– Not all tools claiming ROI and attribution are equally effective in driving conversions.
– Many tools focus on quick wins rather than long-term business building techniques.
– It is important to evaluate tools based on their ability to provide valuable data, increase revenue, and offer context for improving the customer journey.Evaluate your tools and prioritize those that provide valuable data, direct functionality for increased revenue, and context on how they are improving the customer journey.Every tool you have is claiming ROI and a piece of attribution. It’s not possible for them all to be driving the same sale. So instead of looking at attribution for driving a conversion, look to the value that a tool is providing to help you gain the next conversion from someone completely new to your website. This is where you start to see that not all tools are created equal. The majority of tools are focused on quick wins, not long-term business building techniques. The quiz is a great example. It claims revenue, collects answers, has zero context as to what those answers mean, and usually is just a replacement for your existing menu. Dashboards with attribution are another great example. They aggregate data, add in their own magic to be “more accurate” where nothing is actually 100% accurate, then advise you to make changes but without any context other than increase ad spend or decrease ad spend on an ad where ROAS can’t be measured in a 1:1 time period. Upsell apps are another good example. How many upsell apps are really just generated collections that fit with the product pages people are on? The other common trend is to gamify the shopping cart to help people unlock more savings. Why not just go all in and make it easy for people to save? So at the end of the day, if your apps/tools aren’t providing you with context on how to improve and what to improve, it’s likely that the numbers being attributed to them are completely inaccurate. Here are a few things that we look for in tools: – Do they provide data we didn’t have previously? – Is there a direct addition in functionality that will result in increased revenue? – Is there context as to how and what mechanisms provided are increasing the revenue? This is about to make your tools list a lot shorter. What we’ve found in doing all this is that the majority of brands we’ve worked with would really benefit from a customer journey audit first. Because all of the above things are influenced by the entire customer journey from ads attracting the right people to landing pages clearly laying out the basics, to product pages that provide all the information needed to make a decision. Often times, data helps inform us make changes to all these touchpoints to drive better customer journeys. You have a choice though. You can rely on any data collected and make changes OR you can look at data in context with orders, revenue, and conversion rates to properly improve the customer journey and drive increased revenue. These two are not the same. Context is what helps you determine how to best evaluate and use data. It’s not about collection of data, it’s about application of learnings from data. #ecommerce #marketing #strategy #datahttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jivanco