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In a world rife with messy and inconsistent first-party data, the importance of clean reporting in eCommerce cannot be overstated.
Fortunately, data reporting platforms have lowered the barrier to entry for brands looking to become more data-driven and drive sustainable growth.
But when faced with the option to build a custom reporting solution from scratch, or simply buy from an established provider, which option is best for your unique brand?
Let's dive into the key benefits, pitfalls, and requirements of building vs. buying a data reporting solution.
Who should build a data reporting platform?
While any brand, regardless of size, can benefit from a custom data reporting solution, an ideal candidate for building often has:
- A staff of highly-trained data engineers/scientists
- Vast and diverse product catalogs
- Reporting requirements that fall outside the capabilities of off-the-shelf options
Brands that will benefit from building often require reporting that is specifically tailored to their products, customers, and business goals.
The key element here is flexibility.
For example, say you're an apparel company with thousands of SKUs and dozens of product collections.
If you need to group your reports specifically to illustrate a buyer persona, most off-the-shelf reporting options won't accommodate such a request. This is where a custom reporting solution would be beneficial.
Steps to build a custom reporting solution
Constructing a custom reporting solution is a challenging task — from planning to execution and maintenance.
As you progress through your decision-making journey, take note of the following steps required to build a custom solution:
1. Extract, transform, and load (ETL)
This step requires extrapolating your data from multiple sources (Facebook Ads, Shopify, etc.), converting it into an analysis-friendly format, and loading it into a large central repository called a data warehouse.
This process often takes a week to complete — and will require your brand to onboard both a data integration engine (AirByte or BigQuery) and a data warehousing solution (Snowflake or MongoDB).
Pro tip: The database you choose to warehouse with will impact your coding language.
2. Select your data visualization software
With your data secured, it's time to choose software that will enable you to transform raw data into engaging visuals.
There are several options here (PowerBI, Tableau, etc.) that range from simple drag-and-drop, to a heavy reliance on coding prowess.
Data visualization software that is geared for user friendliness tends to cost more ($1500+ monthly), while options that rely on strong coding prowess sit at the lower end of the fiscal food chain.
3. Hire data scientists/engineers for maintenance and execution
The final step in the building process involves hiring a small team of data scientists that will execute reporting code and address maintenance-related issues. Expect this team to spend approximately 12-20 hours per week on upkeep alone.
Who should buy a data reporting and visualization tool?
The ideal buy candidate still views data reporting as a cornerstone to their brand's success. However, their reporting needs lie well within what most providers can deliver — so they favor simplicity and efficiency overall.
The ideal buy candidate has the following:
- Clear and consistent north star metrics
- Emphasizes ease of use, low maintenance, and low fixed costs
- A drive to bolster data reporting beyond the capabilities of free solutions
Let's use one of Tydo's clients, YUZUCO, as an example.
As the largest importer of yuzu juice in the U.S., YUZUCO had a clear understanding of the key metrics needed for success but wanted more insight into which channels were the most impactful.
Our team at Tydo helped YUZUCO construct a custom reporting dashboard, enabling them to track its most popular product lines, returning customers, and revenue in real time – saving countless hours of manual data reporting every month.
“Tydo is equipping us with the data to know what investment we should make going forward.”
- Griffin Owens, Co-Founder of YUZUCO
Steps to buying a reporting tool
Unlike the building process, the buying process only requires your brand to onboard a white-glove reporting solution.
This typically involves three easy steps:
1. Discovery
Your brand uses discovery platforms (G2, Capterra) to identify data reporting solutions that align with your business and its reporting goals.
2. Intro call and proof of concept
During this step, the provider will learn more about your business, its challenges, and ideal reporting preferences. The provider will also share a quick proof of concept to give your brand a taste of what it's like to work with them.
3. Launch
Your brand launches its reporting solution — driving value from day one.
Key benefits and pitfalls of buying reporting software
Benefits:
- Rapid deployment and ease of reporting
- Low fixed technical costs and maintenance
- Readily available customer support
Pitfalls:
- Less customization
- Lack of control on updates and new features
Choosing the reporting path that's right for your brand
To both enterprise and emerging brands, building a custom reporting solution is an enticing idea. However, you have to weigh the costs and risks against the benefits before taking decisive action.
Buying from an established data reporting provider can save your brand time, energy, and resources — empowering you to make smarter decisions faster.
Want to see what Tydo can do for your brand? Book a personalized walkthrough today.
What to pledge- How to improve
- Which tools will set you up for success
Resolution
I think the most important thing brands can do in 2023 is to better manage their customer data—both ethically and effectively. There’s an opportunity for brands to know their customers better than ever before—a clear benefit for both the customer and the brand. When you manage your data correctly, you’ll create stronger and more personalized ads, creative, site experiences, and so much more.
Tip
This is a classic: Let the data guide you. Go where the buyers for your products are and communicate with them on a personal level (i.e. by persona and funnel position) and nurture those relationships (past, present, and future customers). It’s possible—all through data.
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Resolution
We recommend that Shopify brands analyze and update their websites using data-driven decisions. Using analytics tools such as heatmaps and scrollmaps can help brands better understand how customers are interacting with their store.
Tip
Store owners tend to make assumptions about the way customers interact with their website. Most never go back and analyze their design choices to find pain points or areas of opportunity. By using heatmaps and scrollmaps, they can see where real customers are clicking and concentrating their attention. Leveraging this data, brands can start to iterate on design and make their online store experience streamlined and intuitive.
Tool
Hotjar provides a simple way to implement heatmaps, scrollmaps, and recorded user sessions on your site, helping you acquire incredibly informative user data. Additionally, it gives you the ability to create on-site surveys, which allows you to obtain direct and often critical feedback from users about their experience.
