Making the Most out of the Online Shopping Experience

I love jewelry. I take no shame in admitting that I am an avid collector and admirer, and I was more than happy to use an e-commerce jewelry retailer as the subject of my research and analysis this week. After learning more about SEO and search results through a comparison of two jewelry retailers for our class discussion this week, I was intrigued and wanted to keep digging. After doing some preliminary research, I found an interesting case study by AcquireConvert founder, Giles Thomas, on ByCharlotte, a jewelry retailer.

ByCharlotte, an Australian-based jewelry company, operates from both a physical location in Sydney, Australia, and online through a Shopify account (Thomas, 2016). Shopify is an e-commerce solution that business owners can use to host and build a store website (“Shopify,” n.d.). The platform allows business owners to create a customized storefront, showcase their products, and provide a secure checkout experience for their customers. Shopify also provides management resources, such as shipping integration, order tracking, add-ons for multiple applications, and even analytics reports. The analytics data available to Shopify users depends on their specific plan.

Call Tracking and Analytics

No matter which generation you were born in or how tech-savvy you are, sometimes nothing can beat a simple phone call and the ability to talk through your questions with an actual human being. Getting direct answers to your inquiries can save time and aggravation for you, and the ability to provide personalized help and further marketing to customers who are interested enough to call is an invaluable opportunity for businesses. Because phone calls are an undeniable part of the marketing mix for both consumers and businesses, tracking these calls is crucial to understanding the impact of marketing campaigns.

CallRail is a call tracking application and technology partner with Google Analytics. The app serves more than 40,000 businesses across North America and is continuing to grow (“Call Rail,” n.d.). CallRail is self-service, with an easy to use setup and interface for marketers who are anxious to analyze and use call data to optimize their campaigns. The app shows marketers the reality of their current marketing efforts and reveals how callers found their companies by offering the ability to “track calls from online and offline marketing campaigns, view which campaigns are driving conversions, and records calls for lead qualification” (“Call Rail,” n.d.).

Clicky - A Web Analytics Tool

 If you are going to have a website for your business, you need to have a web analytics tool. This is crucial in order to measure the impact of your organization’s online presence, monitor your traffic, better the user experience, and ultimately, optimize the ROI of your website to promote the overall success of your brand. To have a website without the ability to measure its performance is to be like “a general engaging the opposition sans intelligence” (“Clicky Web Analytics,” n.d.). While there are many web analytics tools out there to help provide the intelligence you need to lead your brand to success, choosing the right one for your business will give you the insight needed to not only optimize your online performance, but to succeed against your competitors in the marketplace.