Simple Tools Help Owners Sift Data for Eager Customers
By JULIE WEED December 12, 2012
Velvet Palate sells artisanal wines that are made in small quantities around the world and typically not stocked in stores. Selling online, said Kim Kooren, a co-founder, has allowed the company to zero in on a niche of geographically diverse customers.
Before helping to start Velvet Palate in New York in January, Ms. Kooren worked for an online media company that analyzed how effectively subscription offers and other marketing tools attracted new customers.
"We could see which Web sites people were coming from when they arrived on our Web pages, what they clicked, where they abandoned the process," she said. "And that allowed us to constantly tweak and improve what we were offering and how we were communicating."
In her new venture, Ms. Kooren said her goal had been to use online data collection and Web analytics to cater to customers' tastes.
There is nothing new, of course, about paying attention to customer needs and desires, but there is now far more data available - far less expensively - through Web analytics and customer-loyalty programs. Using basic e-commerce software along with free tools like Google Analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools, small businesses can perform sophisticated data collection and analysis that can help them compete with companies that have far greater resources.
Based on the experiences of business owners, this guide offers suggestions on how both Web-based businesses and traditional retailers can use data.
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