A few years ago, a UI/UX guru on the usability front said that customers navigation through the pages of an ecommerce site is like moving around a shopping centre. We now add: with one fundamental difference. Browsing on the website offers brands the opportunity to collect a huge amount of data on searches, preferences, interests that is still difficult to track in the store.

If on the one hand commitment and resources are required to create an ecommerce that is clear and simple to consult and interact with, respecting privacy regulations, on the other hand the effort is reciprocated by a significant increase in information on consumers, whether they are customers or prospects. Knowledge of their online behavior is of great value to the business and can become the key to success in your relationship, allowing you to deliver experiences and digital communications tailored to each individual, through retargeting campaigns.

More time spent online, more ecommerce purchases

Social distancing has given a boost to the digital transformation that leads people to spend more time online. Various analyses claim that in Italy at the beginning of 2021 there were around 50 million connected users, with a penetration of 82%.

Among the first reasons why consumers use the Internet, there is the search for products and services, as well as the purchase and use of the same. More and more people are buying online, preferring mobile over desktop, thus reducing the gap between the two modes of access.

Consumers are proving to feel comfortable online, they love to shop online, they move fast and while browsing here and there, they leave behind numerous traces, data and information that are crucial for brands.

It should be noted that these trends do not seem to be reversed in the future. On the contrary, the new shopping habits that place ecommerce alongside the store will remain even when all the restrictions due to the pandemic are overcome, reinforcing more and more omnichannel shopping experiences.

Web browsing data

However, the presence online of your contacts is not only confined to the moment of purchase, which ends with payment. To maximise the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, you need to record consumer behavior before and after and use this information for activities that capture their attention, guide them in their searches and make purchases, reducing abandoned sessions and increasing conversions of visitors to customers.

For a successful digital marketing strategy, you have to collect web browsing data as well.

Monitor page views and understand who are repeat visitors and who are first-time visitors. Understand the entry points, which products or services they visit or how long they stay in. All this information is useful for immediate up-sell or cross-sell and for building and implementing personalised and differentiated contact plans or customer journeys over time, paying attention not only to content but also to timing and message delivery channels.

The Contactlab Marketing Cloud

Don’t let precious opportunities pass you by. The Marketing Cloud gives you the tools you need to track your online activities.

By appropriately configuring your website and a Javascript source in the platform, you can write the information on your unique profile automatically. And so you can, for example, decide to target all contacts who have viewed a particular page even more than once, over a certain period of time, but without completing any purchases. Or reserve a special birthday discount for the purchase of the product viewed in the previous month but not purchased. Or simply identify the campaign with which the contact landed online and monitor following behavior, measuring the effectiveness of initiatives and providing you with the data you need to refine future initiatives and maximise their returns. The values recorded are constantly updated.

All this with the certainty that your activities comply with privacy regulations simply by configuring the platform so that, if a contact has denied consent to the use of a particular piece of information, even if your ecommerce system notifies the action, it is not recorded on the profile.

So, if you still have doubts, please contact us. Together we will look at your needs, tell you industry best practices and guide you step by step through the collection of web information. Put your contacts at the heart of your strategies and empower your business.