Proxyrack - November 7, 2023
Global eCommerce Data Collection: A Comprehensive Guide
For online retailers, tailoring their offerings to suit the needs and trends of consumers is a critical practice. From elevating the customer experience and encouraging them to make online purchases to understanding users' habits and refining product offerings based on users' locations, the benefits of collecting global eCommerce data can be lucrative.
We've put this guide together to help you gain insights into how people shop online and get a competitive advantage on online businesses in the same space.
Here, you'll find everything you need to know about collecting eCommerce data, including key considerations before you start finding data, how to collect eCommerce data, and how proxies can make the whole process much more straightforward.
What is eCommerce data?
Global eCommerce data refers to information and statistics gathered from eCommerce businesses, i.e. online stores that buy and sell goods and services to online customers.
eCommerce data covers a wide range of metrics and insights from the online retail sector, all of which businesses and online retailers can leverage to understand the trends, behaviors, and performance of the global eCommerce market.
What are the main elements of global eCommerce data?
1. Sales revenue
A company’s sales revenue is the total monetary value of global goods and services sold through online platforms. Tracking sales revenue helps to assess the overall size and growth of the eCommerce market.
2. Transaction volume
Tracking this metric will give you an insight into the number of online transactions, including purchases, payments, and other financial activities conducted through eCommerce platforms, like competitor websites.
3. Market share
Providing information on the market share held by eCommerce companies and platforms, this metric indicates which competitors have relative dominance or competitiveness in the global market.
4. Customer Demographics
Understanding key demographics, like the age, gender, and location of online shoppers, can help your business tailor its marketing strategies and product offerings. If you want to expand globally, tracking international eCommerce transactions and cross-border shopping trends is crucial.
5. Conversion rates and average order value (AOV)
This data shows the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, usually making a purchase, and can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your eCommerce website.
The AOV represents the average amount customers spend in a single online transaction. This data can help your business gauge its revenue potential and profitability.
6. Shipping information and payment methods
Using this data, you can find shipping times, costs, and delivery options and how they can impact customer satisfaction and influence buying decisions.
Gaining an insight into how people like to pay for their goods or services can help you make changes that improve the customer experience.
7. Mobile Commerce (m-Commerce) Data
Understanding how many people use mobile devices for online shopping, including mobile app usage and mobile-friendly website design, can help you identify areas for development and track how customers use your website.
8. Security and Fraud Trends
Information on online security threats and fraud incidents will help your eCommerce company protect its customers and business.
9. Customer Reviews and Feedback
Monitoring customer reviews and feedback on eCommerce platforms is valuable for maintaining and improving the quality of your products and services.
10. Competitor Analysis
Analyzing data on competitors' strategies, pricing, and customer reviews can help your business stay competitive in the eCommerce market.
Why should you collect eCommerce data?
Collecting eCommerce sales data can help your business make informed decisions, optimize operations, and adapt to market trends and customer sentiment changes. eCommerce data also serves as a valuable resource for researchers and policymakers to understand the impact of eCommerce on a global scale.
Ultimately, insights from eCommerce activities enable data-led decision-making, which can support commercial growth far more effectively than assumption-based tactics.
Preparing for data collection
If you think collecting eCommerce sales data will benefit your online business, you can’t just dive in head first and hope for the best. You’ve got to plan with precision.
This way, you can ensure the data collected is relevant, accurate, and actionable. To see the best results from any eCommerce data collection efforts, we recommend taking the following steps to prepare before getting started.
1. Define your objectives
Determine the specific goals and objectives of your data collection efforts. What do you want to achieve with the data you collect? Are you looking to optimize sales, understand customer behavior, improve website performance, or something else?
2. Select key performance indicators (KPIs)
Identify the key metrics and KPIs that align with your objectives. Common eCommerce KPIs include boosting sales revenue, conversion rate, average order value, and reducing customer acquisition costs.
3. Choose data sources
Decide where you will collect data from. eCommerce data can be sourced from your website, mobile app, social media, email marketing, third-party platforms, and more. Ensure that you have access to the necessary data sources.
4. Data collection tools
Select the tools and technology required for data collection. The eCommerce platform your company uses may have built-in analytics tools, but additional software or services may be needed for more in-depth analysis. Standard tools include Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and eCommerce-specific analytics platforms.
5. Ensure compliance with data protection laws
When you collect eCommerce sales data, you must adhere to strict privacy regulations. To do this, familiarize yourself with relevant data protection legislation and ensure your collection, storage, and deleting methods comply with the law.
6. Consistent reporting
You can set up automated reporting tools to regularly share key insights with stakeholders. Continuously reviewing and refining your data collection and analysis processes will provide a complete picture of customer activity and insights. You must also stay updated with industry trends and technologies to adapt to evolving customer behavior and market dynamics.
