eCommerce Advertising: 3 Steps To Understand Consumer Behavior

In the past decade, eCommerce has seen a remarkable rise as more and more consumers jump on the online shopping wagon. Retail eCommerce sales in 2021 totaled about $5.2 trillion worldwide. Experts predict this amount will grow by 56% over the next few years. 

Such a prediction has led brands to continue developing their online shops alongside their brick-and-mortar stores. Many businesses now find it easier to open their eCommerce stores thanks to the advanced eCommerce infrastructure and platforms available today. 

Customer knowledge is essential for those engaged in eCommerce. This insight allows them to serve this growing market of online shoppers better. Studying your target market can help your business in many ways. 

First, understanding consumer motivations behind purchasing behaviors can help you tailor your products to the needs and wants of consumers, resulting in improved product offerings. Next, knowing your target market can help you create a personalized consumer shopping experience, which helps influence the consumers to follow through with a purchase. A customized shopping journey can also improve satisfaction and build loyalty.

Another benefit is it helps businesses determine how to reach and influence consumers better. When done right, knowing and understanding consumer behavior can serve as a strong foundation for driving online sales growth through effective advertising.

If you want to know more about your target market and how to turn your insights into effective advertising campaigns, here are three steps to help you out.

Identify Key Information

The first step to understanding consumer behavior is identifying which aspects you wish to expound. You can start by looking into personal, browsing, engagement, and behavioral data.

Personal data helps you identify the demographic profile of your target market, such as their location and age group. Browsing data allows you to see patterns in consumer interactions, like how consumers typically interact with your store and your existing advertising campaigns.

Behavioral data delves into why consumers purchase products. You can look into this by analyzing the consumer’s decision-making process or how branding influences their product consideration. 

You may need to define the decision-making process while analyzing it. This process consists of problem recognition, information retrieval, evaluation of options, and decision-making. 

Information retrieval is one of the stages you can focus on and improve. The easier consumers know about your products and services, the more likely they will consider them. You can also look at how brand reputation influences consumer conversion, especially regarding consumer beliefs, attitudes, and norms. 

A good balance of the three will more likely lead consumers to complete a product purchase.

Collect Relevant Data

Once you have identified the information to gather, you can start selecting the appropriate data collection tools. A classic method is using data collection surveys. 

These surveys help you identify customer needs or preferences, get customer satisfaction feedback, and identify areas for improvement. You can implement data collection surveys one-on-one through e-mail, website questionnaires, and interviews. You can also conduct them in groups via focus group discussions.

Another way to collect data is by using cookies, website analysis, or social media. Cookies are data files and other technologies that store information regarding a consumer’s browsing activity or website preferences. These codes can help you identify your consumers’ profiles, shopping behaviors, trends, and how often consumers visit your site. 

Identifying the appropriate indicators and knowing how to obtain website data can help you get insight into your consumers. Some of the information you can get from your site include its traffic volume and the time a consumer stays on a specific page.

Engaging with your target market via several social media channels is another great way to mine consumer data. Social media also lets you obtain input from more users.

Organize and Analyze the Collected Data

You can start organizing the data in a suitable format after collecting it. Otherwise, the analytics tool may generate an inaccurate or unhelpful consumer profile. 

Several customer data platforms (CDPs) are available to store and organize your collected data while ensuring data privacy and protection. Your choice of CDP will depend on your budget and its alignment with your business goals.

You can then input the organized data into an appropriate analytics tool. The analysis allows you to convert your collected and organized data into actionable insights, which can guide your advertising campaign and influence your other business decisions.

Some consumer analytics tools come as part of a package for ease of use and easy integration into your platforms. When you avail of these packages, the service provider performs all the steps in gathering consumer insight, from data collection, organization, analysis, and implementation of an effective advertising campaign.

One example is the Google Analytics suite. Linking your Google Analytics to a Google Ads account helps you seamlessly integrate your analytics insights into your advertising campaign. You can partner with a reliable Google Ads agency to help you make the most of your gathered consumer insights.

Conclusion

Customer knowledge is key for eCommerce brands since this insight lets them serve their market better. Studying and learning your target market can provide in-depth insights for any business.

Following the steps above can help you understand consumer behavior in eCommerce advertising.