Big data applied to e-commerce in order to boost sales

One of the Technologies which have experienced a bigger growth in recent years is the one known as Big Data, that is to say, applying analysis on big volumes of data in order to optimize processes and being aware of market trends. Those companies with a greater digital presence are where Big Data takes on greater relevance, being e commerce a clear example.

Knowing your client´s vision of your company, your prices or your competitors´ actions are key points to reach success. Internet generates millions of data every day. These data, if processed and analysed provide great value to companies.

How can we apply Big Data to e-commerce? Its application is very diverse, ranges from managing brand reputation (in social media, blogs, forums, etc.) to study market trends or price optimization. If we concentrate in pricing, we can determine questions of great importance such as:

• Price feeling we are transmitting to clients in relation with the competition. Are we more expensive or cheaper?
• Average price comparative by category and brand in contrast with main competitors. Knowing this information will help us detecting in which families of brands, our price is out of market and therefore we are losing sales
• Competitors´ Assortment growth rhythm (In thousands of references). This is a very clear indicator in order to detect which competitors are expanding its business at a higher speed.
• Determine approximate stock levels the competition works with
• Knowing the price distribution (quartiles) of other companies in our industry, will help us determining the market segment they are targeting
• Price trend on a certain period of time. Are our competitors increasing or decreasing their prices? Being able to breakdown this information by categories and brands, will allow us to be aware of their strategies.
• Finding out our competitors´ catalogues sizes, as well as the amount of references and brands they work with, is vital information in order to make our e commerce grow.
• Analysing which of our competitors is more dynamic in terms of pricing, counting the number of price changes they carry out during a certain period of time.

As shown, there are many metrics we can analyse applying Bid Data to e- commerce. Having this valuable information available will allow us to take the right decisions to keep ahead of the competition.