E-Commerce Retailer and How to Use Web Analytics

I worked with Dr. Amen and his team for a short time, this year, and learned a lot from the e-commerce team about the tools they used to monitor and build traffic and sales for Dr. Amen’s supplement brand, Brain MD.

I don’t know if this is the case for every e-commerce brand, but having interviewed with a couple and having insights into Bran MD’s shop, it appears that the company needs several tools to gather the full picture of what is happening on their site.

For example, Magento is a software tool that enable the shopping cart experience on a website. This tool allows the company to understand the customer lifetime value, to calculate ROI and to build highly-targeted email lists based on purchasing behavior. While this is definitely valuable information, there is more to the picture of web analytics needed to run an effective e-commerce site.

Enter: Shopify, which allows the company to track abandoned-cart sales and allows you to accept credit cards for transactions. Some would argue that Shopify is enough for e-commerce, but our team seemed to need both to get the full picture and to offer the full experience.

Listrak is also a player in e-commerce, this was used to create the email series/campaigns needed once a customer is in the funnel. For example, with Listrak, you have the ability to set up welcome series emails, nurturing emails for those who don’t purchase on the first visit and follow up/promotional emails to those who become repeat customers. It also serves as the platform for thank you emails and other correspondence with customers, such as an announcement for a discontinued item, etc.

With all of these tools in place the company is able to track the full customer journey – from entry to purchase, to subsequent purchases and so-on. BrainMD created a monthly subscription service and was able to utilize the data from Magento and Shopify to determine the average customer order, and to make daily saies projections and goals.

The team was also able to utilize Listrak and Shopify to follow up with those who abandoned their cart and those who became repeat customers. They had highly-targeted messaging depending on the shopping behavior of each client and ran promotions and special correspondence when appropriate.

On page SEO consisted of product descriptions, customer reviews and FAQ articles that helped them utilize keywords that they researched and determined to be included in a customer’s search for multi-vitamins and other supplements.

BrainMD did not have any links to reputable companies, however they do offer an affiliate program and part of an affiliate agreement includes placing their link back to our page from their site. Having read Fleischner’s recommendation that it’s better to have fewer quality links rather than several lower-ranked pages linked, I see now that I don’t believe this tactic was actually managed as well as it could have been.

BrainMD does utilize social posting/sharing and You Tube Videos to also increase their search-ability, so they are covering off on the opportunities that have evolved over time. In addition, I know they were working on placing “Guides” that would include keywords and phrases that should also boost their rankings.

Switching gears, I interviewed for a Digital Marketing job at Sugarfina and learned that they are also on Magento and they also have various supporting software (similar to Shopify, etc.) to create their universe of digital/web analytics.

In addition, Sugarfina offers their product at stores like Bergdorf-Goodman, Nordstrom and Bristol Farms. These “affiliates” are all linked via their “locations” page which is lifting their SEO and helps them maintain their “Artisan-Boutique” brand equity via organic SEO. In their first 5 years of business, they have relied on organic see and 95% of their traffic is from that channel. They are just now exploring paid and other digital opportunitites because they have been able to build the brand from strong SEO tactics.

Optimizing SEO is an ongoing strategy that needs to be managed. Some companies think they can set-it and forget it, however, any thriving e-commerce shop is interested in all levels of data so they can use it to create better traffic that turns into more qualified leads and ultimately, more sales.

It is important to know what marketing activities are working and to be able to move quickly on trends with your products, segment and customers. Web Analytics are essential for any e-commerce site. It would be a true waste of time and resources to continue to pursue site visitors who have no intention of purchasing. Knowing your data and looking at it from various angles will help you stretch your dollar, investing it more wisely into servicing people who are your true custoemrs.

References

BrainMD Health | Dr. Daniel Amen's Brain Supplements. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.brainmdhealth.com/

Ecommerce Software - Best Ecommerce Platform Made for You - Free Trial. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.shopify.com/

Fleischner, M. H. (2014). SEO made simple: Strategies for dominating the world's largest search engines - Google, Yahoo!, and BING.

An Introduction to Analytics for Ecommerce Websites. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/intro-to-ecommerce-analytics/

Magento Business Intelligence | Magento. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://magento.com/content/Magento_Business_Intelligence?ls=Advertisement&lsdet=ao+Google+-+BID&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=magento1+%7C+ao+-+na+-+brand&utm_term=%2Bmagento+%2Banalytics&utm_content=brand+-+magento+business+intelligence+-+analytics&gclid=CjwKCAjw0qLOBRBUEiwAMG5xMKdpSus3SnrURjV0CJWCzAjS64SNOvLUSA-gDWweiPJuoD2YU0Kt1RoCYMIQAvD_BwE

Sugarfina | A Luxury Candy Boutique. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.sugarfina.com/