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Streamlined Metrics, Data Pipelines, and Sources of Truth with Analyste
Annalise Ashdown Lee is the head of business intelligence at Analyste, where her team helps startups distill and manage their data, so they can focus on growth.
Prior to Analyste, Annalise worked in operations across a range of industries spanning apparel, beauty, and health. The Tydo team caught up with Annalise to discuss data pipelines, how she builds custom dashboards, and why brands should work from a single source of truth.
Distilling Data Into Dashboards
At Analyste, every client has a different set of needs and a different set of key questions. To dig into those questions, Annalise leverages custom-built dashboards using Tydo’s platform.
Her clients tend to be most interested in retention dashboards and cohorts. After looking at cohort data, they typically ask questions that focus on when customers are coming back and what they’re purchasing across multiple revenue events within a time window.
With cohort analyses, Annalise works directly with clients to define the parameters of each cohort, whether it’s month over month or specific batches of time corresponding to product drops.
When onboarding new clients, the goal is to set up automated dashboards that deliver actionable insights in real time. But, Annalise notes that the first step is always understanding their questions and pain points on a day to day and week to week cadence. Then, she’ll dive deeper.
“Each client is inherently different. They ask their own set of unique questions, and they hone in on unique metrics. Using Tydo, we can deliver custom solutions.”
Designing Streamlined Pipelines
When Annalise first starts working with a DTC brand, she finds that most of them ask two questions: where’s our data going, and who has access to that data?
As it relates to the data movement and storage pipelines, Annalise explains that while data sets permanently live in Shopify, she links Shopify to a secure warehouse via end-to-end encryption, where data can be safely queried and analyzed.
Then, after understanding the client’s questions, bottlenecks, and ongoing pain points, she determines what sales and demand dashboards already exist and then designs a streamlined, custom solution—created to save a client time and introduce accuracy and consistency into their reporting.
When it comes to forecasting, Annalise’s approach focuses on mapping the forecast and the calculations that go into it to the brand’s real-time thought process. She adds that the rationale behind forecasting can be quite variable, thus the need for clear and concise mapping.
For example, a client might be focused on optimizing for a retail partnership, looking at a product with strong seasonality, or managing cash. In her words, these use cases all require different calculations and recommendations that are then distilled into custom dashboards.
“Data is often a foreign language to folks. It takes work to get brands on board, but once they get up to speed, they’ll see that their data is extremely powerful.”
Constructing a Single Source of Truth
Annalise and her team partner with early-stage brands who don’t have full-time data hires, but they do have seemingly endless data needs. With all her clients, she stresses the importance of keeping Shopify clean from an accuracy and security perspective.
If data is changed or handled too much, human error can easily be introduced. And, that only makes analytics more complicated, more expensive, and less accurate. That’s why Annalise recommends working from a single source of truth, in her case leveraging Tydo.
She points out that there’s often a significant need for accuracy and specificity around inventory recommendations because it’s extremely costly to get that wrong. In addition, workforces are increasingly distributed and agile, so teams really do need to be aligned around the same data.
For emerging brands looking to upgrade their data ops, using an Analyste dashboard is faster than starting from scratch with any spreadsheet tool out there. Annalise creates a set of rules so that the data gets cleaned through the same process every time. Put simply, her work drastically reduces the margin of error for emerging brands.
“We start by identifying and isolating our clients’ pain points. Then, we get everyone on the same page by working from a single source of truth.”
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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