Advanced Analytics For Scaling Ecommerce Brands to Track

Congratulations you're ecommerce brand is successful and you're starting to scale! In this stage, diving deep into analytics isn’t a luxury but a necessity for brands looking to scale. The earlier you start tracking the better. 

The jump from basic metrics to advanced ecommerce analytics is a major shift, that helps businesses get insights and fine-tune their strategies for growth. 

Let’s get into the advanced metrics and analytics you should be tracking to scale your brand.

Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Taking into account and tackling the issue of shopping cart abandonment is necessary for growth-stage or beginner ecommerce brands trying to increase conversions. This metric is a clear indicator of potential revenue that’s slipping through your fingers, often at the final hurdle of the purchase process.

How to track: Start with setting up precise tracking mechanisms. Ensure that your analytics setup captures every stage of the checkout process, identifying where customers drop off. Is it at the shipping options, payment method selection, or at the final confirmation page?

Analyzing these drop-off points provides insights into potential friction areas within your checkout process. Maybe the shipping costs are a surprise, or the payment options aren't sufficient - understanding the "why" behind cart abandonment allows for targeted interventions to streamline the checkout experience and recapture lost sales.

Tools: Your ecommerce platform (Shopify or WooCommerce) with advanced analytics plugins or extensions should be able to easily track this. 

Product Performance and Profitability Analysis

Product performance and profitability is necessary for ecommerce brands looking to fine-tune inventory and marketing strategies. This analysis sheds light on which products are top performers and which are not pulling their weight.

How to Track: Start it off by integrating your ecommerce platform with analytics tools that can break down sales data by product. This involves tracking not just the volume of sales, but also the profit margins for each item. Pay attention to metrics like sales velocity, return rates, and customer feedback for a holistic view of product performance.

Understanding the profitability and appeal of each product allows you to make informed decisions on inventory management, pricing strategies, and promotional efforts. It can highlight opportunities for bundling less popular products with best-sellers or identifying which items could benefit from targeted marketing campaigns.

Tools: For ecommerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce, native analytics provide a good starting point for product performance tracking. For a deeper dive, use tools like Looker or Tableau which can connect with your ecommerce data to offer more granular insights into product profitability and sales trends.

Website User Behavior and Heatmaps

Gaining insights into how users interact with your ecommerce site can reveal opportunities to enhance the shopping experience and boost conversions. Website user behavior and heatmaps offer a visual representation of where customers click, scroll, and spend time on your site.

How to Track: Start by using tools that record user sessions and generate heatmaps. These tools can show you hotspots of activity and areas that might be causing confusion or hindrance to your users. Look for patterns such as common drop-off points, ignored calls to action, or areas where users linger, indicating interest or uncertainty.

Analyzing this data helps identify website elements that need refinement, whether it's simplifying navigation, making CTAs more prominent, or adjusting content placement to better match user behavior. The goal is to create a seamless, intuitive user journey that guides visitors from landing page to checkout.

Tools: Hotjar and Crazy Egg are the best in providing heatmap and user session recording capabilities.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

Understanding the long-term value of your customers, or Lifetime Value (LTV), is a must for any ecommerce brand aiming to optimize marketing spend and create customer loyalty. LTV helps you measure the total worth of a customer to your business over their entire lifetime. 

How to Track: Start by aggregating data on your average order value, purchase frequency, and customer lifespan. This involves analyzing historical purchase data across your customer base to identify trends and averages. Calculating LTV provides insights into how much you can afford to spend on customer acquisition while maintaining profitability.

Increasing LTV isn't just about boosting short-term sales; it involves nurturing relationships through personalized (email) marketing, exceptional customer service, and loyalty programs. Strategies aimed at increasing purchase frequency or order value directly contribute to enhancing LTV.

Loyalty programs, personalised email marketing and making your customer feel genuinely valued and engaged, to increase LTV is our bread and butter at LTV.ai.

Tools: LTV.ai was built for exactly this in mind - maximising your customer LTV through personalised email marketing, loyalty programs, re-engaging lapsed customers and more. 

