Collecting customer data and generating reports is one thing, but are you sure you’re using it effectively? Here are a few metrics worth keeping an eye out for when obtaining that data, as well as our top tips for maximising your data.
Dwell time
This is how much time people are spending on your site, as well as which pages they spend the most time on. Generally, the longer the dwell time, the more likely a customer is to make a purchase.
Use your knowledge of your customers to give them personalised recommendations. If you can give them suggestions based (for example) on the pages they’ve spent the most time on, then you’re likely to increase dwell time even further.
Make sure you’re offering a well-designed eCommerce website too - no customer enjoys navigating a confusing website or looking at an unattractive design.
Type of purchases
What kind of people are buying what products? This indicates your customers’ demographics and interests which you can use to build your buyer persona knowledge. And the better you know your customers, the easier it will be to offer them the products/services and experiences they want and boost sales.
Alter your product information to ensure that your messaging resonates with your desired demographic. If you can personalise your offerings, then you will increase the likelihood of a sale.
Number of returning customers
Your customers’ loyalty indicates how high your customer satisfaction is. A happy and fulfilled customer makes for a loyal one, so track brand loyalty by looking at customer purchases.
Furthermore, be intentional about making sure your customers always receive the same quality of service or better. If you’re aware of what they bought from you in the past, then you can give them personalised suggestions to entice them into making more purchases.
Heat maps
Heat maps highlight how your customers are navigating your website. You can see what pages they visited and in what order. This can help you to make your website as straight forward and easy-to-use as possible.
Review the steps your customers take to get to specific actions on your website. Think about how you can make this easier for them, such as having fewer steps between putting items in a basket and purchasing.
Number of active users
Knowing how many users visit your website and at what time can give you a better insight into their preferences. This allows you to tailor your online content based on popular times of the day.
Map the number of users into particular demographics to gain more insight into your customers’ preferences. When you find a correlation between demographic and time of day, you can offer even more specific content. To boost your sales further, combine this with other insights such as whether they’re a returning customer, what their past purchases were and search history. This means you can offer even more personalised content.
Search terms used
Awareness of what words and phrases your customers are looking for can really help you to stay on track with brand messaging and make sure your products are seen by the right people at the right time.
Make sure all your product information – right from product names to image alt text – is SEO-optimised. Insert a relevant keyword where you can, so long as it’s natural and isn’t shoved in just for the sake of it.
Types of consumed content
Finally, what kind of content do your customers consume? Knowing this can be invaluable when creating your content strategy.
Try to get to know your customers and understand what they actually want to see. Build your future content on this because you want to base your content strategy on the reliable data you’ve just sourced rather than a hunch.
Successful marketing relies on customer relationships
Creating successful marketing campaigns relies on building quality relationships with your customers. However, you can only do this really effectively once you’ve got to know them. Collecting data from them is the best way to this. Below is a summary of each metric and how to maximise its data (in case you missed something):
- Dwell time – personalise recommendations and build an attractive eCommerce site
- Type of purchase – alter product information to resonate with desire demographic
- Returning customers – provide consistent service and quality
- Heat maps – make your web pages more user-friendly
- Active users – find a correlation between time of day and demographic and use it to make personalised offers
- Search terms – ensure product information is correct for maximising SEO
- Consumed content – build future marketing campaigns off what content your customers consume most
Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to create attractive marketing campaigns to boost your business.
However, collecting product data is only one aspect of personalising your marketing. Do you want to know how to put this personalisation into your eCommerce strategy? And discover how technology can help?
To find out more, download our free guide down below.
