The e-commerce industry saw a massive boom in 2020. More retail customers started to shop online than ever before, but that also meant more competition in the space for established companies. A 129% year-over-year growth for e-commerce in the US and Canada alone.
Looking at that number, it’s easy to assume that your retail data analytics should focus solely on sales, but that’s not entirely correct. Every bit of data your system collects is pure gold. It’s unique information that’s only relevant to your store, but you need to sift through it to find the real nuggets.
Where can you start an analytical deep-dive into e-commerce? Logistics. ?
Shifting priorities in e-commerce
Everyone is talking about the marketing and sales customer journey. How does the customer find your store? Is the user interface easy to navigate? Are you measuring the right marketing metrics?
While you should be figuring out the answers to all of those questions, there is another area of e-commerce that few people seem to talk about: the parcel’s journey. Once a customer has clicked the ‘buy now’ button and handed over their hard-earned cash, how does their order get to them? Who handles it? And does it reach them on time?
Logistics is a core part of e-commerce, but sometimes it’s left up to a courier or warehouse fulfilment company. Yet, it’s essential that you keep a close eye on logistics – your store’s last chance to impress customers. The solution lies in the data.
Logical logistics with Qlik Sense + Vizlib
Say your business sells guitars, which can be pretty expensive. Your customer orders a gorgeous five-string Gibson Gibson ES-345 ? with a cherry red finish. This piece of musical equipment needs to reach the customer safely and without a scratch on it.
The first step is to find the specific model among the hundreds of guitars that you sell. Can the warehouse team find it easily? How much time are they spending looking for products on the shelves?
Next, it’s time to package the guitar and get it ready for the shipping company. How much packaging are you using and how much is being wasted?
How much will it cost you to ship the guitar? If they live in Centralia, Pennsylvania, it’s going to cost you a pretty penny. Logistics fees can quickly eat away at your company’s bottom line.
Your management team needs a ground-level view of what’s happening in your warehouse. And they need it instantly! By providing them with visual analytics that make insights pop, they get the bird’s eye view they need to make quick decisions. Decisions that fast track your parcels. And ensure the customer holds their new (scratch-free ?) cherry red Gibson in their hands in no time!
With Vizlib KPI Designer, you and your team can create customised e-commerce KPIs in your Qlik Sense dashboards. And help managers easily track the progress of major processes and workflows at a glance!
Create impactful KPIs quickly and easily in Vizlib Library
Analytics for all
In a booming industry, analysing data to make better decisions should be an all-hands activity. Not only the realm of your IT or data specialists. All teams should have the ability to ask and answer their own business questions. Because analytics is a game everyone can play (with intuitive software, of course!).
And the best way to get everyone engaged and enthusiastic about data is with easy-to-use dashboards in Qlik Sense. It’s important to design effective e-commerce dashboards that do just that – help users of all skills levels feel confident to create reports and tell the right stories with their data.
With Vizlib, your warehouse manager doesn’t need to rely on anyone to create a specific retail report such as an overview of the quarter’s shipping error rate. They can create customised ad hoc reports quickly and easily with the out-of-the-box templates included in Vizlib Self-Service.
The right data analytics solution should simplify how your organisation works with data and support all users’ data discovery journey.
Ready to ride the massive growth wave in e-commerce? You can start by exploring how to get the timing right with your retail analytics.
And, if you want to learn more about Vizlib, give our friendly sales team a shout. They’re eager to show you how to create your own dataviz wow and get more value from Qlik Sense features.
