Marketing
15 March 2023
GA4: The new Google Analytics will bring big changes for ecommerce
The new GA arrives on July 1. Logical Position's Nick Tursi says site owners should migrate data now.
Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash
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To succeed in ecommerce, brands must not only tally sales totals and compare them to costs, but also analyze the drivers of those conversions. Putting the learnings about what worked into action can be used to optimize a site in a way that eases the path to purchase, and ultimately propels future sales even higher.
For years, Google Analytics, or GA, has helped brands uncover those insights. The service tracks, analyzes and reports data on traffic for website owners.
“Google Analytics has been a key part of the marketer’s toolkit for a very long time. It helps you understand where your customers are coming from, where they go on your site, how they interact on your site,” said Nick Tursi, Manager of SEO Strategy at digital marketing agency Logical Position. “You want to use all of that to make business decisions based on that information, and shape your site around that.”
For ecommerce brands, the data goes beyond counting and understanding users. It also measures how many of those users converted, and whether they returned to the site. This can all be used to seek the next set of customers, and drive more loyalty.
But GA as we know it is about to change.
GA4 is set to launch this summer, and it will completely replace the tool that is used now. On July 1, 2023, the current version of GA, called Universal Analytics, will be sunsetted. That means UA will no longer process data, and all traffic and analytics must be run through GA4.
That means the first half of 2023 is a period of transition. Rather than simply rolling out a new product release, the switch to GA4 is essentially creating a new platform. In order to avoid any risk of losing historical data, businesses must migrate to GA4. Tursi recommends website owners take that step well ahead of the official transition date, meaning that connected data will be flowing through both properties for a time. That way, historical data will be fully integrated into GA4, and in place once UA is retired for good.
“It is important to get set up as soon as possible,” Tursi said.
Making the switch soon can also provide a period to get familiar with the new Google Analytics. GA4 is set to usher in a series of changes. Google is making many shifts in the interest of privacy – in particular, it is scaling back the use of cookies and adding privacy controls. This move is designed to line up with where digital marketing is heading as a result of EU laws and new scrutiny on tracking in the U.S. that has resulted in privacy prioritization features like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency. In the near future, Google itself will also be making big privacy-oriented moves, as the shift to GA4 comes ahead of the company’s long-discussed, but much-delayed deprecation of third-party cookies.
For those who use GA4 every day, this focus on privacy will lead to changes in how Google Analytics reports and analyzes data.
“It’s going to be very important for you to find the information that you used to be reporting on and get familiar with that new layout and design,” Tursi said.
Tursi outlined the following features of GA4, and changes in key areas that site owners need to know:
Event-based: GA4 is shifting from reporting session-based hits on a site to event-based reporting. This is designed to provide a more comprehensive picture of users and how they interact with a site. This will provide a range of data, some of which is different and goes into more detail than what was available in UA. The idea is not only to protect privacy, but provide more insightful data. Some important metrics to hone in on include transactions, average order value and form submissions.
Multiple platforms: GA4 is designed to make it easier to track across both websites and apps. This will provide a more complete view of the conversion process, and how customers interact with a site.
AI: Google will use advanced data tools to provide insights and detect anomalies that occur on a site. It’s designed so that the site owner doesn’t have to sift through mountains of data to find a way to improve, or investigate what happened during an event. “They’re going to use AI and machine learning in order to keep the customer’s data safe and identifiable information anonymized, but you still get the actionable insights you need as a business owner.”
A new interface: The look and feel of GA4 will also be different. It’s designed to be better organized and easier to navigate. The reports and menus offered will also look different, so the faster site owners can get familiar with it, the more comfortable they can be when it is the only option.
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Jun 09, 2023
Shopper Experience
08 June 2023
AI, but make it fashion: Rent the Runway, Stitch Fix look generative
"Fashion ecommerce is one of the most cumbersome customer experiences that exists," said Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman.
Photo by Daniel G. Wells III, used under a Creative Commons license.
The rise of generative AI is bringing with it a groundswell of interest and concern about how the capability to automatically synthesize information and create something new will change how we work.
Given that AI will sit within the architecture of our digital lives, it’s also worth considering how the technology will introduce new tools for other aspects of life, as well.
For two ecommerce innovators in the apparel space, it’s a time to explore how it will transform shopping. Rent the Runway is set to roll out new AI-powered search capabilities, while Stitch Fix is drawing on a long history with data science and machine learning to personalize the inventory buying process.
Here’s a look at the initiatives underway at each company, and their visions for the future:
Rent the Runway: From search to concierge
Rent the Runway is putting a focus on the customer experience this year as it seeks to retain more subscribers and continue a yearslong push toward profitability.
This is resulting in the introduction of a variety of new initiatives, from the addition of an extra item to all orders to speeding up page load times. Yet as CEO Jennifer Hyman zooms out, she sees change being necessary on an industry-wide level in fashion. Beyond adding new features, AI can play a transformational role.
