Use data sets to pinpoint customers
How can big data be leveraged to gain competitive advantage? Who is using it in the most effective way? How can it be properly analysed? It’s spawned conferences, dedicated websites, ebooks – you name it.
Understanding how to use big data and getting the most from it is one of the biggest opportunities for online retailers, but also one of the biggest challenges. So what exactly are people talking about and how can it be used?
What is big data?
By definition big data is a collection of data sets that are so large and complex they can be difficult to process using traditional data management systems. This data is created by any action we take be it online shopping, phone calls, online searches etc.
“When we use the term big data we are referring to the huge amounts of data we are collecting,” explains Jamie Turner, CTO of Postcode Anywhere.
“The modern day consumer now generates so much data; big data is evaluating these piles of data and trying to make some sense out of it. Big data can be used to create insights to help businesses or governments make better decisions and ultimately be smarter.”
Can it be used by smaller companies?
This kind of data has a lot of offer ecommerce professionals. Companies such as Amazon are famed their clever use of big data. It’s famously successful recommendation system uses shoppers’ data to make tailored suggestions which result in increased sales for the ecommerce behemoth. But getting the most out of important data is not just for the big guys – all online retailers collect big data and all of them can benefit from it.
“The biggest challenge for most ecommerce businesses is to collect, store and organise data from multiple data sources,” says Turner.
“Rather than concentrating on the amount of information being gathered, retailers need to focus their efforts of the quality of the data they are collecting. In doing so, they can be sure they use only accurate, consistent and relevant resources when trying to improve the customer experience.
“But big data is a complete waste of time without good housekeeping. You will never obtain a positive return on investment from big data if the quality of data is poor. Without clean data, your big data initiatives are likely to take longer, cost more, and deliver fewer benefits.”
Working out what data to look at
It’s good to understand what data you are interested in and how you will use it before you start out. You are already collecting huge amounts of data but some of it is more valuable than the rest. Think about what your targets are for the company and where you can improve.
This information should help you to formulate a plan of which pieces of data to concentrate on. Are you loosing a lot of conversions at the checkout? Look at the data around check-outs and see of patterns occur, that way you can solve the problem.
Big data doesn’t have to be scary
At times, it can feel just too much to manage – an unfathomable wilderness of data sets. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
“Big data is not as scary as it sounds. Sometimes we get caught up in the “bigness” of big data and forget that it really means being able to put all relevant data to use in real time,” says Matt Asay, VP of corporate strategy at 10gen.
“Fortunately, today’s best big data technologies tend to be very flexible, allowing e-retailers to experiment and iterate with their big data projects. So, for example, new NoSQL technologies like MongoDB have a flexible data schema, which allows e-retailers to easily change the kinds of data they collect based on tests to see which data is useful, and which isn’t.”
There are business-analytics consulting firms out there who are happy to help if you feel you need an outsider’s input but saying that there are also a number of open source platforms which can help you to manage your data. Apache Hadoop is just one example but there are many out there.
“E-retailers needn’t go chasing expensive and scarce “data scientists.” It’s far easier to train existing employees on big data technologies like MongoDB and Hadoop than it is to train an outside “expert” on one’s business,” says Asay.
“Increasingly, such technologies are also available as hosted services, making it even easier to get started as there’s no need to install the software in one’s data centre.”
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