How to understand your consumers for your eCommerce business

E-commerce businesses are booming in today's digital age. Understanding the customers of an e-commerce business is essential to the success of the business. There are a few key ways to understand the customers of an e-commerce business.

The first way to understand the customers of an e-commerce business is to understand the customer's needs. What does the customer need? What are they looking for? What do they want to achieve by using the product or service? By understanding the customer's needs, businesses can tailor their products and services to meet those needs.

Another way to understand the customers of an e-commerce business is to understand the customer's buying journey. What are the steps that the customer takes from when they first become aware of a need or want, to when they make a purchase? By understanding the customer's buying journey, businesses can better align their marketing and sales efforts to match the customer's journey.

Finally, businesses need to understand the customer's profile. This includes understanding who the customer is, what their demographics are, and what their interests are. By understanding the customer's profile, businesses can better target their marketing and advertising to reach the right customers.

But how do you do that? Well, here is some practical advice on the tools that can help you to understand your customers, and not only base your knowledge on trending eCommerce products.

Tools you need to understand your costumers

E-commerce businesses are constantly trying to better understand their customers. By understanding their customers, they can provide a better product or service and keep them coming back. Here are a few ways to get to know your e-commerce customers.

1. Use data analytics

Data analytics can help e-commerce businesses track customer behavior and preferences. This information can be used to improve the customer experience by, for example, suggesting products they may be interested in or providing personalized recommendations. Some useful free tools for an e-commerce business are:

• Google Analytics: It provides in-depth information on your site's traffic, including how your visitors find you, which pages they visit, how long they stay, and much more.
• Matomo: You can use it to track all of your e-commerce conversions, as well as any other goals you've set up on your site. It can monitor multiple sites at once.
• Clicky: One aspect that sets Clicky apart from their main competitors is the live information made available to website owners. It also has a free demo that you can use before purchasing a plan.
• Crazy Egg: This software better than many other solutions because it offers some very comprehensive and yet user-friendly graphs, along with in-depth information about traffic. It offers a 30-day trial that is free.

2. Conduct customer surveys

Customer surveys are a great way to learn about customer needs and expectations. They can be used to gather feedback about a recent purchase or to find out what people think about your product or service. Don't base your customer interaction only on social media or a contact page. Sending your customers regular surveys is a more hands-on approach.

3. Engage with customers on social media

Social media is the platform for engaging with customers. E-commerce businesses can use social media to answer customer questions, provide customer service, or learn about new customer needs. Trending e-commerce products can easily be identified on social media platforms, especially TikTok.

4. Use customer service data

Customer service data can be a goldmine of information about your customers. By tracking customer service interactions, e-commerce businesses can learn about common customer concerns and pain points. This information can be used to improve the customer experience. You need to keep in mind GDPR regulations if you are based in Europe. It si not enough to alert your clients that your site uses cookies. You also aren't allowed to keep or sell data about your customers. Of course, this doesn't apply to their behavior on your website (metrics), as long as you don't make that data public.

5. Conduct customer focus groups

Customer focus groups are a great way to get in-depth feedback from a group of customers. They can be used to gather feedback about a new product or service or to get insights into customer needs and expectations. In this case, you can talk to your customers on social media, to see what are their needs, if you don't have the budget to hire a specialized business.