5 Web Analytics Solutions for eCommerce Websites

Featured blog by Jack Dson, Independent Author

Why Data Analytics is Important for eCommerce Websites?

Data analytics can be used to learn a wealth of information about the potential customers visiting your eCommerce website. By analyzing the customer behavior and tracking their activities, eCommerce ventures can not only gather valuable insights, but also utilize the findings to improve the user engagement, service quality, decision making process and ultimately, the sales figures. Whether you are looking for ways to boost your sales, generate more leads or enhance your brand recognition, analytics is the way forward. To put it simply, you can use web analytics for effectively measuring, collecting, analyzing and reporting the on-site activities of your visitors with the objective of optimizing the success of your eCommerce website.

Picking the Right Analytics Tool

With so many web analytics solutions available in the market, it can get confusing for you to figure out which would work best for your business. While some are open-source tools, others come with a price tag. Quite a few are very easy to setup, while some of the alternatives provide you with better reporting interface. It is a daunting task to evaluate all the options and arrive at a meaningful conclusion.

To make the job easier for you, we are going to introduce you to 5 most comprehensive web analytics solutions that sufficiently cater to the requirements of eCommerce businesses.

1. IBM Digital Analytics (CoreMetrics)

Formerly known as IBM CoreMatrics, IBM Digital Analytics solution has all it takes to become the leader in the web analytics market for eCommerce and other online ventures. A feature-reach, highly customizable and versatile solution that can be easily integrated with almost all website development suites, many experts consider IBM Digital Analytics as the best retail analytics platform today. The reporting interface is designed conveniently and the intuitive dashboard gives visibility to all the metrics relevant to a particular product. It is an out-of-the-box solution that can provide you every detail on product engagement and conversion, allowing business owners to get real-time insights and make effective marketing decisions.

Apart from being an analytics tool, IBM Digital Analytics comes with a lot of pre-integrated, add-on features that can aid the growth of your online business. For example, Digital Recommendation add-on, which is basically a dynamic product recommendation engine, utilizes the behavioral data of users and recommend them relevant products. It can significantly boost sales and provide an excellent ROI when used properly.

2. Adobe SiteCatalyst

Adobe SiteCatalyst is another powerful web analytics tool primarily used by large eCommerce retailers. Rather than just analyzing the data, it helps you to take immediate actions with automated real-time decision-making feature. The reporting interface allows you to organize and visualize any data in quick-reference dashboards and drill down the data points for deeper insights. The graphic visualizer is a great addition that can be of great help to non-tech savvy users. Considering the extensive features bundled with the tool, the slightly higher price tag is well justified.

On the flip-side, it does require a great deal of knowledge to do the initial setup properly. So unless you have an experience hand to help you out with the configuration part, you may end up in a messy situation and a significant financial burden.

3. KISSmetrics

If you are looking for a comprehensive eCommerce analytics solution that can help you improve customer engagement and retention rate, then KISSmetrics should be your ideal bet. The data visualizer interface with color coded graphical representation makes it easy to figure out the sales, trends and forecasts for specific products and product categories. Apart from providing you analytical insights, the tool also comes with add-on features to cater to the marketing of your online store.

4. Google Analytics

Undoubtedly the most widely used web analytics tool, Analytics by Google can be an equally impressive solution for the online entrepreneurs and internet marketers. The distinct advantage of using Google Analytics is from the financial perspective. The solution offers many of the key features offered by the enterprise-level solutions, but for free of cost.

Integrating Analytics with your online store is as simple as inserting a code snippet to your website’s template file. Also the availability of excellent tutorials and user manuals make it really easy to master the art of data analysis using Google Analytics. Although it does not necessarily include the level of support and training as provided by the enterprise solutions, learning to use the tool and finding the key behavioral insights from the user data is not too difficult.

5. WebTrends

Some of the most admired eCommerce businesses make use of WebTrends Analytics solution. It is one of the original premium web analytics tool which has been in the market for long and has built a loyal base of users over the years. Not only for eCommerce businesses, WebTrends is a clear leader when it comes to comprehensive digital marketing intelligence with a strong focus on social media engagements.

Final Thoughts:

Starting a new blog and measuring the reader engagements can be a straightforward task – thanks to Google Analytics, but when it comes to eCommerce websites, the scope of data analytics and its implications are much more complex. A comprehensive data analytics solution can provide accurate sales trends, product-specific forecasts, real-time action items and thorough insights for you to optimize the performance of your online business, eventually attainin1g greater success.