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Understanding where your customers come from is just as crucial as knowing who they are. That's where Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) (by traffic source) comes in, acting as a pillar for brands aiming to maximize their online potential. 

As per Velocity, a PPC agency in Dallas, leveraging CRO techniques by identifying key traffic sources can significantly boost conversion rates and ROI by tailoring strategies to the specific behaviors and preferences of each traffic channel. This targeted approach not only refines audience engagement but also ensures marketing budgets are allocated to the most effective channels, maximizing returns across campaigns.

How to track: Start by setting up detailed tracking in your analytics tool of choice while ensuring you can distinguish between different traffic sources. Make sure you can see whether traffic is converting from reddit, instagram, tiktok, youtube etc.

Next, analyze the conversion rates from each source. Look beyond the surface to understand the journey of converting visitors—what pages they visit, how long they stay, and what ultimately persuades them to make a purchase.

Tools: Google Analytics is the best here in combination with UTM links but specialized tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg also offer heatmaps and visitor recordings to give you a closer look at user behavior from each traffic source.

Attribution Modeling

Attribution modeling in ecommerce helps quite a bit in understanding the customer journey and determining which marketing channels and touchpoints contribute most to conversions and sales. It provides insights into how various marketing efforts work together and which ones play key roles in influencing customer decisions.

How to Track: Start by identifying all the touchpoints a customer interacts with across multiple channels before making a purchase. Use attribution modeling to assign credit to each interaction, whether it's an initial ad click, an email open, or a social media engagement. This process helps clarify the impact of each marketing channel on your overall sales, enabling more strategic allocation of your marketing budget.

Fine-tuning your marketing mix based on the attribution modeling insights can increase the efficiency of your advertising spend. By focusing on channels and campaigns that have the highest impact on customer behavior, you can optimize your efforts for better ROI. 

Tools: Google Analytics offers built-in attribution modeling tools that can be a good starting point for ecommerce businesses. For more advanced and customizable solutions, platforms like Adobe Analytics and Bizible provide detailed attribution analysis.

Email Marketing Performance Metrics

Elevating your email marketing requires a deep dive into performance metrics beyond the basics of open and click-through rates. Advanced email marketing metrics provide a clearer picture of how your campaigns influence customer behavior, engagement, and ultimately, revenue.

How to Track: Focus on metrics that measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns in driving conversions and sales, such as email conversion rate, list growth rate, and the overall ROI of email marketing efforts. Analyze how different segments respond to your emails and monitor engagement trends over time to identify what content resonates most with your audience.

Improving these metrics often involves refining your email content, segmentation, and personalization strategies. For example, testing different subject lines or email formats can help increase open rates, while more targeted segmentation and personalized content can boost engagement and conversion rates.

Tools: Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and Klaviyo provide comprehensive analytics features that track these advanced metrics. For more detail, CRM systems like HubSpot or Salesforce can be useful.

Social Media Engagement and ROI

For ecommerce brands, social media isn't just a platform for engagement; it's a critical driver of direct conversions and brand awareness. Advanced analytics in social media help you measure the effectiveness of your content and campaigns, providing insights into how social interactions translate into tangible business outcomes.

How to Track: To track social media's impact, focus on metrics that link social engagement to ecommerce success, such as conversion rate by platform, referral traffic to your website, and the ROI of social media advertising campaigns. Additionally, track platform-specific metrics like shares, comments, and direct messages to understand how social interactions contribute to customer engagement and loyalty.

Optimizing your social media strategy for better ROI involves not only creating engaging content but also using targeted advertising to reach potential customers. Analyzing the performance of your social content and ads can reveal what resonates with your audience, allowing you to replicate successful tactics and adjust your social media marketing spend for maximum efficiency.

Tools: Social media management tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social offer in-depth analytics that can track engagement and conversion metrics across multiple platforms. For advertising ROI, platforms like Facebook Ads Manager and Google Analytics provide detailed reporting on how social media ads contribute to website traffic and conversions.