It is important to correctly represent data when trying to understand it. This is why visualization is so important in the eCommerce world. By representing data visually, we can often glean insights that would otherwise be hidden when looking at numbers and statistics alone. In this article, we will guide you through the latest trends in data analysis and visualization, as well as provide you with examples of great, mostly free tools!
The utmost importance of data visualization in eCommerce
The sheer number of data generated by eCommerce platforms and marketing software overwhelms the possibilities of marketers. They begin to realize that, without real-time, consolidated feed, they wander in darkness:
- Only 58% of marketers say they are often successful in achieving their marketing goals (Responsify),
- Only 29% of marketers said they had no issues or delays in getting results from automated campaigns (VentureBeat).
Let’s say you want to get to know customers better. This will be much easier if you have in place integrated charts and graphs that show your customers’ age, gender, location, preferences, interests, transactional data, etc., on one screen. This information can help you understand your customer base better and make decisions about how to market to them, without meticulous comparisons, number by number.
You will also find visualization and aggregation invaluable while trying to understand trends. By looking at data over time, we can see how consumer behavior or preferences have changed. This information can help us decide what products to stock or what marketing strategies to use – or abandon as ineffective.
Finally, you can use visualization to compare your business against the competitors. By looking at metrics such as revenue or page views (if you can get such data about competition, of course), you can see where your business falls in comparison and make changes if necessary.
Omnichannel Growth Intelligence
At SALESmanago, we define Growth Intelligence as “Merging human and AI-based guidance enabling pragmatic and faster decision making for maximum impact.”
It means drawing lightning-fast, and at the same time, correct conclusions from data coming from various sources, e.g., marketing software and eCommerce platform.
This process is more than just having vast amounts of data. This is intelligence. And it is necessary for successful growth – hence the name.
eCommerce businesses need to track their performance in basically all channels at the same time and understand how each channel performs to allocate marketing spending accordingly.
A dashboard can help you do just that. A dashboard is a collection of graphs and charts that give you an overview of your business performance. It allows you to see how your store is performing, based on data gathered from various marketing channels – site, marketing software, Web – Push, SMS. It shows how effective your campaigns are and how much revenue you make from each source.
A dashboard can also help you track your progress over time. By seeing how your business is improving or declining month by month, you can make the necessary changes to stay on top of your game.
Marketing managers, specialists, and even CMOs must understand their customers – demographics, behavioral and transactional data. By looking at aggregated, clearly visualized data such as age, location, gender, interests, product preferences, transactional history, or behavioral data, you can understand at a glance who your customers are and their preferences.
How to make your Growth Intelligence intuitive, lightning-fast, and pinpoint-accurate, all at the same time? Check out these trends and tools for 2023!
Top 4 trends and 11 tools of data visualization in 2023
Data Democratization
In a recent survey of 500 business leaders, 90% said data democratization was a priority for their business.
Simply put, data democratization entails opening up data access to all users. In a company context, this implies that IT involvement is not necessary for every data-related task. Users across the organization can independently access data, conduct analyses, and generate data visualizations.
This unrestricted access to data empowers employees with the necessary information to make informed business decisions and enables them to create visual representations to effectively communicate those decisions to company leadership.
No-code/low-code solutions play a central role in facilitating employees’ ability to perform their own data analysis and create visualizations. These solutions allow individuals with limited or no coding experience to customize their data experiences.
Who excels in data democratisation in eCommerce:
Amazon, one of the largest eCommerce companies globally, uses data visualization to democratize data across various teams within the organization. They have a robust data analytics platform that provides real-time dashboards and visualizations to their employees. These visualizations enable employees to gain insights into customer behavior, sales trends, inventory management, and other key metrics. By making data easily accessible through visualizations, Amazon empowers employees across departments to make data-driven decisions and optimize their operations.
Shopify, a leading eCommerce platform, understands the importance of data democratization for its merchants. They offer a built-in analytics dashboard called Shopify Analytics, which provides merchants with valuable insights into their store performance, sales trends, customer behavior, and marketing effectiveness. The platform offers a wide range of visualizations, such as charts, graphs, and tables, making it easy for merchants to understand and act upon their data. This empowers small and medium-sized businesses to make informed decisions and optimize their online stores for better results.
Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade and vintage products, emphasizes data democratization through their data visualization tools. They provide sellers with a Seller Dashboard that offers various visualizations and analytics related to their store’s performance. Sellers can track their sales, traffic sources, customer demographics, and product performance through intuitive charts and graphs. This enables Etsy sellers to gain actionable insights into their business, understand market trends, and optimize their listings to improve sales.
Useful tools:
Google Data Studio is a powerful and free data visualization tool that allows eCommerce companies to create interactive dashboards and reports. It integrates with various data sources, including Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and databases, making it easy to connect and visualize data from different eCommerce platforms and marketing channels. With its drag-and-drop interface and customizable widgets, users can create visually appealing and insightful dashboards that can be shared with teams or stakeholders.
Metabase is an open-source business intelligence tool that enables data exploration and visualization. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows non-technical users to easily query databases, create visualizations, and share interactive dashboards. eCommerce companies can use Metabase to connect to their data sources, such as transaction databases, customer databases, or marketing platforms. The tool supports various visualization options, including charts, graphs, and tables, allowing users to gain insights and make data-driven decisions. Metabase’s collaborative features also make it easy to share dashboards with team members.
Real-Time Visualization And Analysis
According to a 2022 survey conducted by DataStax, 78% of respondents expressed that real-time data is indispensable, while 71% acknowledged its direct influence on revenue growth.
Harnessing real-time data for insights grants companies a tangible edge over their competitors. Businesses equipped with real-time data visualization can expedite strategic decision-making, enhance risk management efficiency, and identify emerging opportunities ahead of others.
Furthermore, business users have the capability to design dashboards that amalgamate real-time data with historical data, thereby enabling more robust analyses.
Who excels in real-time visualization and analysis in eCommerce:
eBay employs data visualization for real-time visualization and analysis. They have developed a platform called eBay Analytics, which provides sellers with real-time insights into their sales, performance metrics, and customer behavior. Sellers can access interactive dashboards that display visualizations such as sales trends, top-performing products, and customer demographics. These real-time visualizations enable sellers to monitor their business, make informed decisions, and optimize their listings and pricing strategies for better results.
Alibaba understands the value of real-time data visualization for analysis. They utilize their internal data analytics platform called Alibaba Analytics Cloud (formerly known as QuickBI) to provide real-time dashboards and visualizations to their merchants. The platform integrates with various data sources, including transaction data, inventory data, and customer data, to generate real-time insights. Merchants can leverage interactive visualizations to track sales, monitor inventory levels, analyze customer behavior, and identify emerging market trends. Real-time data visualization empowers Alibaba’s merchants to respond quickly to changing market dynamics and make data-driven decisions in real-time.
Useful tools:
Apache Superset is an open-source data exploration and visualization tool that supports real-time data analysis. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows users to connect to various data sources, including databases, data warehouses, and streaming platforms. eCommerce companies can leverage Apache Superset to visualize real-time data streams from their eCommerce platforms, such as transaction data, website analytics, or inventory updates. The tool provides a wide range of visualization options and interactive dashboards, allowing users to monitor real-time metrics, identify trends, and drill down into specific data points.
Grafana is a popular open-source visualization and monitoring platform that supports real-time data analysis. It integrates with a wide range of data sources, including time series databases, log files, and APIs. eCommerce companies can utilize Grafana to connect to their real-time data streams, such as order processing systems, inventory management systems, or website analytics platforms. The tool offers a variety of visualizations, including graphs, charts, and gauges, enabling users to create real-time dashboards to monitor key metrics and detect anomalies. Grafana’s alerting and notification features also allow eCommerce companies to receive real-time alerts based on specific data thresholds or conditions.
SALESmanago’s eCommerce Dashboard puts all of the company’s vital data in one place—from sales to revenue attribution, to digital marketing performance. Using dashboards clearly visualizes data from both eCommerce and Marketing platforms, helps to bridge the gap between the two, and minimize the risk of incorrectly linking events in the store.