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Resolution
Test various attribution models and analyze the impact on your business. At Fifty Six, we are always here to help our clients identify and optimize their approach—a critical step in any successful marketing strategy.
Tip
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times–Customer Lifetime Value. And even more importantly, Future Lifetime Value (FLTV). With the ever-growing importance of first-party data, it is crucial that brands take a good look at their CRM and FLTV metrics.
Tool
OrderlyEmails is our go-to tool for transactional emails. It helps us level up our brands’ email aesthetics with customizable, quick-to-implement Shopify templates.
Lately, I’ve been really interested in Smile.io’s loyalty platform. Their UX is fantastic for teams with low bandwidth!
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Resolution
Stop allocating budgets to low-hanging fruit that doesn’t move the needle on conversion. Think about what’s really going to improve your CX and the return of undertaking different initiatives—not just on what’s top on your list of bugbears on the site!
Tip
One of the best ways to understand your customer behavior is by using HotJar. Their heat-mapping and screen recording tools shine a light on where customers are navigating to and from on your site, where they're rage clicking and experiencing frustration, and where conversion is dropping off within real life customer journeys and flows!
Understanding your customers’ pain points via data and analytics , will allow you to work with your CRO/CX Agency to solve customer frustrations and improve conversion.
Tool
Rewind backs up all product, customer, and order data for Shopify sites—essential since Shopify itself doesn’t provide this solution. It's saved so many of our clients time and money from administrative accidents.
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Resolution
33% of customer service inquiries are pre-sale questions. What does this mean? If you’re not investing in customer service, you’re missing out on revenue-generating opportunities.
Tip
The benefits of elevating your customer experience:
- 10% to 25% increase in AOV for customers who engage with live chat pre-purchase
- 21x higher conversion rate for customers who reach out via Live Chat or SMS compared to other site visitors
- 87% of customers who have a great customer experience will make another purchase
- 72% of customers share positive experiences with 6 or more individuals
Tool
Gorgias is our favorite Helpdesk platform. They can reduce costs by 35%, primarily by decreasing the average ticket handle time. Their machine learning algorithms are trained on millions of ecommerce-related interactions across Gorgias’ customer base and provide accurate, automated replies for the most common ecommerce inquiries. This helps our agents resolve tickets faster, which provides the customer a seamless experience.
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Resolution
Trust your agency! Agencies do the same things across multiple brands and niches, so we see the trends and have the practice and experience!
Tip
Don't be afraid of data and insights. If customers aren't clicking on your emails, try a new CTA. If your ads are driving good metrics at a small spend, start scaling. If your customers are complaining about a product, look into QA! If the data tells you something isn't working, let it go and try something else!
Tool
I'm supposed to say Tydo, right? 😉
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Resolution
Double down on differentiation. There will be a lot of headwinds this year and standing out from the crowd will set you apart.
Tip
A picture is worth 1,000 words. A video? Probably millions. In ecommerce that value translates into engagement, acquisition, and retention—everything you need to impact your bottom line.
At soona, we've seen the we've seen the impact of creative and the continuous split testing of it yield results. Our resolution is to challenge ourselves and double down on innovation and creative optionality so that each brand we work with can distinguish themselves in a crowded sea of D2C ecomm. We'd love to see our brands share this resolution and keep pushing the creative limits.
Tool
Klaviyo. We're using it to power our email and newsletter at soona too!
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Resolution
Optimize your returns strategy! This can lead to valuable customer insights, enhanced user experiences, and increased revenue and customer loyalty.
Tip
Brands need to dive deeper into understanding their customers to set themselves up for success. Conduct research to gain insights into customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. By doing so, you can develop targeted strategies that will enhance customer experience and boost overall retention.
Tool
Right now I would say Gorgias. Having a good customer service tool is crucial to building strong customer relationships.
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Resolution
Start paying heavy attention to data, specifically around retention. We see a lot of effort put towards acquisition with the assumption that once someone buys, they are your customer forever. Instead, get to know your customer, understand their needs, and analyze their behaviors once they are on-site and judge their sentiment after they have visited. Work with a retention focused and data-driven agency to implement tools that contribute to repeat business and customer delight. It will pay dividends.
Tip
When surveyed, about 80% of ecommerce merchants think that they are delivering a great experience to their customers. However, when the same customers are surveyed, only 8% of those customers think that they are getting a great experience from the merchant. Now, more than ever, retaining loyal customers is an essential part of any online business and you should spend time with your customers to judge their experience with your website and products and offer improvements based on that feedback.
Tool
Tydo's report cards are an essential tool, along with Klaviyo for email and SMS, Recharge for subscriptions and memberships, Okendo for reviews and surveys, Rebuy for AI driven collections and upsells, Loop for self service returns... each tool is great on their own, but their strength as the ultimate tool comes from when they are used together!
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Report Cards
Report Cards is a customized glimpse into your business, delivered to your inbox for free.
Report Cards consolidates all your key metrics across platforms for an at-a-glance pulse of your business.
Discover metrics for every team member so they can stay updated with the right data on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
It's free because we believe everyone should have access to the basics.
Portfolio
Portfolio is a hub for analytics across multiple Shopify stores. The perfect tool for agencies.
See an aggregate view of all your data for all your stores in one place.
Make real time assessments on marketing initiatives across every storefront you manage.
Analyze the performance of one store versus another in seconds.
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Here at Tydo, we try to highlight DTC founders who run their business in various ways. And, that's because there's no "right" way to run a DTC brand.
This project illustrates exactly that. Whether it's how a founder supports their team or how they talk about mental health in the workplace, every founder has a different approach. How do they discover these different approaches? One way: reading. Discover the greatest books that have changed the way 15+ founders think about or operate their business.
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