In today’s fast-paced world of smart technology and online shopping, it’s impossible to make strategic business decisions without relying on data. In the digital space, analytics plays a crucial role in prioritizing tasks, estimating the ROI of every action, and evaluating the effectiveness of campaigns.
Here are just 5 reasons to invest in analytics for your business.
Reason #1: Population Share
Roughly 54% of the world's population is online. That’s billions of consumers. In just a single second in the online sphere, there are 55,000 Google searches, 2,500,000 emails sent and 125,000 Youtube videos viewed (Source).
Online businesses strive to use this data to market more effectively to consumers, pinpoint their market, and move their product more effectively to maximize returns. The tools they use for analyzing this immense amount of data are still maturing, attempting to catch up to the amount of traffic that exists in the online sphere. The time is ripe for proper investment into data analytics; many milestones in this field have yet to be claimed.
Reason #2: A Growing Field
Online analytics is not a shrinking market, but quite the opposite. The number of users on the internet has grown by 19% over the last two years alone (Source). These trillions of consumers share information, buy products, and consume media at a ridiculous pace that is only increasing.
Analytics as an industry will become increasingly more important in the future, as companies struggle to find tools to help them discern who their customer is and what they desire.
Reason #3: Businesses Need the Help
Studies show that a large portion of online businesses fail to use the immense amount of data they’ve collected effectively, or that they fail to collect and store it at all. These companies are actively searching for solutions to these problems from third-party analytics tools.
With a strong need for insights and understanding, it’s no surprise to see increasing investment in this field across the market spectrum.
Reason #4: Commerce Comes in Many Sizes
Data and analytics are no longer a nice-to-haves, they're must-haves. And not only for large brands but for tech startups, small businesses, family operations and even solo endeavors using platforms such as Squarespace to field their products on the online market.
The market for analytics is massive, and investment in the right tool could mean an explosion of useful data across many markets.
Reason #5: Improving the Consumer Experience
Online marketing is a two-way street. Analytics not only improve business practices and make marketing more effective but shape the way consumers experience the online retail world as well. Data flows not only from consumer to retailer, but also back from retailer to consumer, with tailored ads and marketing.
Oftentimes, data can seem confusing and difficult to understand in its raw form. Working in the eCommerce world also means that the amount of data pouring in can be difficult to manage, which is often the reason why decision makers choose to go with their gut rather than rely on the numbers. To avoid this, we’d recommend checking out our Golden Rule of eCommerce analytics for some best practices!