This makes it easier to gain a better grip on business activities, giving eCommerce ability to access your live 24/7. As a result, with this more comprehensive view of the store and its operations, businesses can make better decisions while optimizing marketing strategies, leading to greater ROI. It is a powerful feature for marketers, allowing them to identify key areas of opportunity and maximize the impact of their actions. Visual charts and graphs provide a quick snapshot of the performance of different aspects of the business, including loyalty building effectiveness overview. Detailed omnichannel revenue attribution provides business with a comprehensive overview of different marketing activities’ performance.
Animated And Interactive Visualizations
Roughly 65% of the population has a preference for visual learning and retains information most effectively when it is presented in video format.
Animated and interactive data visualizations provide viewers with an opportunity to comprehend the evolution of data points over time. This type of visualization allows creators to convey narratives and illustrate concepts without relying heavily on text, which is particularly valuable given the limited attention span of individuals in today’s society.
Animated visualizations not only distinguish themselves from other digital content but also engage viewers more effectively compared to static visualizations or text.
While basic data animations emerged in the early 2010s, they often emphasized flashy animations with imprecise visuals. However, recent visualization techniques have become significantly more sophisticated. Data creators now possess the capability to design 3D zooming experiences, manipulate information by employing offsets and delays, and demonstrate data relationships through the concept of parenting.
Who excels in real-time visualization and analysis in eCommerce:
Zalando, a popular European fashion eCommerce platform, leverages data visualization to create interactive and animated visualizations for their customers. They provide a feature called Fashion Insights that uses data-driven visualizations to showcase fashion trends and inspirations. Customers can explore interactive charts, maps, and visualizations to discover popular fashion items, trending styles, and outfit inspirations. Zalando combines data from their vast inventory, customer preferences, and external fashion trends to create engaging and dynamic visualizations that enhance the browsing and shopping experience.
Target Corporation, a renowned retail company, uses data visualization techniques to provide animated and interactive visualizations for their employees. They have developed an internal analytics platform called “Target Pulse” that offers real-time insights and performance metrics for different departments and teams within the organization. Employees can access interactive dashboards and visualizations that provide animated updates on sales trends, inventory levels, and customer behavior. These visualizations enable employees to track their progress, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance their operational efficiency. The animated and interactive nature of the visualizations in Target Pulse helps employees engage with the data more effectively and facilitates a deeper understanding of key metrics.
Useful tools:
Tableau Public is a popular data visualization tool that offers a free version for public use. It provides powerful capabilities for creating animated and interactive visualizations. eCommerce companies can leverage Tableau Public to create dynamic visualizations that showcase sales trends, customer behavior, and product performance. The tool supports various interactive features like filters, drill-downs, and tooltips, allowing users to explore data and uncover insights. Tableau Public also enables users to add animations and transitions to enhance the visual storytelling aspect of their visualizations. By utilizing Tableau Public, eCommerce companies can create compelling and interactive visualizations to engage their audience.
D3.js (Data-Driven Documents) is a JavaScript library that enables developers to create animated and interactive visualizations on the web. It provides a wide range of data visualization components and functionalities, giving developers full control over the design and behavior of their visualizations. eCommerce companies can utilize D3.js to create custom animated charts, graphs, and interactive data visualizations that suit their specific needs
Flourish is a web-based data visualization platform that offers a free tier with limited features. It provides an intuitive interface that allows users to create animated and interactive visualizations without coding skills. eCommerce companies can leverage Flourish to build dynamic visualizations such as interactive charts, maps, and storyboards. The platform offers a wide range of animated transitions, interactive elements, and customization options. Users can easily import their eCommerce data and create engaging visualizations that can be embedded on websites or shared with stakeholders.
AI and machine learning data visualization
74% percent of machine learning use cases now revolve around performance analysis and reporting.
One of the prominent trends in data visualization for the foreseeable future involves the integration of AI and machine learning. These technologies will continue to play a crucial role in the development of high-quality data visualizations. Without them, data visualization efforts may prove inaccurate and ineffective in the long term. This is because humans are not always efficient at categorizing raw data, and relying solely on human analysis can result in biased views and outcomes.
