Big data is what online retailers should look for!!
Big data is a term used to refer the exponential growth of available data that consists of a massive volume of structured and unstructured data. The data sets are so huge that it is difficult to process using traditional database and software data processing applications. This is how IBM defines Big data:
“90% of data in the world has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from sensors to gather climate information, posts on social media sites, digital picture and videos, purchase transaction records, cell phone signals and such. This data is called Big Data”.
Ecommerce business and retailers with online presence operate in a very competitive and fast paced environment. There is a demanding need for retailers to satisfy the customers who have a varied range of choices and Ecommerce systems need to provide appealing solutions before impatient customers who tend to switch to competing websites.
Making Use Of Big Data
The benefits of Ecommerce data analytics are vast and clear for all online retailers. Online retailers are some of the best beneficiaries of big data analytics because they have access to endless amounts of intelligence about their customers’ behaviors and purchases. But, while 80% of retailers say they’ve heard of “big data,” only 47% say they understand how to apply it to their business, according to a survey by retail research firm Edgell Knowledge Network. Big data is the hottest trend doing rounds, that has all industries working on analyzing and using the huge amount of data in a manner that results in growth and profits in the online market. Ecommerce industries deploy predictive models in combination with recommendation engines that drive automated next best offers and tailored interactions across multiple interaction channels.
The big data analysis helps the retailers to know how they can best satisfy their consumer needs. These are some of the analytics of big data that Ecommerce retailers will look for:
- 89% of consumers use search engines to research purchases
- 79% of consumers follow brands on social networks
- 70% of shoppers trust product reviews
- 63% of consumers use smartphones to research purchases
- 86% of customers are influenced by negative reviews
- Less than 1/3 of retailers have a conversion rate better than 4%
- 21% of consumers abandon online checkout when they have an inefficient process
- By 2018, 54% of transactions will happen on mobile .
Here is an infographic on the usefulness of big data on Ecommerce industries provided by Monetate.
Flipkart Making Best-Use Of Big Data
The online Megastore Flipkart used big data and analysed user perspectives to gather information, so as to derive changes and transitions as smoothly as possible. They streamed various performance metrics of their website on a large screen, so that their engineers could track performance in real-time. Whenever they wanted to change the design of the website, they allowed multiple versions of the site to be live simultaneously. This framework redirects 10% of flipkart’s traffic to new design. They can then evaluate the impact of change with the metrics collection tool. If the new change leads to a dip in sales, they can immediately roll it back, affecting less than 10% of its traffic.
Now with various big data providers arriving in the scenario, even small ventures can make use of it in a very cost-effective way. Using big data helps improve customer experience, enhances opportunities for personalization and prediction, help’s in dynamic pricing and improving the supply chain efficiency. Big data is now definitely a must for a business to be able to cope up with the ever-increasing dynamic user expectations along with the same users are the sources to big data analysis.
