INTRODUCTION
The best ecommerce measurement tools will allow you to measure your website’s effectiveness, allowing you to improve it based on your findings. But the main goal of any measurement tool is the same: to collect conversion-specific information like paths, view-through conversions or actual purchases for future analysis and optimization.
Every ecommerce marketer wants to know if their efforts are working. They want to figure it all out, as quickly as possible. And that’s why you should use these measurement tools.
Even the best sellers are going to need extra support to help leverage and really balloon their business. But what are the best ecommerce tools out there today?
How can you use ecommerce marketing tools to help grow and cross-pollinate your business? What are some of the best analytics tools for ecommerce that you can really rely on?
Here are 9 of the very best ecommerce analytics tools that you can use right now to help evaluate and illuminate the success of your business.
1) KISSmetrics
KISSmetrics is a powerful analytics tool that provides really good information with the tagline that will enable you to “get, keep, and grow more customers”. This is what really effective e-commerce analytics tools should be all about.
KISSmetrics helps users to understand and appreciate what is going on with their customer’s online behavior. These are things that help website hosts increase customer acquisition and retention rates.
Another great thing about the KISSmetrics tool is aesthetic. They will help you make better decisions on not only the layout, but also the marketing of your online store.
We are all visual species, we accept or reject things based on how they appear before us. So having an ecommerce marketing tool which helps you sift through this is beneficial for sure.
2) RetentionGrid
If numbers and such are more to your liking, then you may want to consider the ecommerce analytics tool of RetentionGrid. It’s perfect for folks who love poring over raw data.
The secret is in the color scheme. RetentionGrid provides the data in easy to understand color coded graphs. This makes digestion and application of this data that much easier for so many users. In addition to this color flow, they also provide suggestions on how to best reach your different demographic segments.
Put another way, RetentionGrid offers information about what kind of marketing works best for your specific customers. RetentionGrid also helps you understand and analyze which of your different marketing campaigns will have the best results depending on who the visitors to your site are.
3) Google Analytics
As the current dominating search engine giant, it should surprise no one that a company like Google has one of the best ecommerce analytics tools on the market.
Google Analytics is one of the most well-known web analytics tools used by website owners from all corners of the globe and it’s not hard to understand why. What makes Google one of the best in the businesses also makes it one of the more challenging analytics tools to really master.
In order to get detailed reports, you really need to spend a lot of time fine tuning the different tools. But trust me, everything you do with Google Analytics will be worth it for your business. Once you have achieved mastery of something like Google Analytics, really the online world is your oyster.
4) Clicky
Another metric for the success or failure of your ecommerce analytics tools is whether or not they are user-friendly. If you can’t use your ecommerce tools, how are they supposed to help grow your business?
One such tool for ease of use is Clicky. For one thing, the tools on Clicky are all in real time. This means that you’re getting the information on the spot for what is going on now.
Moreover, the Clicky tool has an abundance of information. Even though this tool is rather simple to use, that doesn’t take away from the fact that users can have access to a wealth of information.
But the ease of use for anyone is really the takeaway from Clicky, meaning that no matter how much or little online analytics experience you have, you will be able to use and your business will be able to benefit from the use of this analytics tool.
5) Adobe Marketing Cloud
Organization, access, and personalization – three things that all ecommerce analytics tools should have. These three metrics are what the Adobe Marketing Cloud pride themselves on. Far from just a PDF reader or Flash player running in your background, Adobe is also a powerful, end-to-end analytic tool used by large ecommerce stores.
Like Google though Adobe has been around for quite some time. So like Google Analytics. you need to have a fair bit of knowledge in the kitty before you are going to be able to use Adobe Marketing Cloud effectively.
This is one of those ecommerce analytics tools which requires significant knowledge of the application in order to set it up properly. Another thing about Adobe is the cost.
If you are a smaller business of limited means, the Adobe Marketing Cloud may not make sense for you. With all the upfront costs and setup, Adobe can end up being a very costly affair before you get the data you really need.
6) RJ Metrics
Acquisition, conversion, and retention. Sounds simple, right? As the holy trinity of the ecommerce world, these three keywords are anything but simple. However, RJ Metrics would like to show you how they can help you with these three things.
