Where to find e-commerce shopping cart providers with web analytics, Facebook, and bank integration
Thinking of online retail? Use this Free eCommerce Shopping Cart Comparison to see what integrates with an analytics solution and payment gateway easily
Thinking of an eCommerce business? Select a cart that makes digital analytic measurement easy to plan first!
I’ve made this chart of eCommerce shopping cart solutions available. Each offer different capability to integrate an analytics solution. Although some coding effort is needed in general, some solutions provide a plug-and-play capability. The chart includes a consideration of which kinds of banking/payment options are available, whether the sites include Facebook commerce option, and if analytics integration is available. Having theses features in place makes sales easy to manage, and to permit an analytics tools to reveal when customers are dropping out of a cart…and not purchasing your product.
Click here for the full e-commerce shopping cart chart in pdf format.
Avoid The Client Funk: How to work with clients — be it corporate, medium, or small biz
Having trouble trying to communicate a data-interpreted decision with the executive team? Or maybe a small business client is really resistant to understanding the need for adding analytics to a website? Many professionals run into trouble managing the expectations of others. The difficulty can be a particular pain when the situation applies to a client, be it corporate or small. I call it “client funk”. The following are sources of quick tips that can help analytics practitioners minimize “client funk”.
Michael Bierut at Pentagram presented before 300 creative design students and graduates at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. The talk was sponsored by CreativeMornings, a designer forum based in New York City. His talk offered a balanced view of the client/designer relationship, stating the factors that make or break a designer’s success, as well as what makes a good (and bad) client. His intended audience are web designers, but the perspective is very sound for web analytics practitioners, and furthermore, any service providers who work intimately with a client.
For corporate environments, analytics practitioners must understand financial terms to convince managers and decision makers on analytics-related projects. To sway and convince project skeptics, three metrics must be kept in mind with every argument of a project’s merit:
- 1. The dollars needed for invest in the project
- 2. The revenue that can be generated
The third is a metric based on the prior two — return on investment (ROI).
This post on creating an analytics corporate culture (by Top Rank’s Jolina Pettice) offers more on how to convince executive management as well as best practices to establishing analytics as an integral part of a business.
You can also read Avinash Kaushik’s book Web Analytics 2.0. Much of his book addresses the challenges of working with various departments to create an analytics environment. For those with broader analytics application, there is another book, called Analytics at Work, by Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris.
Thinking of Pay Per Click? Try an online coupon (and a li’l web analytics, too!)
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An eMarketer report on online coupons provides various stats that indicate growing usage among retailers and marketers as a marketing strategy to drive website traffic and sales. The usage, which became more mainstream with consumers beginning with the 2008 holiday season, is expected to increase in the coming years.
The surging usage should also be a boon to analytics practitioners.
Why? With capability to track campaigns in an analytics solution, practitioners now have a new medium to convince managers the value that analytics can play in investigating the response to an online buzz. With the explosive growth in social media, along with consumer interest in value, coupon campaigns are becoming a great value for marketers. Furthermore, smartphones have made sharing online coupons a benefit for potentially engaging customers with new offers and events. While analytics still has a long way to go for covering the entire tagging activity from a coupon to a site, analytics solutions can still help to correlate site interest to coupon campaigns.
The online coupon growth may also be a benefit for small businesses. Many business owners are leery of PPC, having been burned by overspending on keywords that lead to little actual conversion. Yet these businesses need another driver to their e-commerce site. Coupon creation sites such as twtQpon can help ensure that small businesses can announce tantalizing offers as tempting as those from large corporations.
And a li’l web analytics can help ensure the best results.
An idea through web analytics to prove your business concept to potential investors
Art Chang made a great quote at the December Ultra Light Start-up panel on Bootstrapping vs. Seeking Capital (You can view the Zimanablog post for the Ultra Light Start Up here, as well as a great video for the session at the Ultra Light Start Up site here).
The Times Online article explains how Twitter has justified its value through Google’s offering of Twitter updates in the results pages whenever Google users conduct a search (The same can be done on Bing). Twitter has yet to indicate a strong business despite its advertising potential through user acceptance of its real time subject search and its use to announce events immediately.