AI aids businesses in accurately categorizing data, particularly customer feedback, in real-time and based on specific requirements. This eliminates the need for employees to undertake tedious tasks, such as manually tabulating data for extensive hours, which often leads to biases and errors. By automating this process, particularly with the assistance of AI, businesses can obtain unbiased and accurate feedback, which can be used to make well-informed decisions.
Furthermore, AI can assist businesses in identifying data visualization trends that may not be easily recognizable by humans. With these insights, businesses can create more effective data visualizations that provide valuable insights into their operations. Additionally, AI can be employed to develop predictive models that enable businesses to anticipate future trends and adapt accordingly.
Who excels in AI and machine learning data visualization in eCommerce:
Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service, leverages AI and machine learning data visualization to provide personalized recommendations to their customers. They collect a vast amount of data about customer preferences, body measurements, and style preferences. Stitch Fix utilizes AI algorithms to analyze this data and generate visualizations that help their stylists understand customer preferences and make personalized clothing recommendations. The visualizations may include style profiles, trend analyses, and visual representations of customer feedback. By employing AI and machine learning data visualization, Stitch Fix enhances the personalization of their service and provides customers with a more tailored shopping experience.
Instacart, a popular online grocery delivery service, leverages AI and machine learning data visualization to support their employees in optimizing their delivery routes and operations. The company collects extensive data on customer orders, delivery addresses, traffic patterns, and historical delivery performance. Using AI and machine learning algorithms, Instacart analyzes this data and generates data visualizations that provide real-time insights to their employees, such as delivery drivers and operations managers. These visualizations include optimized route maps, predicted delivery times, and recommendations for efficient order batching and assignment. By visualizing data-driven insights, Instacart’s employees can make more informed decisions, streamline their operations, and improve the overall delivery experience for customers.
Useful tools:
Google Cloud AutoML is a suite of machine learning tools that includes data visualization capabilities. eCommerce companies can leverage AutoML to build and train machine learning models using their own data. The platform offers data visualization features to explore and understand the dataset, identify patterns, and gain insights. With AutoML, users can visualize data distributions, feature correlations, and model performance metrics. These visualizations help eCommerce companies analyze their data and make informed decisions regarding feature selection, model training, and model evaluation.
TensorFlow.js is an open-source library for machine learning in JavaScript, enabling eCommerce companies to create AI-powered data visualizations directly in the browser. It allows developers to build and train machine learning models using JavaScript and visualize the results dynamically. TensorFlow.js provides tools and APIs for creating interactive visualizations such as charts, graphs, and heatmaps. eCommerce companies can use TensorFlow.js to visualize AI predictions, model outputs, and decision boundaries, offering a more intuitive understanding of the underlying machine learning processes.
H2O.ai is an open-source machine learning platform that offers a free version called H2O.ai Community Edition. It provides data visualization tools and libraries that enable eCommerce companies to explore and analyze their data in the context of machine learning. With H2O.ai, users can visualize datasets, feature distributions, and model performance metrics. The platform also supports interactive visualizations for model explanations and feature importance analysis. H2O.ai simplifies the process of visualizing AI and machine learning data, making it accessible to users without extensive programming skills.
Perceive information through data
According to Capgemini’s findings, marketers do not make data-driven decisions as frequently as they should. At SALESmanago, we do not criticize this situation. It is easy to say, “You have so much data, just use it!” without considering the daily reality of marketers’ work, which demands numerous actions to be taken with limited time for in-depth analysis. In such circumstances, should marketers invest their time in meticulously analyzing numbers and charts from various sources, or should they simply rely on “intuition” (a fancy way of describing decisions made without analysis)? They face a dilemma regardless of their choice.
Instead, we offer solutions like the aforementioned eCommerce Dashboard. These tools, along with others discussed in this article, assist you in making data-driven decisions on the spot. Finally, technology eliminates the burdensome choice and empowers marketers to make lightning-fast decisions based on a solid foundation of data.
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