How to use your B2B web store analytics to reduce costs

As an e-commerce specialist, you’ll be used to companies telling you to harness your data. Naturally, this is sound advice but what do you do once the harness is in place? How do you keep this abundance of information from spilling over and becoming a hindrance rather than a help? And how do you use your analytics insights to cut costs and achieve the efficiencies that will keep you one step ahead? Let’s take a look.

How to track B2B marketing ROI

Monitoring and tracking the ROI of your marketing channels and campaigns ensures you stay on the front foot. However, the complex nature of B2B e-commerce keeps even the most experienced marketers on their toes, so you need to be extremely proactive to meet its demands. Here’s how:

• Set clear goals and objectives: Define success metrics such as increased sales, higher website traffic, or more email sign-ups to evaluate the effectiveness of each channel and campaign.
• Monitor web store performance: Track key metrics such as abandonment rate, bounce rate, page views per SKU ordered, percentage of orders researched online and offline, and view-to-basket conversion rate.
• Track costs: Record all expenses related to each marketing channel and campaign, including ad spend, production costs, and fees to accurately calculate ROI.
• Measure revenue: Use your e-commerce platform to track sales from each channel. Then, regularly review data to identify high-ROI campaigns and compare each campaign’s performance against industry standards and past campaigns to spot trends. Then, prioritize tactics and channels that attract and engage visitors and drive conversions.
• Benchmark and analyze: Compare performance against similar web stores and your historical data to understand how sub-categories like products and locations influence key performance metrics. Then analyze this data to identify trends and optimize strategies. Your e-commerce platform should be able to help you do this easily and efficiently.

How to optimize your web store to reduce costs and increase ROI

Optimizing your web store creates a superior personalized user experience, boosts engagement, and increases conversions. Coupled with powerful analytics, you can pinpoint underperforming pages or elements, reduce development and maintenance costs, and create the seamless user journeys your customers deserve. Here are a few tactics to consider:

• Use tools like heatmaps and session recordings, and cross-reference with drop-off and bounce rates to understand how users interact with your website and identify which pages or features aren’t engaging users.
• Once identified, either enhance these elements to boost engagement or remove to streamline the user experience.
• Use data insights to refine the sales journey and conversion funnel. Auditing content inventory, simplifying navigation, reducing clutter, and improving page load times can lead to higher conversions and lower bounce rates, ultimately reducing customer acquisition costs.

Enhancing operational efficiency with data-driven strategies

Your business’s profitability depends on efficient operations that maximize productivity and minimize waste. Bottlenecks are your enemy, so seek them out as priority, using process analytics to improve workflows and real-time sales data to maintain optimal inventory levels, inform demand forecasting, and reduce excess stock and storage costs.

Maintaining a complete view of your business data ensures you keep sight of your goals and avoid operational issues or unexpected costs. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by integrating your e-commerce and ERP systems. This approach synchronizes your data to one centralized location, improves process automation, streamlines logistics, mitigates error, and enhances marketing personalization.

If you’re curious about ERP integration, you can get inspired by Claygate, a distributor that saw a 33% increase in monthly sales, a 70% increase in average order value, and a 67% decrease in phone inquiries to the sales team after integrating their ERP with their e-commerce platform.

How effective customer support analysis boosts ROI

Reducing costs and improving efficiencies doesn’t mean letting customer service standards slip — far from it. By using analytics to identify common customer issues, you can address them promptly, increasing satisfaction and loyalty and enhancing the buyer journey. Here are a few tips to get you started.

• Analyze customer support interactions to identify and address recurring issues proactively.
• Implement self-service options like FAQs, help centers, and chatbots to empower customers to resolve issues independently, reducing the volume of support interactions and delivering a superior user experience.
• Use predictive analytics to anticipate and resolve issues before they escalate. You can also use this data to train chatbots and provide personalized recommendations and support.

Real-world examples of cost reduction through analytics

Implementing the above recommendations is far easier with the right tools and technology. Here are just a couple of examples showing how adopting Sana Commerce Cloud significantly cuts costs, creates efficiencies, and increases ROI.

Arizona Fireplaces

Arizona Fireplaces streamlined operations, improved customer experience, and achieved seamless integration with their ERP system. No longer required to manage multiple platforms they benefited from more accurate inventory management, automated accounting processes, and data consistency enabling them to leverage complex, accurate insights for business growth.

Rather than the frustrating bottlenecks caused by their previous solution, the client and their customers now enjoyed seamless ordering processes, a user-friendly interface, prompt multichannel communications, and reduced errors.

Read their full story

AOSS Medical Supply

AOSS Medical Supply’s previous ERP-connected platform struggled with complex tasks and had poor uptime which seriously impacted customer satisfaction. When seeking a superior solution, AOSS needed a swift implementation within 140 days to reduce customer loss and time spent on support.

The new system improved personalization and streamlining sales processes, efficiently handling higher volume requests and high-value opportunities. Sana Commerce Cloud’s reliability and low maintenance — with no recorded downtime — meant AOSS could focus on strategic initiatives and save time on order management. Robust documentation enabled the team to troubleshoot issues independently, further enhancing operational efficiency.

Positive customer feedback and a 100% adoption rate highlighted the solution’s success, and has since led to increased revenue opportunities and business growth.

Read their full story

How Sana Commerce helps businesses leverage analytics for cost reduction

Sana Commerce Insights

By integrating data from your web store and ERP, including online and offline actions, Sana Commerce Cloud provides powerful insights into marketing ROI and website performance. Pre-set dashboards display key metrics for evaluating buyer behavior and tracking performance offering a complete view of the complex B2B customer journey and helping identify growth opportunities. For example, businesses can use these powerful data insights to identify high-value customers to deliver personalized offers or a VIP service. Or to re-engage lapsed customers with a timely, relevant offer based on their preferences and buying behaviors.

GDPR-compliant analytics ensure regulatory compliance, and cross-channel dashboarding consolidates sales data, empowering informed sales conversations. Performance benchmarking enables easy comparison against similar businesses and your own historical business data, identifying trends and areas for improvement. All of which puts you in the perfect position to be there for your customers, right when they need you.

Integration with ERP

Sana Commerce’s streamlined data flow provides a single source of truth, seamlessly integrating ERP, PIM, CRM, and e-commerce systems. This unified approach enhances cost analysis and decision-making by ensuring consistent and accurate data across all platforms. PIM integration connects with ERP and e-commerce stores to improve logistics and reduce costs while CRM integration prevents siloed data and inaccuracies, helping you maintain precise, up-to-date customer information.

E-commerce integration synchronizes data between ERP systems and web stores, boosting efficiency and reducing errors. Additionally, online marketplace integration streamlines order management and information flow, helping you deliver a superior customer experience while driving efficiency.

Customized KPI tracking

Sana Commerce Cloud offers a variety of customization options to track specific KPIs and metrics related to cost reduction goals. By using the platform to benchmark your web store against others on 18 different KPIs you can swiftly identify strengths and weaknesses and set goals for continuous improvement based on data from similar businesses.

This is the ideal opportunity to get valuable, real-time insights into performance trends and outliers, helping you make data-driven decisions to control costs, optimize your business, and support long-term growth.