Big Data: The Treasure Trove for eCommerce Industry

In today's cognitive world, data is the new oil. Every digital business in every corner of the world wants to leverage data to offer differentiated customer service and fuel business growth. This is especially true for the ecommerce sector that has emerged as the game-changer in the technology-driven economic landscape.

Personalizing User Experience

The biggest positives that ecommerce businesses offer are the ability and convenience for customers to view, compare, and buy items using a payment option convenient for them. Similarly, sellers get a global, ready-made customer base, which they can tap easily. Since the users—both buyers and sellers—are tech-savvy, ecommerce businesses must harness data in a way which enhances user experience. As a result, players in the business are using big data to analyse user behaviour on their platforms and offer personalized services. Based on the items viewed, ecommerce platforms suggest newer products that the customer may be interested in. For instance, some e-retailers are going a step further and creating an entire personalized wardrobe, based on customers online purchase behaviour.

Fighting Fraud

An important use case of big data for ecommerce business is to fight fraud. Since ecommerce platforms entail large-scale spending and acceptance of money, there are greater chances of fraudsters trying to abuse the platform for stealing money and conning unsuspecting genuine users. Harnessing the data they possess, ecommerce businesses can gain insights into the behavioural patterns of the users and differentiate between genuine users and bad actors. This enables businesses to quarantine the bad actors while continuing with the business as usual.

Key Constituent of Business Strategy

Increasingly, ecommerce businesses are realizing that the data they possess can not only enhance customer experience, but also increase revenues, reduce operational costs, efficiently manage risks, and comply with the changing regulations. Therefore, they would do well to include big data analytics as an essential component of their overall business strategy given the fact they are operating in a digital world.

The article has been written by Neetu Katyal, Content and Marketing Consultant

She can be reached here.