Data analytics has been a hot trend in business for the last decade. It involves taking data and analyzing it in order to make more calculated future business decisions.
But just what kinds of data should you be collecting? There is all kinds of data available that you can be making use of. This post delves into some of the different types of data that could be worth collecting, how to collect this data and what to do with it.
Sales figure data
Sales figure data is the most basic form of business data. It involves making a record of every sale that you make. This is not just handy for working out your profits, but for also tracking what individual products you are selling and when you are selling them. It can help you to detect trends in your sales (such as increased demand in certain products during certain times) so that you can act upon these trends.
Customer retention data
When it comes to subscription services, it could be just as important to track data on customer retention. This includes how many subscriptions there are, how long you have had each client, how each client is using your service and when clients are unsubscribing. Using this data you may be able to come up with strategies to improve retention (such as sending clients discounts or gifts in the lead up to popular subscription cancellation periods).
Website traffic data
To create a website that generates leads, you need to be analyzing your website traffic data. This includes data regarding how many visitors you are getting, what pages they are visiting, when they are visiting, what actions they are taking and where they are arriving from. Such data can help you to make positive changes to your website to boost traffic, improve visitor time spent on your site and increase direct leads.
Call detail data
You can also track data regarding phone calls to and from your business. This typically requires using a VoIP phone system or digital phone system of some kind so that you record data on each call. By tracking data such as caller location, popular call times and call length, you can implement a better phone call strategy (such as dedicating a staff member to answering the phone during busy times).
Social media data
Social media automatically helps you to collect data on how many engagements your social media posts are getting, when people are engaging and what types of people are engaging. This can be useful for building better social media strategies. Make sure to take advantage of this data if you want greater social media success.
Email engagement data
When using bulk mailing tools, you also have the option to track email engagement data. Such tools can tell you exactly who has opened your email or clicked on a link in your email. By tracking which subscribers are opening your emails and which aren’t, you can more effectively target emails at certain subscribers and increase leads.
Employee performance data
It’s not just data on consumers that is worth collecting. It can also be worth collecting data on your staff members such as employee performance. This could include recording data such as individual employee sales, employee hours, employee absence and potentially employee satisfaction through surveys. This data can be used to highlight employees who are doing well and highlight employees who are not doing so well. You can then take action to praise and promote those who are thriving, while helping and motivating those who aren’t doing so well. This ensures that your team is working as productively as it can and could help you retain employees.
Machinery performance data
It may be possible to track the performance of certain machinery used by your business to check that it is serving you well. Vehicles are the most popular form of machinery to track data on – it’s possible to maximize vehicle use by tracking data such as weekly mileage, weekly routes, fuel consumption and service history. You may be able to similarly track data on machinery like industrial printers, manufacturing machinery, agricultural machinery and even office HVAC systems to make sure that you are using them economically and maintaining them well.
How should you collect this data?
There are many forms of software on the market that can help you automatically collect data. Such data can be automatically converted into graphs for you so that you can make better sense of it.
When collecting phone data or equipment data, it could be essential that you use digital hardware. This could involve having to switch to VoIP systems or investing in vehicles that offer smart metrics that can be linked up with software. Other types of hardware that can be used to collect digital data for business include digital employee time clocks and digital POS displays.
Some data may benefit from being manually recorded and sorted. This is something you could do yourself if you have the time. However, you may find it’s more beneficial to hire an employee or outsource a data entry virtual assistant.
When collecting data, it’s important that you get people’s consent. This is particularly important with website data, phone data and email data – give website visitors the choice to accept cookies, tell callers that you record calls and warn subscribers that you collect data when they sign up to your mailing list. Additionally, provide options that allow users to minimise online data tracking, ensuring that their privacy preferences are respected and building trust in your data collection practices.
What are the best ways to use this data?
Data should be collected with the sole purpose of helping to improve your business. As a result, you need to arrange regular audits to examine your data and then build future strategies based on this.
It’s important that you put data to use in an ethical way and that you store sensitive data securely. While you can sell data, it needs to be done with the permission of all those involved. Some companies get around this simply by hiding clauses in contracts, but this can have the potential to cause backlash if it is revealed.
