e-biz Blog for Small Business

Information captured by your online business plays two vital roles. First, it allows you to directly service the needs of your customers. Second, it empowers you to make decisions that will allow your business to grow. Of course, some may argue that a growing, thriving business benefits your customers and a well serviced customer base allows your business to grow. All true. But for the sake of this consideration, we will be segregating your data into these two classes: transaction processing and decision support. Let’s explore them individually and see why a clear understanding of each will help you provide the best experience possible for you visitors and afford you the finest insights into your business’s future.

Transaction Processing

When a customer does something on your website worthy of recording or capturing, that is typically considered a transaction.

· The customer signed up

· The customer wants a news letter

· The customer purchased something

· The customer adjusted his order

· An item was shipped

In all of these cases, an event took place that has related information worthy of your attention and important enough to be captured. It may prove beneficial to you as a business owner who will make a decision, or it may prove helpful in servicing a customer; perhaps someone wants to know when the widget was shipped, for example. These are transactions, and depending on the amount of business you do, there could be a large number of them each day, perhaps many a minute. Small, discrete pieces of data inserted into the database. This activity represents where your business is at this very moment; the invoices that need to be cut, the product that needs to be shipped and the customers that deserve an email thanking them for their business. This is live, “hot” data and it is likely that it will be referenced in the near future. This is compared to “cold” data or decision support data.

Decision Support:

There is a difference between reordering a case of widgets because you are about to run out and determining whether you will be carrying widgets next year.

· How well did this item sell compared to other items in the same category?

· How is my business trending?

· What are total sales to customers based on region?

· How do those sales compare to last year?

A review of these questions reveals that the data is going to be used to create a different view of the business; one that is a bit less specific in nature. Rather than concerning ourselves with an individual sale, a transaction, we are concerned with a number of them. Data is group together so that we can step back and see the business from a different perspective. It’s analogous to looking at a city as an urban developer as opposed to a shop owner. Both have their place, but one is clearly more interested in the big picture and the decisions that affect the long term future of the community.

Any business that is to succeed needs to balance both needs. Customers need to be serviced and their immediate questions and concerns need to be met. Invoices need to be cut and product needs to be reordered. In addition, the overall course of the business needs to be addressed. Are you on track to meet your goals? What are your developing markets and which ones are no longer of interest to you?

When you logically separate your data and see the roles that it plays, then it may be time to consider physically separating it into separate entities dedicated to each task.

I will address the potential benefits of aggregating your data and customizing your storage to meet your specific business needs.

OK, so you’ve heard about Search Engine Optimization and how critical it is to incorporate it into your on-line strategy. “Drive more traffic to your site” and “Improve your hit count” are phrase that hint at the potential benefits just waiting to be tapped. What really are the benefits though; in practical terms? And, what steps are involved in comprehensive SEO strategy? By starting with the process, the benefits will make themselves know naturally. So, let’s start there.

The Analysis + Adjustments = SEO

The “optimization” in Search Engine Optimization may lead one believe that process starts with adjustments to the site, optimizing it to… well to do something… to make it more “searchable”… or something. While there are typically some obvious adjustments that can be made to improve the potential for traffic, in actuality, the process starts with an analysis of your site. Let’s illustrate the point: Imagine that you own a house and you realize it’s high time to weatherize it. For the sake of our illustration, you want to optimize your home for efficient use of the energy that is expended to control the temperature. If the house is old and the windows have never been upgraded, it’s a pretty safe bet that you will get some degree of “optimization” simply by replacing the windows. No analysis, no effort expended in studying the environment, simply grab the low hanging fruit and change the windows. However, after the obvious adjustments are made (if any actually exist), you will be left with a decision: do you stop at this point and convince yourself that you have “optimized. It all depends on how serious you are about savings. You can take it to the next level and hire someone to perform an infra-red and vacuum test, and this will reveal all sorts of areas that can stand some improvement. So what’s the application?

SEO can take place at a superficial level; hit the obvious stuff and in fact, there are some benefits to be had. However to truly optimize your site and get the most from your energies, you first need to determine what needs attention.

· What is happening when people visit your site?

· How long do they stay?

· What pages do they visit?

· Do they do any of the things that you would
actually want them to do (e.g. buy something, leave some information, look at
some key report)?

· Do they come back?

Think about these questions for a moment. Do you see how the answers they generate can
be used to make decisions about how you can… optimize you site? Can you also see that real optimization can only take place when you know the answers to questions such as these? If so, you are beginning to understand that SEO is not simply a matter of “flipping” switches and changing page
titles. There is much more involved. In fact, analytics is at the root of successful SEO. You need to know:

1. What you are try to accomplish with your site

2. What is actually happening

3. What steps you can take to align your goals with
those who visit, or even attract different visitors.

The Benefits

At this point, the benefits have probably come into focus. Once a successful SEO effort will leave you with a more productive site, as judged by your own criteria of why the site was created in the first place. If the purpose is to sell product, you will be selling more product. If your goal was to capture visitor information then you will have more. With a well defined process, you will determine if your site is accomplishing its purpose and then you will be in the position to make the needed adjustments, should any be needed. Yes, that is possible as well. It maybe that an analysis our your site reveals that you are leading the industry, your visitors are doing exactly as you expected and your are completely satisfied with what you learn. Perhaps. What is more likely, you will see activity and patterns that surprise you and this will the basis for targeted site adjustments rather than blind efforts to improve results.

Whether you chose to pursue on your own, or you decide it best to include a professional, hopefully the process is more transparent and the potential benefits are obvious.

Contrary to commonly held opinion, the purpose of a database is not simply to store data. Rather it is for retrieving data and reporting on it. Clearly a database full of data is of no use on its own. What’s more, if a business uses its database simply to produce invoices and regularly email a customer list, there are unfound gems just waiting to be discovered.

While data warehousing is rightly applied to large repositories of data typically in the terabyte range, the concepts associated with a data warehouse can be applied to virtually any company’s data.

· Would you like to know your most popular items?

· Would it be beneficial to know what sales seasons are the most active for your on-line business?

· Would a month over month or even year over year comparison of sales be helpful?

· What items are sold to your most active customers?

· Which items are sold only once, never to be bought again?

When a database is viewed as collection of profit producing answers to insightful business questions, then its potential is ready to be realized. If you have been in business, or expect to be in business for more than three years, the data you are collecting each day is extremely valuable as it will likely provided you with insights that will make you more competitive and profitable.

What is required to mine these gems? Knowing the questions to ask and turning those questions into business intelligence (BI). You likely have some questions and speaking to an experience BI professional may open up opportunities that you didn’t know existed.

In addition, you may have questions that require the capture of even more data; data that is available but lost with each passing transaction. Adjustments to the structure of your database today can yield big dividends in the future.

Whether you choose to pursue the mining of you database by yourself or to include a professional, there is tremendous opportunity hidden in the data captured by even a modest size business. Mining this data will allow you to make more insightful business decisions; decisions based on insight and intelligence rather than reaction and habit.