For the last couple of years, Big Data has been a buzzword in basically every industry, and seeing how much actionable data the Internet creates on a daily basis, its not hard to see why. In the last five years, the overall global population of internet users has grown by around 60% – from 2.2 billion in 2011 to 3.5 billion users at the moment according to data gathered by Internet Live Stats. Today, Big Data is being used across sectors, but there has be an increasing emphasis on Big Data analytics in eCommerce in a recent few years.
When it comes to eCommerce, data usually falls under two distinctive categories structured and unstructured data. The first is regular data they have been able to catch easily, like a customers name, address, age and preferences. Unstructured data, such as tweets, likes and videos, is much more valuable. For example, according to Harvard Business Review, Walmart collects roughly 2.5 petabytes of unstructured data every hour from its customer transactions. But one of the biggest challenges eCommerce businesses face today is how to take all of that data, analyze it and gain meaningful insights.
Leveraging Big Data
Sometimes, it takes parallel software running on hundreds of servers just to handle Big Data; however, BDA (Big Data Analysis) isnt just there for large companies anymore. The truth is, many small businesses are already using it to drive the success of their business.
Monitor Your Business More Closely
With solid data processors, such as Hadoop-based EMR, companies can track their own income, expenses and HR down to the last detail. This can help you improve your archiving, and allow you to make more fact-based decisions. For instance, at one point, UPS installed sensors in more than 46,000 vehicles, which allowed them to keep track of speed and direction at any given moment. This allowed them to cut 85 million miles off of daily routs and save more than 8.4 million gallons of fuel.
See How People Are Accessing Your Site
Two years ago, mobile surpassed fixed Internet access, and today, according to the latest KPCB mobile technology report, people spend significantly more time on mobile devices, compared to desktop (51% vs. 42%). With that in mind, it is critical to understand that a lot of consumers are using smartphones and tablets to access your site. And that is why you need to analyze conversion funnels and bounce rates by device for your key conversion pages. This will highlight different issues, such as page loading times and different layout problems, and help you properly optimize your site for different devices.
Improve Supply Chain Management
As an eCommerce company, you are surly dealing with a lot of moving parts logistics, vendors, warehousing and delivery just to name a few. With the help of Big Data, companies are now able to build efficient systems, using analytics to manage the supply process. Some are even using the Internet of Things to gather and communicate data on a wide range of conditions, and redefine the supply chain intelligence. Whats more, prominent 3PL companies, like Invenco, are also using data to improve logistics operations, process quality and integration across the supply chain. In fact, according to the latest 3PL Study report, 86% of 3PLs believe that effective use of Big Data will become a core competency of their business.
Make Better Pricing Decisions
Both differentiating pricing strategies at the product level and optimizing pricing using data have become achievable in the last couple of years. Research from the management consulting firm, McKinsey & Co. has revealed that more than 30% of the hundreds of pricing decisions businesses make every year fail to deliver the best possible price. However, Big Data can help you create accurate customer profiles, which can reveal things like the exact price-point that youd have to offer the customer to persuade them to return and make another purchase.
Final Thoughts
While there are many options out there, if you want to improve your business in the long run, Big Data is definitely worth your time. According to a recent MGI study, retailers using Big Data can potentially increase their operation margin by up to 60%. Also, it always helps to see how large corporations are going about things, and then take inspiration from their unique approaches. For example, you can read Fast Companys case study on Amazons fascinating relationship with the concept of Big Data.
Big data has a wide range of interesting applications even beyond what you thought was possible. Some analysts, for instance, think that even the elections can be decided by analyzing large volumes of data. All in all, it is way easier to learn from the past than ever before, and lets face it Big Data is the future, so it would be wise to start adopting it as soon as possible.
