Give Your ECommerce Operation a Data Science Boost Posted on : Mar 04 - 2021

Many retail stores remain closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, forcing countless outlets to move their operation online, many for the first time. With eCommerce retail becoming an increasingly competitive space, data science is playing a key role in giving retailers a competitive advantage, particularly for those businesses hoping to make a longer-term investment in their online presence.

Data-driven decision making uses facts, metrics and data to inform strategic business decisions that align with a company’s goals, objectives and initiatives. It subsequently enables companies to create new business opportunities, generate more revenue, predict future trends, optimise current operational efforts and produce actionable insights.

There are many ways in which data science can revolutionise eCommerce businesses and, in this article, we take a look at some of the most important.

Shopping Cart Abandonment

The shopping cart abandonment rate is an important metric for eCommerce sites to track because a high abandonment rate could signal a poor user experience or broken sales funnel. A sales funnel should run seamlessly from marketing to product selection to checkout, bringing potential customers to a purchase through a series of marketing actions such as automated emails, videos, articles and landing pages. Today, the average cart abandonment rate in online retail is 69.57%, which is $18bn lost every year.¹

There are many possible causes of cart abandonment, making it a complex problem to tackle. Beyond simply improving and optimising the shopping experience through A/B testing, a key strategy for dealing with cart abandonment is shopping cart recovery.

The following methods can be used to entice shoppers to recover items in their cart.

1. Abandoned cart emails or text messages – If the user entered their email address or phone number during the checkout process before leaving the website, then there is the opportunity to send them an abandonment message. This usually takes the form of an offer or discount code to entice the user to return to the site and complete the purchase.
2. Abandoned Cart Retargeting – Ad retargeting is another powerful tactic in cart recovery. With retargeting, retailers place an ad pixel on their checkout page and then can remarket to those users on platforms such as social media and Google. The advantage of retargeting is that it works even in the absence of personal information such an email address. View More