It might seem that over the last 18 months the world of retail has turned upside down with more and more businesses and consumers turning to online providers for good and services. But what happens if you are one of those online providers, and you start out small, looking to sell some goods?
Some E-tailers or online shops have seen huge growth, and as one, you may have got your order management up to spec, but do you know where your customers are? Have you ever considered location, the location of your customers or location of visitors to your website?
We all know target marketing makes a big difference, but what areas, countries or regions are you targeting? If you’re not visualising existing transactions and if you don’t understand where your revenue is actually coming from and building a relationship with customers by a given location, then targeting becomes a best guess.
eCommerce systems provide a wealth of data based on visitors and customers. GEO systems like Mapsimise.com can help you to understand that data by location, where your visitors and customers are coming from, which products purchased are popular in which area, or the value of sales by a given area.
We all know that shopping from the comfort of our own homes with free delivery has increased over the years and with the recent pandemic our respective economies have slowed, especially high street and shopping centre retail.
Sales of goods on the high street has dramatically slowed having told to close due to restrictions. Whereas online business is seeing continued growth and parcel delivery increased, as goods and orders are moved around the country.
All this activity creates trackable data. With high street you an only measure value over footfall, whereas with internet you can measure time, location, household, and individual demographics like age and gender.
All of this new data when analysed by location can enable your business to focus on audience and type of visitor, or customers that engage with your service by location, giving you the added ability to understand individual niches created through data collection.
Much research and analysis has been done to see how shopping trends have changed and the information below shows some of these by Country.
As a technology GIS, electronic maps are not new, but it has been recognised as being a niche technology sector.
This is now changing with the creation of Internet of Things (IoT) soon followed by Location of Things (LoT) which meant a demand for viewing data was generated. It makes sense if you are enabling objects with internet capability, whether it be a phone, car, or some other device, you would want to track its location.
Location Intelligence is the latest buzz term or LI is the latest acronym to be related to GEO and mapping of data. It is Location Intelligence that can be most beneficial to eCommerce providers in understanding demographic of customers by their location.
You may have multiple data sets to view, and tools like Mapsimise can help you deliver this easily.
By showing multiple pin types of a different data set, you are able to visualise relationships built by area.
As a provider of services, you may want to know the best place to locate drop boxes for customers to pick up, mapping customers and sites.
Or you may need to view and create boundaries for given states or zip/post codes using definition files like KML (as seen in the example of US states below)
To find out more about how we can help you understand and work with your data in a more effective way, get your free account at Mapsimise.com and don’t forget to follow us on social media.