“I think that fashion ecommerce is one of the most cumbersome customer experiences that exists. You are searching through pages and pages and pages of content to find the items that you like and no one likes doing this,” Hyman told analysts on the company’s earnings call this week. “As an industry that still is selling physical products, AI is going to be -- fashion is going to be a major beneficiary as an industry.”
As a rental service, Rent the Runway has a distinct niche in fashion that lends itself to AI’s advantages, Hyman said. As opposed to a retailer that a consumer may visit a couple of times a year, RTR is used frequently by customers. So Hyman said there are opportunities to turn Rent the Runway into a “utility” by creating a more seamless experience.
This frequent use also provides a “highly unique” dataset, Hyman said. They know what a customer is planning to do based on what they rented. They know whether she liked or disliked an item, and many customers are reviewing 10 items per month. They know her size and how an item fits. This can be put to work in tools that allow customers to ask questions, and find answers.
The first application that combines AI and these advantages will appear in the coming weeks, when Rent the Runway plans to launch a beta of AI-driven search. The tool will allow customers to search for common terms or use cases for an item. So a person will be able to write “Miami vibe,” “‘clambake in Nantucket,” or “tropical motifs,” and receive results about what to wear for such an occasion.
The goal is to help customers sift through the endless aisle, and instantly finds what's right for them.
“I think that across all fashion sites, all over the world, the way that people are searching for product is fairly vanilla, it's fairly functional, right?" Hyman said. "You can go to a site and search for a T-shirt, you can go to a site and search for a black-tie gown. The fact that we're going to be able to enable our customers to search how they actually want to use this closet in the cloud, to search for items to wear to my beach bonfire this weekend, that is a completely different way to search, and I think that it really brings out the value proposition of what a closet in the cloud is all about."
Hyman sees this as a first step in the company using AI models to improve the product experience, and expects more tools to appear in the coming months. RTR is also introducing an SMS concierge experience for onboarding that allows customers to text with a member of the customer service team. The company is already exploring ways that AI can be incorporated into that tool, as well.
In the longer term, Hyman said the company has a vision that will leverage AI to allow customers to communicate with Rent the Runway asynchronously across different modalities, and have a stylist that is constantly available to recommend items, pick out new inventory and answer questions.
“If we are utilizing AI appropriately over the next few years, I see no reason why someone even has to come to our website,” Hyman said.
Stitch Fix: Inventory buying and beyond
Stitch Fix has long married AI with human curation to provide outfits on a subscription basis.
“For years, we have utilized capabilities in generative AI, injecting scores and language into our personalization engines and, more recently, automatically generated product descriptions,” CEO Katrina Lake told analysts. “We have also developed and implemented more advanced proprietary tools such as outfit generation and personalized style recommendations that create a unique and exciting experience we believe is unmatched in the market.”
A new area where the company is applying AI is inventory buying.
“We have historically utilized a number of tools to make data-informed decisions with our inventory purchases,” Lake said. “Now, directly leveraging our personalization algorithms, we have developed a new tool that creates an exciting paradigm shift, which will utilize math scores at the client level to drive company-level buying actions. We expect the clarity of demand signals at the individual client level to drive more proactive and efficient inventory decisions as a company. And because of this, we expect to see higher success rates on fixes and drive increases in keep rates and [average order value] over time.”
Early results are promising. When compared with existing buying tools, testing showed a 10% lift in keep rate and AOV. By the end of this quarter, Stitch Fix expects 20% of all purchase orders to be algorithmically informed.
With experience using AI and a team in place to build, Stitch Fix is investing in the technology. Like Rent the Runway, it also has a unique dataset that offers an immediate advantage.
Here are Lake’s thoughts about how Stitch Fix’s AI strategy:
One of the things that I love about our experience is that we have generative AI that's really in more of a visual format. And so, the outfits that we have in our app, those are actually taking into account your preferences, what we know about you, and then in combination with what we know that you own in your closet. And to be able to kind of continue to push that technology and to be able to continue to give people more value in their experience with Stitch Fix, that's a really good example of, I think, a capability that is, firstly, really aligned with our capabilities around data and personalization and really unique to us.
And then I think it's also really compelling because I really think that pushes us as we think about what that addressable market is. I think if we can push outfits to be something that can be an asset to everybody, I think that is a universal thing that people would love to be able to have, is to have access to advice on a daily basis around what to wear and how to wear it.
While these are distinct companies, their plans lead us to a common conclusion: While the talk around generative AI might be new, many technology-forward companies already have assets sitting inside them that can be leveraged to build new tools. Uncover what’s already there, learn about the AI’s capabilities and develop a solution that's right for your organization. Then, talk to customers to determine how to improve it. It might mean commerce looks different, but that’s okay. The point is to create a better experience.
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