eCommerce Analytics

I am a bit discouraged today. I am surprised that we have not had more takers on our free customer scorecard application. Granted we have not unleashed the Social Media channel on the tool but I figured that after a week of availability we would have 10% more customers. The customers that have used it are overwhelmingly surprised of the results but I still wonder if the tool’s purpose is clear.

One of the leading, and might I say insightful, retail marketing professionals, Kelly Mooney, recently posted a blog titled: “Myths about online Retail Marketing”. In the blog she does a great job of providing an analysis of several marketing myths and there are a couple of takeaways that directly support how we perceive our tools to add value.

Read How Predictive Analytics Optimizes Frugal Environments »

Kevin Hillstrom has an excellent post today entitled Customer Retention: The Myth where he says improving customer retention might sound like a good idea but is actually quite difficult to do. I agree with his assertion that retention rate, average order value, and orders per buyer are difficult to improve in the short term, but I, perhaps unlike Kevin, I think that there can be real immediate gains to be had by trying.

Read Customer Retention: a Tough Needle to Move? »

Seems like you can’t turn anywhere this week without hearing more about the stimulus package currently being debating in Congress. Last night, almost every channel carried the hour-long press conference where the President took questions about the economic downturn and how current actions are supposed to help us going forward. I have to admit that I eventually fell asleep while watching (new baby), but I did stay up long enough to hear Obama talk about how the economic health of the nation is reflected in the economic health of consumers…and if I may expand on his words a bit…with the economic health of businesses. So the question for many of us is how do we stack up – how well are we actually doing?

Read Do You Pass the Customer Base Fitness Test? »

Not sure if you’ve used any of HubSpot’s Graders. Right now the Graders come in three flavors (Website, Press Release, and Twitter) and one in-progress flavor (Facebook Profile). Whether or not the latter two offer anything but ego-validation for single, consumer adherents - as opposed to true metrics by which businesses can assess their efficacy - is still TBD. But one thing is obviously true, the Graders tap into an innate need to contextualize ourselves, to rank ourselves. They also tell us how just a few metrics tell us a lot about how good we are. It’s this aim to simplify the complex, and to do so in a way that still portrays the full story, that moved us to build the Customer Scorecard.
Read Fans of Twitter Grader Should Check Customer Scorecard »

Tags: acquisition, customer health, Customer Scorecard, purchasing behvaior, retention
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