4 Ways You Can Use Product Analytics to Drive Sales

Ecommerce sellers typically spend a ton of time gathering customer data and analyzing buyer behavior - and that's not a bad thing. But focusing the bulk of their reporting energy on customers doesn't mean that brands should lose sight of product analytics - after all, who's buying from you is only one piece of the puzzle. Another huge piece? What they're buying.  Effective product analytics has the power to transform your SKUs into actionable insights - insights that you can use to inform your selling strategy, optimize product performance and drive your profit margins.  There are countless ways you can utilize product analytics to help you understand your performance and discover opportunities. Here are our top 4:

1. Gain insights about hot products

Most online retailers have a pretty good idea about which products are their best sellers. (And if you use Glew, you have easy access to segments of your high-volume, high-margin and most-profitable products). But for insights you can act on, we like the Hot Products segment. This segment, defined as products that have the largest growth in orders period-over-period, enables you to find the products that are selling well for you, right now, and maximize that success. (This segment is automatically available in Glew under Products > Segments).  How to use Hot Products:

 
• Increase exposure of your hot products by showcasing them in campaigns and in prominent places on your website
 
• Improve cross-sell and upsell opportunities by offering your hot products in bundles
 
• Better scale your future purchasing decisions

2. ...and cold products

As important as it is to understand your top-selling products, it's also critical to understand what products aren't selling as well - as every merchant knows, keeping unpopular inventory on hand can cost you big-time. And just like you can use Glew's product segments to figure out which of your products are hot and flying off your shelves, you can also use them to figure out which products you're having trouble moving at a given time. Cold Products is another prebuilt segment in Glew, defined as products with the largest drop in orders period over period. You'll find this in the same place, under Products > Segments.  How to use Cold Products:

 
• Identify any issues that are causing your sales of specific products to drop
 
• Lower the prices on your cold products to try to move them faster
 
• Create a limited-time promotion that drives urgency

3. Understand your product LTV

Merchants normally think of LTV in terms of customers - how much revenue will your customers generate for you, over the course of their entire relationship with your brand? But looking at LTV on a product basis can tell you some really impactful things, too:

 
• What's the average LTV of customers who have purchased your individual products?
 
• Do you have products that translate into especially high-LTV (or low-LTV) customers?
 
• What products are your highest-LTV customers actually purchasing?

This can help you prioritize which products to spend more marketing dollars and time on, segment products to the right audience, utilize products effectively for retention and acquisition and more.  Sign up for our webinar on 4/18 at 11:30 AM EST to learn more about how to use product LTV to maximize profitability!

4. Identify and cross-sell your top bundled products

One of the most impactful things product analytics can tell you? Which products are often bundled with other products. You can then use that information to make product recommendations, fuel upsell and cross-sell campaigns, and drive your average order value up.  A good place to start? The products that are most frequently purchased with your best-selling products. In Glew, you can click into any individual product to see the other products often bundled with it, as well as your customers who've purchased that product. You can take that customer list and use it for a campaign to cross-sell those popular bundled products, as well as use those products in targeted Facebook ads, site placements and more.  

Product performance reports - made easier with Glew

Your product performance can change quickly - so don't wait to log into Glew to see how you're doing. You can use the Reports functionality to create automated reports for different product analytics that will help you make better product, sales and marketing decisions.  For example, creating a a weekly report on your Top Bundled Products can help you determine which products should be featured together on your website, or sold as a package. A weekly report breaking down your product segment performance will tell you what products are performing well in certain channels, what's hot and cold, what's being returned frequently and what's about to sell out.  See more reporting ideas in our Top 10 Reports guide!