Interesting Ways Big Data Has Changed the Face of the eCommerce Industry
Big Data is trending right now, but how does it change the eCommerce industry? Let’s understand in detail.
eCommerce is booming, and consumer’s data has become a lifeline for online stores. A huge volume of data is generated by the eCommerce industry when it comes to customer patterns and purchasing habits.
It is projected that by 2025, the digital universe of data will reach 175 zettabytes, a 61 percent increase. It includes e-commerce – tracking shoppers’ activities, their locations, web browser histories, and abandoned shopping carts.
Modern tech such as Artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and Big Data is not just for books and sci-fi movies anymore. These are now one of the most common tools used in an E-commerce site’s performance optimization.
Gartner reported that by 2020, 85% of customer communications might not require human intervention due to advancements in AI. Online businesses should have access to a large volume of data, enabling them to make better decisions about their customers, the products they recommend, and how they will plan and implement their marketing campaigns.
A great deal of success in e-commerce relies on Big Data to plan future business moves. Now before discussing how Big Data impacts eCommerce, let’s understand the meaning of Big Data Analytics.
What Stands for Big Data Analytics
Source: FinanceOnline.com
Big Data Analytics means examining a huge volume of data to identify hidden patterns, correlations, and other valuable insights. This enables online stores to make informed decisions based on data.
E-commerce companies use Big Data analytics to understand their customers better, forecast consumer behaviour patterns, and increase revenue. According to the study conducted by BARC, some benefits brands can avail using Big Data:
- Making data-driven decisions
- Improved control on business operations
- Deliver top-notch customer experience
- Reduce operational cost
- Allow customers to make secure online payments
- Supply management and logistics
The eCommerce market is skyrocketing, a source taken from Elluminatiinc.com, today, 2.15 billion people shop online, and this figure will continue to grow because customers today value comfort over anything else.
Now think from the eCommerce business owner’s point of view, how they identify preferences of these billions of customers and provide them with a personalized experience. Here Big Data comes to the rescue. eCommerce Big Data includes structured and unstructured information about customers, such as their addresses, zip codes, shopping cart contents, and more.
Now think from the eCommerce business owner’s point of view, how they identify preferences of these billions of customers and provide them with a personalized experience. (start) When it comes to serving a huge customer range especially for multi-channel selling firms, it’s hard to manage and update constantly among sales channels. This can cause great damage to keep your loyal customers. That’s why, integrating your business into a reliable tool is the best way to deal with the problem. Here, BigData and LitCommerce comes to the rescue.
Email, video, tweets, and comments in social media are unstructured eCommerce parts that can also serve as valuable sources of information. The ability to examine shopping carts or show individual content based on an IP address via a content management system is already available to online retailers, but Big Data discovery will extend their capabilities in the short term.
Big Data in eCommerce
Are you able to benefit from this? Well, Big Data lets you organize information in a pretty structured way so that you can provide a top-notch experience to customers. As a result, e-commerce business owners gain valuable insight into the choices and behaviours of their customers, resulting in increased sales and traffic.
The following are the most notable ways Big Data will affect eCommerce in the future.
Enhance Customer Service
Big Data plays an important role in delivering excellent customer service because it keeps track of your existing and new customers’ records and helps you study their preferences to boost the engagement ratio.
This process includes what your customers like, which payment method they follow, what kind of products they buy frequently, and much more. Consequently, eCommerce business owners understand the user’s mind and offer a personalized experience to drive sales and traffic.
Here you can take an example of an online streaming service, Netflix. Along with personalization, it also has implemented autoscaling support to meet evolving needs of customers.
Improve Payment Methods and Security
Basically, unsecured payments and a lack of variety in payment methods contribute to abandoned carts. For instance, customers would not purchase from your store if they don’t find their desired payment methods. eCommerce stores can improve conversion rates by offering a variety of digital payment methods, but it should be swift and secure.
Big Data can also improve payment security in the future. A variety of payment methods and safe and secure transactions are important for customers. Here Big Data can detect fraud activity and ensure an amazing experience for customers.
Business owners can set up alerts for transactions on the same credit card that are out of the ordinary or for orders coming from the same IP address using various payment methods.
Customised Offers
Who does not like to get huge discounts on products they love? Of course, we all, right? Utilize customer data to determine specific offers relevant to their previous purchases and send them discount codes and other offers based on their buying habits.
Additionally, Big Data can be used to find potential customers who are browsing a website, abandon a purchase, or but don’t buy. You can send a customer an email inviting them to purchase a product they looked at or reminding them of it. Here you can see how Amazon and eBay perfected the art of online selling.
Helps to Conduct A/B Testing
To ensure a seamless and efficient online experience, A/B testing is essential. Detecting bugs and removing errors will help your business grow. In addition to testing your pricing model on a time-based basis with data collected from your store, the data collected will help you optimize the overall store performance.
Especially during days when the demand is high, incorrect pricing can make your retailers lose money. Additionally, marketers can identify where the lift occurs and how they can use it to increase volume in time-based A/B testing, further assisting them in determining discounting strategies.
Forecast Trends and Demand
Predicting trends and demand is equally important to meeting buyer’s needs. Having the right inventory on hand for the future is crucial for e-commerce. eCommerce brands can make plans for upcoming events, seasonal changes, or emerging trends via Big Data.
Businesses that sell products online amass massive datasets. Analysis of previous data allows them to plan inventory, predict peak times, forecast demand, and streamline operations overall.
E-commerce companies can also offer various discounts to optimize pricing. Machine Learning and Big Data here make it easier to predict when and how discounts should be offered as well as how long they should last.
Big Data is Here to Stay for a Long
The above points clearly define that Big Data is making eCommerce better. eCommerce is already being affected by Big Data, and that impact will only continue to grow. With its use, online stores do business faster and easier than ever before. Their business activities are improved through the use of Big Data in all areas, and customer satisfaction is always maintained.