For many businesses managing data is still seen as a cost but analysing and using data effectively presents opportunities to increase profitability and performance.
However, in a digital world there’s so much data available it can be difficult to extract meaningful information from it. With smartphones and smart devices in our homes and geographic and behavioral analysis tools for our online activities analysts understand that only some data will provide useful business insights.
Improving ecommerce customer journeys
As retailers and business to business (B2B) organizations have moved online it has become clear that new skills are needed to understand and anticipate customer needs and improve their purchasing journeys.
From the way they use an ecommerce site’s navigation to how they respond to offers and recommendations, there’s a lot to learn. However, the information is often collected in different ways and formats in separate parts of an organization making analysis more challenging.
Big data solutions are now available to bridge the gap between different data sources to allow large-scale interrogation for fast and reliable analysis. You can learn from correlations with the weather or the effect of different browsers and devices on user experiences.
Rather than personal information marketers can create actionable insights using this aggregated and generic data and privacy regulations won’t come into play. As customers become increasingly concerned about both the use and security of their personal data this provides opportunities to deliver personalized experiences without intrusion.
Customer preferences
The changes in shopping behavior we have seen since 2020 have made omnichannel services like curb side and in-store pickups for online purchases commonplace. More of our daily activities are now online, seamlessly linked with offline channels, making the quality of customer experiences a priority at every touchpoint.
Digital services, marketing content, easy searches, personalized menus and ‘favorites’ lists are just some of the ways experiences can be customized to suit individual preferences. More than two thirds of respondents in a recent Adobe survey said they would like to receive relevant, personalized recommendations and promotions based on their shopping habits.
Tools to improve your customers’ journeys
Adobe has recognized the importance of enhanced analytics to improve customer experiences and has introduced an experimentation panel in its Customer Journey Analytics application.
This allows you to test real-world scenarios and see the effect of changing a single step in your customer’s journey. You can then use this data to personalize experiences for specific segments of your audience.
You can track metrics for purchases made on your website, in an app, at the point of sale, and through your call center. You can quickly see which website pages prompt the most calls to your customer services team or build flow analysis charts for different customer segments across all your channels.
The benefits of analytics
Fast insights – artificial intelligence and machine learning tools can deliver useful insights from data, taking account of historical purchasing patterns, similar campaigns, and key performance indicators for example.
Flexibility – you can evaluate cause-and-effect relationships across your online and offline channels to understand the meaning of data sets from your whole organization.
Personalization – based on these insights you can create new customer experiences or content and automatically define target segments for improved personalization across different channels.
Streaming – customer journey analytics (CJA) can combine streaming data with cross-channel insights so you can analyze complete customer journeys and link digital media engagement with sales conversions on social media, your website, or offline.
Attribution – you might be able to identify trends by collecting and monitoring raw data, but it will be difficult to interpret motivation. Artificial intelligence can now help you to attribute the impact of your marketing touchpoints. With a clearer understanding of the contribution of your website, mobile apps, email, and social media campaigns you can make better-informed decisions.
Building better customer experiences
To improve customer journeys, you will need to integrate, analyze, understand, and share data across your business. You will need to identify which channels will provide data that is helpful in creating a complete picture of your customers’ behavior.
You will also need the right tools to analyze their journeys and quickly implement changes based on the insights you discover. You can then fully appreciate the complexity of multichannel customer journeys. You can remove pain points to increase your conversion rates and enhance customer experiences at key points.
Your customer journey partner
Williams Commerce is an Adobe Commerce Gold Partner with EMEA Adobe Commerce Specialization. With over 10 years of experience our fully certified team of Adobe Commerce developers understands how to get the best from the unparalleled functionality and flexibility of the Adobe Experience Cloud. We recommend Adobe Analytics as a powerful tool to improve customer journeys for your business.
