Help Your Clients Visualize Their Transaction Data with SumAll
Larger companies have known the power of data for years. It’s at the heart of some of the biggest success stories – think Amazon, WalMart – these guys are able to tell their customers what it is they are looking for, even before they know they want it!
To stay ahead of the pack and use big data to your advantage, consider adding visual reporting for your clients.
While measuring a business’s financial performance can sometimes seem as complex as measuring the rate at which a black hole rotates, (unless you're an astrophysicist, in which case we apologize) such measurement is necessary given that the need to prove the value of marketing and social media has never been greater.
Our advice? Keep things as simple and easy to interpret as possible. To get you started, here are five metrics we often recommend businesses of all sizes track.
1. Revenue
Probably the most obvious metric but also the easiest to lose track of, revenue is vital for every business to thrive. Being able to see revenue not only as a static number at the end of the day, but in real-time allows your clients to take action immediately.
2. Costs
It can be hard to tell sometimes if costs are exceeding profits. It could be that all those discounts and Facebook giveaways are eating away at your client’s bottom line. Knowing what fixed costs are vs. variable is important (for small businesses especially) so your clients always have a pulse on their business expenditures.
3. New vs Returning Customers
Based on a thorough analysis of customer buying habits, satisfying the immediate needs of returning customers is critical because they spend more money than new customers. It would be wise to treat returning customers as preferred patrons; a segment that your clients should focus marketing efforts on because of their reliability and the safety they provide the business during lean economic times. Another benefit to profiling return customers: your clients don’t need to keep spending to acquire their business.
4. Traffic
Learn where customers are coming from and what they are worth, in order to identify which channel is working. Conducting paid advertising through multiple channels? Tools like Google Analytics lets your clients see which of their channels is acquiring more customers allowing them to identify the ROI on each channel. By seeing not only how much traffic they’re receiving but also where it’s coming from, your clients can choose to spend their money in smarter ways that will maximize your returns.
5. Trends
Analyzing patterns and trends is another early indicator of the overall well being of a business. Understand what a normal business day is like for your client by paying attention to daily, weekly, monthly and even seasonal spikes. That way if something suddenly goes amiss, it’ll be easier to course correct before it’s too late. Not seeing that usual bump in sales on a Wednesday afternoon? Maybe your client forgot to tweet out their weekly Tuesday discount special. The same goes for site visits – maybe that blog post never got published causing a drop in visits.
It should go without saying, but you and your client need to reevaluate and adjust their metrics as tbusiness priorities change. Every week, month, and quarter is a new opportunity to test and refine your ability to set and track metrics that will drive growth, so why not get started today?
How SumAll Can Help
Rather than come up with ways to measure and analyze the data yourself, you can have your clients use SumAll. SumAll visualizes revenue as it comes in so your clients can spot problems faster and optimize earlier to minimize any revenue losses.
All they need to do is sign up for an account and connect their Authorize.Net data with the click of a button. Once the data is loaded up, your clients will be able to see their entire payments history, quickly identify customer behavior patterns, and take action on this information to increase sales.
Have your clients sign up today!