With discussion on the sour US economy and the limited lending by banks to small business, businesses are under more pressure to show cash flow and have a great monetization model. Cash is important in business, but showing how the idea is connecting with a target audience can be equally valuable. This is what Twitter has done, and small businesses have tools available to make this crucial link to the start to customer behavior.
If a website is involved for transactions — sign up or purchase — an analytics solution should be added to the site. Traffic data can provide an indicator of how well the concept is appealing to customers. Furthermore, more detailed data can be captured. In Google Analytics, for example, returning visitors can be captured, a means for stating how appealing the website — and consequently the concept — is. Benchmarking data is also available (although users should consider that the data may not neatly breakdown into a category that compares to their industry). Time on site, visitor recency, page views per visitor — all of these can confirm the story of customer interest, depending on the website content and its context. No one metric can capture the information, but a combination of metrics can show the trend.
The key is to show that your business concept has appeal, even if there are some capital concerns in place (That concern can be a separate conversation on how it will be addressed). If the data is showing gradual improvement in traffic and traffic quality over time, your business can then make a statement to its appeal to an audience (and retain if the returning visitor number is significant).
What other metrics can be used from analytics to aid an investment decision?
How will you fund your business — by Bootstrap or Investment?
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The UltraLight Start Ups network, lead by Graham Lawlor, held its December meeting with a great panel on business capital called Bootstrapping vs. Venture Funding. Financing has been an age old debate whenever start up founders discuss the initial financing needed for their business. The panelist for the ULS gathering were: Art Chang, CEO of Tipping Point Partners; Brian Cohen, Founder/President of iFluence PR and Board Member at New York Angels; Mark Davis, IT Venture Capitalist at DFJ Gotham Ventures; and Dennis Mortensen, Director of Data Insights at Yahoo! and founder of Canvas, Evonax, and IndexTools.
Altogether the panelists provided the overview of what the outcomes are for choosing bootstrapping or seeking venture capital and angel investment. Dennis offered great cautionary comments on accepting venture capital for the sake of increased value (and at the expense of founder control), and that an acceptance of venture capital can be in a sense a “defeat” for the entrepreneur — the business is asking for capital to cover expenses to a milestone. Having successfully sold his businesses, Dennis is a strong believer in entrepreneurs building equity in their business.
Mark Davis provided the audience with a great chart that matched business structure to financing structure, stating that businesses should “simplify the decision process for capital”. Brian reinforced the idea, stating that the one question start-ups must answer is “How does the money help to achieve the goal?” In fact Brian’s reference to “capital as a tool” is one of my favorites, because I believe the same. He also stated how one investment group, Band of Angels, had 60% of its investments underwater, that venture capitalists generally have a poor success track record, with about 1 in 14 invested businesses succeeding.
Art summed up the concepts of value creator (creating value for the customer) and wealth creator (creating wealth from an investment) — because of these concepts, Art warned, entrepreneurs (value creators) can be at odds with investors (wealth creators) when it comes to investments and the associated terms.
Art provided some truly memorable statements, but his best comments sums up a consensus view of the panelists – “Don’t focus on the capital. Focus on the proof of concept.” No matter how capital is selected, a great action for a business is be analytical with how well it is deploying the capital.
From a web analytics perspective, reviewing captured data — time on site and visitor recency, for example — can provide insights into customer needs and wants, but the data can also imply how capital can best be used to meet those customer needs and wants. For example, if customers are more interested in a start up retailer’s webpages that display blouses over the pages that display slacks, then the retailer would consider not tying up so much inventory in slacks. Or the retailer can use keyword performance to get an idea of what it should be offering, and can adjust its funding request accordingly. The key is to be alert to how to use a business’ best tool, capital.
The UltraLight Start Up network is one of the best groups I have encountered in my time here in New York. With presentations by entrepreneurs of all services, the ULS group is an excellent network for resources and true-blue idea exchange. To learn more about the group, take a look at the website as well as viewing the group on Meet Up.