Big data is now everywhere. Every kind of big business relies on big data to make their marketing, sales, or financial decisions. This practice is especially prominent in e-commerce, where big data is essential to stay ahead of the competition.
Worldwide, online data is now measured in zettabytes (1000⁷ bytes), and the size and complexity are only increasing. By Cisco's estimation, the world passed the first zettabyte mark of total Internet traffic per year in 2016.
With larger data sets come more prominent and more powerful data analytics tools. And with more powerful tools, people find more ways big data can be used to make better business decisions.
E-commerce is incredibly reliant on big data analysis. Every step of electronic commerce collects data: from customer behavior to supply chain efficiency to social media trends. Data-driven decision-making pushes business owners to look for powerful big data analysis tools, where data could be processed in real-time.
This is our main topic for today's post. What is big data? How it's used in the e-commerce industry? How processing big data with Whatagraph can help companies make sound business decisions?
Big data is usually described by the 3Vs: high volume, high velocity, and high variety of information that need new processing methods. For every company, big data can mean very different things. The amount of information Amazon stores about its processes will appear huge compared to small e-shop owners tracking their customer orders. This makes big data subjective to the operations and customer base, translating to the type of data collected and how it's processed.
There's no strict definition of what specific data goes into e-commerce analysis. The conversation about big data in e-commerce generally revolves around what goals should the data help achieve. Business Applications Research Centre has introduced the most popular aspects of business where big data is relied upon:
Based on the aspects of the business, companies can use different data sets to facilitate improvement. Each element has different big data needs.
Big data in e-commerce is nothing new. Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, and other large e-commerce businesses use big data on everything - from improving their customer service to effectively using social media for online marketing. Even small-scale online retailers are using large data sets to improve their business and gain more insights into the market.
Whatagraph is the best example of powerful big data analytics for e-commerce. With Whatagraph, it's possible to connect many complex data sets and analyze them in real-time. This means that various improvements to internal operations or customer experience can be made instantly, instead of waiting for reports or business intelligence calculations.
Big data is growing bigger with each passing day. E-commerce businesses are going to be relying on big data input for all major decisions. Only better big data analytics tools can give an edge in the competitive e-commerce market.
Published on Mar 30, 2021