Customers of RJ Metrics benefit from the deep dive. RJ Metrics provides a detailed analysis of your website, helping your ecommerce business grow based on the raw data. Moreover, their team helps make suggestions on things you can do to make your site better and to help your retailer grow.
Another great thing about the RJ Metrics ecommerce analytics tool is that they give great tutorials and suggestions so that even the ecommerce novice can thrive in the digital world. It’s this type of information acquisition and ends user education which sets a company like RJ Metrics apart from the pack.
7) Crazy Egg
Do you know why your customers come to your site? Do you know why they leave your site?
The ecommerce marketing tool Crazy Egg says that they do. Crazy Egg offers some comprehensive and user-friendly graphs which all end users should find helpful.
But it’s their heat maps which are most exciting. These heat maps offer information which can be used to examine which areas of your website you need to focus on and which areas your visitors are simply ignoring.
If you’re able to draw the eyes of your customers to the things that you really want them to see, this will help you with customer acquisition, retention, and streamlining of your site so that the things you don’t need, don’t gum up the works with the things which you do!
8) Unbxd
One of the biggest reasons customers of any shop, whether online or terrestrial don’t return is because they feel that the shopping experience “isn’t for them“. Think about this. When was the last time you felt this way about a website you visited? How often did you return to the same site? Not likely very often.
This is a travesty which many online retailers blithely ignore. Even though they could be tapping into a much wider and larger audience base, these retailers continue to ignore their customer’s wishes, all leading to the retailer’s ultimate end. Unbxd recognizes this so they proffer to help online businesses convert and retain customers through a relevant customer experience.
When the customer feels relevant, the customer will come back. Unbxd provides intelligent, ‘context-aware’ site search and personalized recommendations for all of their customers. Going even deeper down Unbxd understands visitor intent, meaning that their customers will benefit from the experience. Unbxd also provides a personalized touch by offering customers what their business needs based on your individual business demands.
9) Optimizely
One more of the best online ecommerce analytics tools offers their customers something that everyone loves – choice! Optimizely has all kinds of tools to make your website more responsive to customer needs and more effective for your individual sales goals. The tools at Optimizely are used to measure the impact of changes of two variants in your site design.
A/B testing helps you to test different layouts, colors, and copy on your ecommerce website to determine what converts best. As an extension, these seemingly benign aesthetic features can and will lead to higher revenue. Optimizely also offers a whole host of intelligent tools so that you can and will make the best choices for your site layout.
Instant testing capability, scheduled test options, easy customization with visual point and click editor, track engagement, clicks, conversions, and so much more! There are so many things which go into the decision of whether or not to make a purchase at an online retailer; Optimizely just helps you separate the wheat from the chaff in order for you to confidently know what will work and what will fail for your online business.
Special Mention: BiQ
BiQ is an all-in-one SEO tool that can be your Ecommerce best friend!
We have all heard about SEO and how important it is if you want your website to rank, get those traffic, and convert them into your customers.
BiQ deserves special mention here because it is the perfect tool for every Ecommerce site owners that want a handy little tool that can give them more insight into things like keyword research, but can also track the rankings for every keywords, and better yet, discover what your competitors are ranking for so you can steal that ranking for yourself.
Here is a screenshot of one of their key features, keeping track of your webpage ranking have never been so easy!
You can do all that with BiQ. They also have tons of informative blog posts on their site that shows you true use cases using their tool.
Check it out, you won’t regret it!
CONCLUSION
Measuring your ecommerce store’s performance is a critical part of your online marketing strategy. Use these charts and reports to track key metrics like sales, average order value (AOV), conversion rate, cart abandonment, emails sent and many more so that you can improve the performance of your ecommerce store. The below chart and reports will show you how to measure those valuable ecommerce KPIs by Google BigQuery.
Your online business has a lot of moving parts. Metrics and measurements are key to keeping it on the right track. A lack of data leads to hesitation and frustration, but the right ecommerce analytics can help you understand the mechanics of your business so that you can make smart decisions quickly and improve performance.