So, you run an e-commerce business and you are obviously looking to increase your sales. Like any other form of business, after having all your products listed and displayed, you will be waiting for customers to visit your site and perhaps purchase something.
Not just about spending
When you start garnering sales, it seems that you are doing something right but this usually does not last forever. However, business owners tend to go on a knee-jerk reaction when sales do not come in. As a result, you start to spend more on advertising and in some cases, make wholesale changes. If this continues, you could run into a high-risk chance of closing down. That is one of the biggest reasons why businesses fail. It has been found that more than almost 50% of SMEs fail in the first year in Malaysia.
What is causing the failure?
You can avoid falling into the same mistakes that many of those companies did if you put your business on the right path. Analytics is where you can measure the statistics on your site so that you identify areas that can be improved. This is more crucial if your business is online. Only by understanding what your customers do and where they spend their time most can you target them better and offer what they are looking for. Analytics can help you convert visits to sales by:
- Understanding your sales performance – Your business is not all about pricing or external factors. It is always the behavior of the customers. Analytics gives you a clear picture of this including time-spent and percentage of terminate at checkout.
- Modifying your site for better customer experience – Analytics gives you the idea of what to change and how to make your site more attractive. Areas with the highest staying power can be further enhanced and the least visited areas can be removed.
- Designing a better marketing plan – With analytics, you can then derive a marketing plan which is more feasible and actionable.
What you should know in analytics
Google Analytics is the best and most affordable option for tracking and measuring your site. To do this, you need to ensure that your store has added the Google Analytics tracking code. Take note of how Google Analytics uses features like Acquisitions, Behavior and Conversions in the Reporting section. Then, you will need to set goals for your store. This is the part where you track each time a visitor completes a purchase.
- Creating a new goal – This is the first thing you need to do.
- Naming the goal – You can name the goal to describe what action you want it to be like ‘Complete an order’.
- Goal Details – This is the part where you conclude the deal. It is used to ensure that the final step is to capture. You can design this to be a thank you page or the one that says ‘Your order is now ready to pack’.
- Verifying the goal – This is the final step in the setup where you need to ensure that your URL destination is correct.
Tip: Use Google Analytics Dashboard to view activities in your site.
