The holiday season is going to be here before you know it… have you analyzed last year’s data yet? An important part of the planning process is analyzing what happened last year to understand what worked and what didn’t.
Knowing how to dig deeper into the data and knowing where to look can help immensely in this year’s planning. To save you some time, here are two ways you can leverage your data this season.
Which items are most likely to be gifted? Understanding which items are most likely to be gifted can be helpful in determining which products to showcase in promotional materials as well as on gift guides and landing pages all season long. If your company provided a gift wrapping option last year, this is a great place to start.
The way we analyzed this data for one of our clients was to look into which product category was most commonly purchased along with a gift box. To start, we pulled down every transaction from November 1st through December 31st of the previous year, and then separated them by transactions with gift boxes and transactions without gift boxes (gift boxes were listed as a product for this client). Using the product category attribute (which included categories such as tops, bottoms, dresses, jewelry, scarves, gift cards etc.), we were able to see which product categories were the most associated with gift boxes. Our analysis showed that scarves, handbags, and sweaters were by far the most gifted items. Skirts, jeans, and pants were the least gifted. Our client used this information to plan their holiday email calendar and rest assured, steered clear of wasting any real estate on promoting pants as gifts.
Compare Page Types. Which landing pages were the greatest performers last season? Did the gift guides drive as much revenue as you expected? Or was there another page that came out as a clear winner?
Google Analytics defines page value as “the average value for a page that a user visited before landing on the goal page or completing an ecommerce transaction (or both).” This metric in particular can be very valuable in analyzing page performance. By comparing the page values of holiday pages to those of regular product pages, you can see if a certain holiday is driving more transactions than others. A higher page value means there are more transactions occurring from that page. For example, if your gift guide from last year were to have a page value of $20 and non-holiday pages on average had a page value of only $5, it is clear that the gift guide is driving more transactions.
Now you can use this information to decide if the pages that were created last year should be replicated for this holiday, or adjusted to drive additional conversions.
Get started with your analysis today and get ready for the holiday season that is just a few months away!
