We often hear about how important Data & Analytics is to business, but no one actually stops to think how what exactly is meant by the term ‘Data & Analytics’. At this point, to many, it’s just another fancy buzz word that you use to impress your friends and family.
Well us here at Riwaya are looking to bridge the gap between jargon and giving you the tools to elevate your business through our marketplace platform. You can find out more about Riwaya here
As a proud data-led organisation, we feel like we can help bridge the gap a little to help explain what it’s all about and importantly, how it can help you and your business!
We’ll start off by explaining what Data & Analytics mean. Data in business can mean a lot of things and the reason is that there is usually a data point created for all aspects of your business. You upload a product to your website — that’s a data point, you login to your business bank account — that’s a data point, a customer uses PayPal at checkout — you guessed it, that’s another data point!
The analytics part comes in when you get all these random data points and then trying and build it together so you can actually do something about it. An example of analytics could be combining all the different ways someone pays for your order, you can then see which methods people are using the most, those that they don’t like or the ones they are having issues with. Then you can do something about it, given your data and analytics. Viola! A data-led action.
If that makes sense, we’ve put 5 different ideas of tools and tips on how you can use data & analytics to improve your business
1) Google Analytics — Tool
We’ll start off with the most widely used tool. Google analytics is a free and incredibly useful tool for online business to understand their customer base better. Google analytics gives you data points on pretty much everything you need to know about your site. How many users, when are they going on your site and for how long, what are they doing and where are they coming from plus a lot of other details.
You can create dashboards or funnels to understand what it is you do well and what you need to improve on. One example could be how customers get to the checkout page, if you see they are leaving at a particular stage then try and make that page more shopper-friendly.
You can sign up for Google Analytics here: https://analytics.google.com
Some of the data points you can see at Goolge Analytics
2) Better decision-making — Idea
Data and analytics can help you make better decision making. By getting your data together, you can start to see trends and patterns emerge. This can then inform your decision-making on what you need to do next to take your business to the next level!
Notice category A is doing really well but category B isn’t? Maybe you run a new marketing campaign highlighting category B. Or maybe you don’t want to sell category B anymore because it is too expensive to maintain. What you eventually do is your choice but it's important that you’ve made your decisions based on your interpretation of the data rather than just a gut feeling.
3) Improved efficiency — Idea
We’ve briefly touched on this point in the previous two but it is so important we had to expand on it. Efficiency is key to running a successful business. 20% of businesses fail in their first year and by the end of year five, half would have failed. The most cited source of failure? Lack of money. One way to mitigate against this is to improve efficiency in your business to help you to keep costs low whilst still providing an excellent service for your customers!
You can use data and analytics to better aggregate and understand your expenditures. By understanding your expenditures, you can better take actions to reduce them and keep your business thriving for longer! This is just one example of improving efficiency, but it spreads throughout the organisation from how you answer customer questions to how your customers go from your website to checkout.
4) Improved productivity — Idea
By using data and analytics you can better get an understanding of what’s going well and what’s going not so well. It’s incredibly easy to try and reinvent the wheel when things aren’t going your way, but as a result, you’ll most likely end up feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to focus on.
By having an understanding of how to use data and analytics, you’ll be able to understand the main bottlenecks and pain points in a more manageable way. Rather than getting overwhelmed you can make productive steps in improving your business!
5) Riwaya — Analytics
As the world’s first premium online Islamic marketplace, we’re looking to elevate not only how we do business but how our sellers do business too! That’s why every seller who joins our marketplace gets access to Riwaya Analytics.
Riwaya Analytics gives you instant access to your sales reports, monthly reports, Category Reports, Top performing products, and much more. At a click of a button, you get access to information that can take your business to the next level.
With no joining & listing fees, you can join the Riwaya revolution here
