When trying to create a successful eCommerce business, you may be focusing on website speed, competitive pricing, and exposure of your website. But one very important element that some eCommerce business owners may overlook, is getting to know customers. When selling to people in a physical environment, it is easy to learn a lot of information about your customers quickly. You can do so by observing them, and asking them questions. But how do you learn about your customers from behind a screen? Surprisingly, you can do so by observing them and asking them questions in this format too. Why does it matter, though? Doesn’t the internet just transform every site visitor into a mere name, number, or sale? In a way it does, but each name belongs to a real person who has a reason as to why they purchased your products, or why they did not. Knowing the logic behind this reasoning, as well as additional information about your eCommerce customers, can improve your business greatly.
Conducting Surveys
It is important to learn from your eCommerce customers to better understand your own business. One key way to discover what your customers are thinking is by conducting a survey. You can use a free online service, such as SurveyMonkey, to create a survey that pertains to what you want to learn from your website’s visitors. Ask well-constructed, specific questions that are easy to understand in order to obtain the best results. If questions are unclear, respondents may be confused and answer them incorrectly. Refrain from using complicated words to further reduce potential confusion. Also, only ask the most important questions to prevent the survey from dragging on for too long. Surveys that have too many questions will often be abandoned by respondents before they complete and submit the survey.

Creating a proper customer survey will allow you to understand what your eCommerce customers think about your business.
In terms of distributing the survey, you can do so through a variety of different methods. These include embedding it into your website, sharing it on your social media platforms, and sending it out to your e-mailing list. Often times, customers are not interested in filling out surveys unless they have very strong feelings about your business that they want to be known. To maximize your number of respondents and boost enthusiasm, consider offering incentives to customers who complete the survey. These incentives may include discount codes, free shipping, or the chance to win a gift card to use on your site. Once you receive a large number of responses, take this newfound data and transform it into an understanding of how to change your business to better satisfy visitors.
Customer Analytics
In order for you to learn about the demographics of your eCommerce customers, Google Analytics is one of the best outlets available. It comes with an eCommerce tracking feature that will be of great importance to you. Reports under the “Audience” section offers the age, gender, language, and location of each customer. Analytics will also if they are accessing your site via desktop or mobile. All of this data is very important to your business as you can take it and use it to your advantage. For example, you can better tailor your site to a certain demographic that you notice have taken an interest to your site.

Utilizing Google Analytics will benefit your business greatly, allowing you to learn about customer demographics.
Other features of Google Analytics include the ability to see what customers are doing on your site. Found under the “Behavior” section, this data gives you an idea of what customers are searching for on your site and how they interact with certain site elements. This data will help you improve your user interface. The “Acquisition” section can tell you how customers found your site. With this information, you can focus on bringing in more customers through the methods that have proven most popular. Overall, Google Analytics provides it’s users with priceless customer data that business owners can use to their advantage. Analytics data allows merchants to improve their business and better understand who they are selling to.
Overall Benefits
In a brick and mortar setting, you can physically see your customers, and get to know returning buyers by talking to them each time they come into your store. Now you know that you can do the same online. Remember that eCommerce customers are real people with real thoughts and feelings about your store. And learning about these people and their opinions will propel your business further toward success. Perhaps you learn through a survey that site visitors think it’s hard to navigate your webstore. Take advantage of this new information and redesign your site to have a better user interface that makes it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for. Maybe you didn’t realize how many teenagers were buying from your site. Now you can use that information that you discovered through Google Analytics to start working on a marketing campaign geared toward teens. Start learning more about your eCommerce customers and your business will start to improve.