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How to collect eCommerce data
Collecting eCommerce data involves gathering information about online sales, customer behavior, and website performance. To make your data collection tasks a little easier, we've listed some typical methods and techniques to collect eCommerce data below:
1. eCommerce analytics tools
You should utilize tools like Google Analytics or platforms your eCommerce software provides, e.g. Shopify Analytics. These tools offer pre-built features to track retail sales, conversion rates, and customer behavior.
2. Tracking pixels and scripts
Implement tracking pixels or JavaScript tags on your eCommerce website to track user interactions, page views, add-to-cart actions, and completed purchases. You can do this via Google Tag Manager.
3. Third-party integrations
Integrate your eCommerce platform with third-party tools and services specializing in data collection and analysis. To gather additional data, you can integrate CRM systems, email marketing platforms, and customer review services.
4. Cookies
Use cookies to track user behavior and preferences. Cookies can store information about user sessions, cart contents, and past interactions, allowing you to personalize the shopping experience and analyze user journeys.
5. Customer surveys and feedback forms
Collect qualitative data by using surveys and feedback forms on your website. Ask customers for their opinions and suggestions, which can provide insights into their preferences and pain points.
6. Social media monitoring
Monitor social media platforms to collect data on customer sentiment, mentions of your brand, and product discussions.
7. Email marketing
Analyze data from email marketing campaigns, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Email service providers often offer detailed analytics reports.
8. Inventory and product data
Collect data on your product catalog, including SKU details, product descriptions, prices, and inventory levels. This information is essential for managing your eCommerce store.
9. Customer support and CRM data
Incorporate data from your customer support interactions to analyze information relating to customer inquiries and complaints.
When collecting eCommerce data, it's essential to prioritize data security, privacy compliance, and ethical data handling practices to protect customer information and adhere to relevant regulations. Regularly review and update your data collection methods to adapt to changing customer behaviors and market dynamics.
Eight ways to use proxies for global eCommerce data collection
Proxy servers can be valuable tools for collecting global eCommerce data and enhancing analysis processes. Here are nine ways proxy servers can help you:
1. Geographic data collection
Proxy servers allow you to route your requests through servers located in different geographic regions. This feature is handy for collecting eCommerce data from various territories. By using proxies in specific countries or regions, you can mimic your target audience's location and test your eCommerce website's performance in different global markets.
2. IP rotation
Proxies enable IP rotation, so you can switch between IP addresses as you collect data. This reduces the chances of your IP being blocked or websites rate limiting you, which may restrict access to scrapers or bots. By rotating IPs, you can collect data more efficiently and avoid being detected as a scraper.
3. Data scraping and web crawling
Proxy servers are commonly used for web scraping and crawling tasks. They enable you to gather product information, prices, reviews, and other eCommerce-related data from multiple websites and sources. Proxies make it easier to distribute scraping requests across different IPs, reducing the risk of being banned or blocked by websites.
4. Anonymity and privacy
Proxies provide a level of anonymity when collecting data. This can be beneficial when gathering competitive intelligence or monitoring competitors' pricing strategies, as you can do so without revealing your identity or IP address.
5. Content localization
If your eCommerce data collection involves checking the availability of products, prices, or content on your website from various locations, proxy servers can help you simulate a user's experience in different regions. This is useful for ensuring your website offers global customers a consistent and relevant experience.
6. Load balancing
Proxies can distribute traffic across multiple servers or data centers, helping to balance the load and ensure consistent performance when collecting data from high-traffic eCommerce websites. This can improve the efficiency and reliability of data collection processes.
7. Security
Some proxy servers offer security features, such as filtering malicious traffic or encrypting data transmissions. This can help protect your data collection activities from threats and ensure the data's security.
8. Performance testing
Proxy servers can simulate user traffic and interactions with your eCommerce website from different locations. This is useful for performance testing, load testing, and assessing website responsiveness in various global markets.
It's important to note that when you use proxy servers for data collection, you should respect the terms of service and policies of the websites you access. Some websites may restrict web scraping or data collection activities, so gathering data responsibly and ethically is essential.
Proxyrack makes collecting global eCommerce sales data easy
With a high-speed data center or residential proxy from Proxyrack, you can kick-start your global eCommerce data collection and leverage the data to set your online store apart from your competitors.
As well as being super reliable, our proxies offer full anonymity when browsing, so you can track commerce sales from competitors with complete peace of mind.
Start collecting global eCommerce data with Proxyrack.
FAQs
How can you collect eCommerce data from different countries?
Using a proxy from Proxyrack, you can change your browsing location to the specific country from which you want to collect global eCommerce data. Analysis of this data can help you to refine your offering and improve sales in the location of your choice.
