The key to ensuring business success is understanding customer behaviors and shaping experiences. When consumers enter the store, their journey starts– with product placement, store layout, marketing campaigns, available floor staff, and queues. Tracking in-store consumer behavior throughout the customer journey provides managers insight into dwell time, traffic flows, marketing effectiveness, customer interests, and how to optimize the experience according to data-driven decisions. Creating memorable customer journeys is easy when you have a Retail Analytics solution that turns data into actionable insight.
As we move ahead in increasingly data-driven environments, assuming that the presence of data is a silver bullet to get rid of all the problems is a foolish proposition. To effectively use data, you need to have an equally robust data analytics ecosystem that can cater to your company's requirements. Given that the competition within the retail industry is already aggressive, enterprises need that “it” factor to differentiate themselves.
With this in mind, let’s look at retail data and how retail data analytics help companies compete better in the market.
What is Retail Data Analytics?
Before diving into the concept of retail analytics, let’s first get an overview of the retail data. Retail data is a collation of information that quantifies an organization. The numerous types of retail data include sales data, inventory data, operational data, customer data, etc. As with any info, this data requires to be processed, collected, and analyzed so organizations can take proper action – and this is where retail analytics comes into the picture.
Retail analytics digs retail data and unveils its hidden potential. It provides insights into hidden patterns, trends, and improving business performance across numerous verticals such as supply chain movement, sales, operations, customer experience and inventory management.
Benefits of Employing Data Analytics at Retail Companies to Win More Sales and Customers
Relying on retail analytics and complex data rather than guesswork allows you to make better decisions toward better customer satisfaction, higher profits, and having overall a more awesome store.
The great news is that it looks as though numerous players in the retail industry have already recognized the potential of data. A survey of nearly 350 brand manufacturers and retailers found that 81% of respondents gathered shopper insights, and 76% contemplate insights to be crucial to their performance. The bad news is that while numerous merchants are collating data, most aren’t using it effectively. As per the study, only 16% consider themselves experts when it comes to data harnessing, while 24% and 60%, respectively, describe themselves as “newbies” and “getting there.”
Of course, we know being data-centric is easier said than done. That is why we have compiled some tips to assist you collect and harness data in your retail business. Read about them below, then see if you can put them into action in your operation:
Start with the right tools.
Organizations might be having issues with their data-centric efforts as they lack the right tools for harnessing and collecting info. Or perhaps they have the tools, but they don’t know how to use them to their full potential.
Consider the following:
POS
If your point of sale (POS)system is only being used to ring up sales, you’re missing out. These days, most modern POS solutions come with reporting features that can shed light on essential metrics like profit margins, sales trends, customer counts, basket sizes, and more. For instance, looking at your sales reports will let you know exactly which suppliers or products are driving revenue so you can plan out the stock orders accordingly. That’s what happens when an England-based retailer sells hand-made gifts. The owner shares that they constantly use their POS system to dig into their sales data to make more reliable decisions. Their favorite feature has to be the sales reports. By day, by month, by period, by the hour, but most importantly, by the supplier,’ he says. They can predict what will happen next year and therefore plan our staff rosters and product ordering, saving a lot of money and time. We only order what we require and know what will sell. They can also order only as much as they need because they can see how much was sold before.
Email marketing software
If you are keeping in touch with customers through email, be sure to track open rates, clicks, and engagement times. Your email marketing software should offer this info, so always delve into that data whenever you send out messages to your list. Open rate data can provide you a good idea of which subject lines are working well, allowing you to optimize them going forward. Meanwhile, when people are reading your messages could help you time your campaigns more effectively.
Foot traffic analytics
If you haven’t done so yet, examine implementing foot traffic analytics solutions in the retail store. Tools such as beacons and people counters can provide dwell times and customer counts, among others. With that data, you can dig more information on how much traffic you’re getting, the parts of your store getting the most and most minor visitors, and more.
Combine online and offline data
Analyzing offline and online data together will provide you the complete picture of your consumers’ shopping journey. Remember, modern consumers go through numerous channels on their path to buying, so if you are analyzing and storing their information in silos, you’re going to get fragmented profiles of your shoppers. You could miss out on critical opportunities and insights. For instance, Barneys, a retailer that understands the power of integrated data. Matthew Woolsey, the VP for digital, told the Washington Post that looking at online and offline customer behaviors said that many ladies who buy fine jewelry in their geographies have previously browsed for it online.
You can witness that if Barneys had looked just at their shoppers’ online data, they would not have figured out that their web-browsing consumers eventually purchased offline. They wouldn’t have gotten a complete understanding of their customer's path to purchase.
Final thoughts
Retailers who want to prevail in the coming times can’t afford to incorporate data into their decisions. Yes, setting up the suitable systems and learning how to gather intel could take some work; but the insights and knowledge you gain will make it all worthwhile when you've mastered it. How are you utilizing retail analytics in your business? Book a session and let us know.
