Greetings, friend.
It gives me great pleasure to introduce Alex Trinidad to you. Alex is a risk and security advocate in one of the world’s leading cybersecurity solutions. He has committed to providing valuable information on the importance of cybersecurity through diverse topics on security solutions like endpoint protection for enterprise, internet security suites, mobile device security and a lot more.
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Big data has become more popular in recent years as businesses have learned to tap it into making crucial decisions. Big data has helped in seeking and fixing problems, in telling how the business fairs, and in justifying causes for action.
We believe that there is more that we need to understand when it comes to big data. And when we do learn more, there are lots more we can do with it. We further believe that big data is the future of e-commerce.
E-commerce is the sweet spot of business and technology, making it an ocean of Big Data. Some of the information that flows to and from an e-commerce business includes inventory, sales data, payment data, delivery information and others. Consider just how much transactions happen in one day and you’ll see just how much overwhelming all the numbers would be. Without an efficient big data processing system, it would be a complete nightmare!
Big Data also opens a lot of doors for an e-commerce business. It opens the opportunity for the analysis of sales, for the efficient tracking of transactions with issues, for forecasting demand and supply, for planning out expansion, and a lot more things. Big Data truly has a lot to offer for e-commerce and that is why its understanding essential.
What are Concrete Examples of Benefits that Big Data Provide for Ecommerce?
One of the most known e-commerce companies is eBay. There are around 164 million active buyers in eBay daily – imagine just how much data that would lead to! One of the biggest challenges for eBay is not only having a data warehouse system that can store that much data but to give meaning to these data and use this intelligence in order to drive sales even more.
For eBay, big data serves as a tool that helps them improve and personalize user experience. With big data analytics, eBay is able to recommend similar items to the one a guest is searching for. eBay is also capable of detecting fraud thanks to predictive machine learning that roots from the analysis of previous transactions. eBay has placed a lot of time and effort in understanding big data and to make actions about the knowledge that can be taken from it.
Alibaba is another key player in the e-commerce industry. One of the purposes that Alibaba uses big data for is the assessment of credit risk for its small-loan business. This is done through the analysis of cash flow, of the behavior of suppliers and customers, and of sales growth.
Big data has surely played a huge part in keeping these two e-commerce giants on the forefront of the e-commerce industry. Making use of big data to understand their businesses better has given them the ability to know the right thing to do in order to keep them at the top of their game.
How Can Big Data Help Your Ecommerce Site?
Big data can serve you in a lot of ways. We already know how some of the e-commerce giants have made use of big data to their advantage. There are some more ways on how big data can help you out. Thanks to the effective analysis of big data, you will be able to do the following:
1. Provide a Personalized User Experience for Your Site’s Visitors
The e-commerce experience used to lack personal touch, preventing the user from having any connection with the business. A buyer will have to go through all products, without highlighting the ones that he is most interested in.
Thanks to big data analytics, you will be able to recommend items that the user usually looks for. You will also be able to send personalized promotions for the user, giving him those that really mean something for him. For example, a user usually searches for gadgets, then he will receive recommendations and promotional materials related to smartphones and laptops but not those for clothes and shoes.
READ: 5 Ecommerce Tips to Improve Your User Experience and Increase Conversions
User experience does not end on our websites, but on security as well. While big data has the potential of skyrocketing our sales, it is also prone to security mishaps if not used properly. As of this moment, our best bet in securing ecommerce transactions lies on SSL certificates, which AltusHost also provides.
2. Be Agiler when it Comes to Pricing.
Your pricing strategy is one of the key determinants on whether or not a consumer would buy from you or from your competitors. It will be all too easy for your visitors to check other ecommerce sites in search for the best deal. It is just illogical to pay more for the same item when it is offered cheaper on another site.
Checking your competitors’ prices every now and then would be too tedious. With big data analytics, you will have the ability to check how much your competitors tagged their products so that you will be able to respond accordingly.
3, Turn Visitors Into Actual Buyers.
The ultimate goal of spending time, effort, and resources into understanding big data is to help you improve your business and this is evident when you attain a higher conversion rate or turning more visitors into actual buyers.
With big data, you will be able to know more why certain visitors end up leaving, as well as why certain others decided to buy. This way, you will know where you need to improve so that more visitors will make purchases.
4. Manage Your Inventory Efficiently.
Big data will help you manage your inventory better. You will be able to automatically deduct products that went through the sales process successfully, as well as to add those products that have been returned.
Big data analysis also allows you to predict demand so that you can get the right amount of supply. By determining how many of certain products are needed for certain periods, then you will not waste money on having too much, nor would you lose potential sales by turning down transactions because you are out of stock.
WHY NOT NOW?
We have mentioned a lot of good things about big data but there is one more thing that we should say: you will still have to wait a little more before jumping into big data analytics. Lots more are needed to be done before big data can be fully understood. Smaller payers in the e-commerce industry must let the giants spend resources on utilizing big data until it comes to the time where there would be big data processing systems that can provide clear results all the time for everyone.
In a bigger sense, big data is also controlled by the company that handles the data from your ecommerce website. If you are a small to medium-sized business that’s into big data analytics, consider using an endpoint protection service for your company to protect the data from being compromised.
True enough, big data is the future of e-commerce. It is safe to believe that this future is not too far away. As e-commerce leaders try to dig deeper into big data, more can be discovered on how we can better utilize this valuable resource. Soon, the entire ecommerce industry can tap into it.
Big data is indeed the future of ecommerce.
The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
