E-commerce grows rapidly and creates a lot of data. Without processing, this information is useless. Big Data analytics is an important instrument that allows solving many issues of the industry and provides a lot of different benefits. But are there any disadvantages? What is the role of Big Data in e-commerce? What company is the greatest Big Data analytics vendor? Let’s discuss.
Use of Big Data in e-commerce to solve common problems
Over the last several years, income from the goods sold via the Internet has doubled. For example, more than 300 million active users visited Amazon in 2015, but only in September 2017, there were 183 million people. We can see the same processes on such websites like eBay, PayPal, etc. As a result, users create a huge amount of data. The process is simple: the more users are on the websites, the more information they create. So, here it’s necessary to make a decision. Either you ignore this issue or use all the data to advance your business approach. So, if you choose the second variant, there are some pros of Big Data in the e-commerce sphere:
- Trend predictions. Special systems pull data from all social media and browsers and, as a result, they are able to define main trends and hypes. This is how to turn Big Data into e-commerce. It’s easy to predict the tendencies and preferences of the public. Moreover, it’s possible to receive information about future trends if you follow marketing companies and departments.
- Price formation. The retail margin forms your revenue. You cannot raise prices high because your clients will move to your competitors. E-commerce Big Data tools are able to collect and analyze the prices of one product. It also follows the demand for a product and suggests you the best price.
- Demand forecast. Storage expenses are able to cause damage to your budget. You can sell a lot of products during such events like holidays, festivals, etc. An e-commerce application using Big Data is able to consider all these factors and provide you with the freshest demand forecast.
- Personalized approach. Let’s consider how browsers work. They memorize’ your requests and, after that, provide you with the products you want. So, it’s possible for you to track the requests and preferences of your potential clients and then fill a store with certain products. So, now you are able to increase revenue.
- Service improvement. Do you know that almost 90% of clients refuse to work with a company if they face poor service? It’s possible to use Big Data in e-commerce to collect personal information about customers, use their social pages or browser history. As a result, you get an opportunity to give your clients improved services.
- Sales increase. Business needs growing. Big Data is able to help and, for instance, solve the problem of shopping cart abandonment. Almost 70% of all shopping carts are abandoned before a purchase, so Big Data can analyze the reasons and, after that, you are able to consider them.
Barriers to Big Data adoption
It all sounds perfect but don’t become very optimistic. There are some barriers you can stumble over. It’s necessary to ensure that you know how to manage them before you start using Big Data analytics in e-commerce. Let’s look through the list of the most widespread threats.
- Inflated expectations. It’s important to remember that the system is not able to solve the problems. It only provides you with the information, and you decide how to use it.
- Lack of knowledge. There are a lot of issues to learn. For example, how to ask the right questions. Moreover, you need to process the information from BD analysis. The system does not define variables, so from time to time, the results can be ridiculous.
- Security issues. It’s the main issue in Big Data. BD knows everything about everybody, so a lot of personal information can be used against your clients. So, it is vital to think about the protection of your users.
- Analytics underestimation. The most significant part of Big Data is the results that you get, so invest in analytics tools more than in gathering ones.
- Poor equipment. The data has to be stored somewhere and processed somehow, so large computational power is required. Luckily, modern Big Data analysis vendors can offer a wide range of services, e.g. data gathering, storing, etc.
Big Data system is complex, so if you don’t have any technical knowledge, it’s better to look through web development services and find the company that will help you. There are a lot of advantages that can be received if you use Big Data cleverly and slowly.
Big Data e-commerce software solutions
Nowadays there are many systems, so you need to choose. Some platforms offer solutions for novices and some for professionals. Some systems can fit both variants. It’s high time to discuss some of them.
- Dundas BI. It’s a company that provides you with a web-based dashboard. This dashboard is absolutely customizable. So, you can choose tools, build your own reports, etc. Moreover, the tool can be linked or integrated with other instruments. Dundas BI provides flexible prices.
- Pentaho. It’s a professional e-commerce Big Data platform that can provide you with BD analytics, visualization, etc. Pentaho can work with different data from diverse resources and process it into a visual analysis. One of the benefits is that you get a free trial period, so you can decide if you need this platform or not.
- Oracle Advanced Analytics. Oracle company provides many platforms for data analysis. Oracle R Enterprise and Oracle Data Mining are the main ones and work with Oracle Databases. This company provides a lot of great features such as market predictions, goods recommendations, etc. By the way, Oracle provides some tools for developers that allow extending the product functionality. However, it’s better to hire a developer who can modify the platform according to the needs of your company.
- Cloudera. Using this system requires some technical knowledge. Cloudera cooperates with the Hadoop platform, an open-source framework for data processing tasks. The company claims that this system is highly-secured and very good for your Big Data analysis.
- Vertica. It’s possible to use this platform only for the application of Big Data in e-commerce. Vertica is a simple, fast and open platform. It offers three products. For example, Vertica Enterprise is an analytical database with the administration and management tools. This platform can give you the high-performance information analytics of an enterprise-class. Moreover, it also has a great number of additional features and provides you with a free trial period.
Big Data in e-commerce the industry is a powerful tool. It gives an opportunity to see the whole picture, understand the cause-and-effect relationship, predict trends, and use all this information to increase revenue. As you can see, there are some drawbacks and barriers to adoption. On the other hand, it can bring a lot of profits if only you understand how to use Big Data systems. It is important to choose the tool fitting the needs of your company and not to rush into the introduction process.