11.3 Sales Data Analysis
To conduct a sales analysis, a clear objective, collection tools, an analytical study, and the willingness to make changes is required. Here’s the process, broken into four steps:
- Determine a sales metric to analyze
- Collect data using analytics tools
- Analyze your results
- Apply your findings to future initiatives
1. Determine a sales metric to analyze
Start the sales analytics process by picking a metric you want to study. This could be sales pipeline velocity or the performance of a sales channel. By focusing on a specific metric and not getting too broad, you improve your chances of achieving actionable insights. For instance, studying a specific Instagram ad campaign might give you more precise knowledge than bunching together all your social media campaigns from the past year.
2. Collect data using analytics tools
You can sort through customer data by using tools like Google Analytics, Shopify Analytics, Zoho Analytics, or Microsoft’s Power BI. They can help you monitor site traffic, user behaviour on your site, and the overall sales funnel. These tools can also turn data into reports filled with charts and graphics, making it easy for your team to recognize trends in the data.
3. Analyze your results
Use your raw data to analyze your company performance and learn about how your customers interact with your website or ecommerce store. Analysis often works best when you’re comparing two things, such as website traffic in two successive quarters or the total sales volume of two similarly priced products.
4. Apply your findings to future initiatives
You may find that you’re pricing your products too high—or too low. You may find that customers tend to leave your site at a certain point in the sales funnel, which could indicate problems with the user experience (UX). The true value of sales analytics comes when you take action to address your findings, make changes, and then reassess your sales metrics over time.
“Sales Analytics 101: Everything You Need To Know” by Shopify Staff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License unless otherwise noted.
