking to have mobile apps, in addition to web-based e-commerce. In some cases, we have also noticed retailers going mobile-only or mobile-first. What’s your strategy?
9. Alright, you have now planned out everything – what about a continuous process for regular performance and security testing? What about automation of emails and promotions?
10. Finally, can you take advantage of predictive analytics or AI to gather insights on your customers to further improve your business?

Step #2: Plan out the finer nuances business side

1. You need a single unified platform to manage your entire process. This includes the front-end (where customers can browse, search and find relevant products or services), back-end inventory management, secure billing, customer data management, customer services, catalog management and order tracking all the way to delivery, to name a few key processes.

2. This platform has to be flexible and scalable; It needs to have the ability to tackle varying levels of traffic, customized workflows as per each product or category, and must be easy to integrate with other ERP or CRM systems.

3. The platform must be highly secure, complete with safe data migration, secure API integration, firewalls, robust and secure billing system and SSL certification integration.

4. The platform must enable simplified processes to help comply with all regulatory obligations.

5. Last but not least, the platform must enable easy integration with multiple digital sales channels including mobile, social media, marketplaces and emerging social selling networks.

Step #3: Plan out the finer nuances on the technology front:

On the technology front, the following features will come in very handy, especially for high-growth online retailers:

1. Enhanced scalable database
2. Easy migration features, to move from one e-commerce platform to another if needed
3. Automatic API upgrades
4. High-quality, intuitive UX & UI
5. Rapid payment processing, including lag-free checkouts
6. Robust, continuous performance and security testing
7. Modular architecture, to make it easy to customize if needed

Step #4: Continuous improvement on performance, security, data analytics and AI-based automation and insights

Finally, once you have your enterprise-grade e-commerce platform online – both on mobile and web, these are some aspects to take care of on an ongoing basis.

These help with continuous improvement of operations and act as key growth drivers for your e-commerce business. These include:

1. Performance testing and optimization to manage traffic growth
2. Digital advertising and promotions using world-class SEO, search engine marketing, social media and now emerging social-selling platforms
3. Security testing and upgrades, to make sure all key customer data and other information stays safe
4. Data analytics to drive predictive analytics, insights and building a culture of data to drive inventory and marketplace related decisions. It will also help you plan out your product mix, brand preferences, etc.
5. Using AI and NLP-based solutions to automate key processes, chatbots to engage with customers, etc.

How can Indium Software help?

At Indium Software, we’ve served retail and e-commerce customers for several years now. We’ve often stayed ahead of the curve, helping our customers navigate through the fast-changing world of e-commerce.

Specifically, we’ve three key areas of expertise and experience, that we’d like to highlight here:

1. We’ve built and maintained several high-traffic e-commerce websites. We’ve done performance and security audits, built technology capabilities to cater to spikes in traffic during holiday season sales, we’ve migrated data from one platform to another and we have taken on high-level customer data management projects.
2. We’ve built solution accelerators using three marquee ecommerce platforms – Shopify, Magento, Spree Commerce(Open source). Depending on your specific business needs, we could take your e-commerce offering live in as soon as 3-weeks, depending on your scope.
3. Over the years, we’ve served customers of all sizes – from startups to Fortune 500 firms. We’re small enough to care and big enough to deliver. We go the extra mile to deliver not only technology capabilities but also business value.
4. We’re here to build, deploy, test, improve your e-commerce platform on both mobile and web, all the way till your end-users fall in love with your online experience.
5. We understand the subtle differences between ecommerce for a variety of products. It is not a one size fits all approach, though a lot of the processes are common. You may want to set up a B2B platform, which may need additional levels of encryption and security. Where you’re selling auto parts online or want to launch a digital storefront for selling food products or household goods, we’re here to act as a key technology partner and deliver across the board. Size and stage of your e-commerce business does not matter. We’re happy to engage and deliver a solution that is apt for your current and long-term business needs.

Give us a shout, if you’d like to talk to our e-commerce experts. Visit www.indiumsoftware.com for more details.

The post Gearing up for an ecommerce-led transformation? We’re here to help appeared first on Indium.