We’ve always believed that data should be easy to see and apply: our analytics platform has been designed around that principle. With Black Friday soon upon us we’ve decided to take a look at how real time analytics can help keep you ahead on the big day.
To make the most out of Black Friday, you’re going to need every little advantage you can get to pull ahead of the competition. Real-time analytics have several advantages over ‘traditional’ analytics platforms, which generally track by hourly granules.
Why real-time?
Everyone knows the big name in the analytics business, Google. But while Google’s offering is incredibly comprehensive, it doesn’t provide you with easy to access data quickly enough for you to make important decisions.
This isn’t a problem for long term analysis, but during high traffic events like Black Friday you want data fast and with minimal hassle. Here are three simple actions that real-time analytics helps you take:
1. Identify your best and worst performing products
When consumers flood websites for Black Friday, how you react to this influx of visitors is measured in seconds. Sales often peak in the period from 7.30am to 10.00am.
Real-time ecommerce analytics gives you crucial retail information such as product performance, transactions and traffic sources within seconds. You can identify your most popular products (or least popular) and respond accordingly. You’ll know exactly what to boost on social media or to include in a midday newsletter.
2. Know your customers
For any retailer, knowing who your customers are is a vital part of targeting consumers more effectively and improving sales. And you need this information straightaway. A lot of the times, the problem is that you never get that information until it’s too late – an hour is a long time on the web.
With real time analytics, you’ll learn more about your customers in one glance than having to trawl through mountains of data in traditional platforms. You’ll know where customers are shopping from, what products they’re interested in, what devices they’re using and what they’re saying about you on social media.
You need to know what social media activity is driving Black Friday sales.
3. Plan for traffic spikes
Picture the wave of emails and tweets coming in as Black Friday hits. 404 errors. Pages taking minutes to load. Items in baskets disappearing, or being purchased by others. Retailers should be expecting for double their regular visitor numbers but preparing for ten times that.
In short, it could be your worst nightmare.
Fortunately with real-time data, you can see the spike coming before it reaches tipping point. You can spot if part of the site has gone down or visitors from a particular region have suddenly disappeared. This insight gives you precious minutes to dedicate extra resource, which may prove crucial to keeping your online store afloat and customers happy.
Get ready…
We’ve gone through three important advantages real-time analytics offers ecommerce stores in the coming weeks. GoSquared is in a position to provide you with all three to help you make critical decisions within seconds:
So forget having to wait until Black Friday is over before learning lessons – you can now prepare to change as the environment does and be as responsive as possible.
Explore how GoSquared helps ecommerce stores stay on top with real time analytics now.
