Small Business Data Analytics: Best Practices and Solutions You Need to Know

Digital Marketing
Small Business Data Analytics: Best Practices and Solutions You Need to Know
Article by Bisera Stankovska
Last Updated: September 08, 2023

As a small business owner, you understand the importance of every task completed, goal achieved, and step taken towards expanding your business. Your work, objectives, and digital marketing strategies all contribute to your bottom line, and you can access information on website traffic, unique and returning customers, and sales trends. However, it can take time to identify the critical revenue-generating factors you should prioritize.

While the right tools can provide you with the data you need, the information can be overwhelming. This is where small business data analytics comes in. To help you make sense of it all, we've put together a guide that covers the best approaches to small business data analytics, how big data can benefit your small business, and the top solutions for data analytics for small businesses.

What Is Small Business Data Analytics? 

Small business data analytics is the strategic process of combining principles and technologies of big data for small businesses with an evaluation of algorithms, use of advanced statistics, and business intelligence or BI tools. 

Together, these derive more precise, defined values and more tactically sorted information on your business. Small business data analytics obtain crucial details—from positive information to issues and problems that need to be addressed. 

Data analysis for small business delivers an objective assessment of your company. Here are some of the things small business data analytics can tell you: 

  • Where your business stands now 
  • Where your company goes if the trends remain the same 
  • The growth potential of your business 
  • How long it should take to expand your brand 
  • The steps to take to make the expansion happen 
Agency description goes here
Agency description goes here
Agency description goes here

Best Practices for Data Analytics for Small Businesses 

  1. Pay Closer Attention to Trends
  2. Look and Monitor Beyond Web Traffic
  3. Keep an Eye on How Much You Spend on Customer Acquisition
  4. Track Content Engagement Based on Accurate Data

Small business data analytics can monitor vital information that can help improve your sales performance, increase your bottom line, and bring in greater revenues. Here are the best approaches so you can get the most out of big data for small business. 

1. Pay Closer Attention to Trends 

Trends in big data for small business are quantifiable information. They accumulate over time and explain patterns in the long-term. When you follow these trends and spot the patterns they create, you can better predict and foresee where your business is going in the future. 

With this practicable knowledge in hand, you can take actions to support and sustain the favorable trends, and enhance them. On the other hand, you can put a stop or come up with a resolution to overturn the negative, detrimental patterns. 

Use the timeframe that works best based on your business model and strategies. You can monitor trends to identify patterns on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. Set up your tool for small business data analytics then wait for patterns to form. That is when you put them side-by-side with each other and compare. 

Focus on these top trends and patterns in your big data for small business: 

  • Source of traffic: This report shows you the overview of where your audience and prospective clients come from before reaching your landing page. Segregate the direct source, i.e., website visits by audiences who directly key in your URL, from the organic source, i.e., website visits redirected from looking up your website on a search engine. 
  • Keywords use and SEO: This tells you which of your contents are ranking well and which need improvement. It also gives you a better idea of what contents to generate in the future. 

2. Look and Monitor Beyond Web Traffic 

Apart from web traffic in general, it is most advisable that you also look into the following:  

  • Amount of time visitors stay on your website: Take note of the time period when people hang out on your site, browse through it, and interact. If your report exhibits a high bounce rate, then it may be an indicator of the need for a design revamp or creation of better, more engaging contents. 
  • The number of visitors that actually buy: Track and examine your conversion rate. It says so much about the effectiveness of your messaging and your offering’s standard of quality. 

Based on the results of your demographic data analysis for small business, you can then modify your future plans for marketing and products to sell. You can launch more efficient promotions, change your advertising tactics, and hence, improve on your conversion rate. 

3. Keep an Eye on How Much You Spend on Customer Acquisition 

The customer lifetime value (CLTV) allows for you to calculate your potential net profits attributed to how many client groups you currently cater to. Through this particular area of your small business data analytics report, you can invest more in acquiring and retaining the customer base that: 

  • Generates the most revenues 
  • Is most fitting and rewarding for your brand 
  • With whom your products or services resonate the most 

4. Track Content Engagement Based on Accurate Data 

They say that content is king and could not be any truer for businesses operating in the digital space. As a business owner, your goal is to capture your prospective audience’s attention, keep them drawn and attracted, and ultimately convince them to place orders. 

Content engagement and effectiveness come down to the quality, relevance, and relatability of the messages you put out there. Here are the metrics to watch out for when you perform data analytics for small businesses: 

  • Signups: Give your website visitors the option to sign up for your email newsletters. Briefly explain to them what is in it for them when they subscribe to your updates. 
  • Click-through rates (CTR): So, you have a long list of subscribers. Now, what you should do is analyze how many of them take the time to open your mail and act on your CTAs. Consequently, the higher your CTR is, the greater the chances for conversion, and ultimately, the better for your business. 
  • Social sharing: While the more obvious identifier of successful engagement is the number of reactions, likes, and comments, the number of social shares is just as important. The more reposts your contents get, the farther your audience reach gets. Also, it suggests that your contents are worth the while to be read and spread through social sharing. 
Receive proposals from top digital marketing agencies. It’s free.
GET PROPOSALS

9 Most Effective Big Data for Small Business Solutions  

  1. Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) 
  2. Alteryx
  3. InsightSquared
  4. ClearStory Data
  5. Kissmetrics
  6. Watson Analytics
  7. Google Analytics
  8. Qualtrics
  9. Tranzlogic

Big data for small business can be obtained through various tools. Here are some of the most prominent solutions for data analytics for small businesses. 

1. Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) 

SAS is a software suite that enables mining, managing, retrieving, and modifying data from various sources including social media, websites, and marketing analytics, to name a few. You can sift through data obtained and utilize the most relevant to your business needs. 

After data acquisition, SAS then performs statistical data analysis for small business. The results of its data analytics for small businesses provide you with customer, market, and business intelligence.  

SAS is a user-friendly tool for data analytics for small businesses. The data-mining and automated forecasting functionalities allow for you to achieve more with less expenditure on resources. It is a small business data analytics tool that gives you accurate information in a timely manner.  

SAS data analysis for small business can help you determine which areas of your company are working. It identifies challenges that are detrimental to your business growth and offers how you can overcome them. This way, you can unveil untapped potentials and opportunities. Also, it helps you understand how to take your company to greater heights, and ready it up for scaling and more stiff competition.

2. Alteryx 

Alteryx is equipped with advanced data mining features and tools for data analytics for small businesses. It presents you with business data that are simple and comprehensible. 

Combining your company’s internal data with publicly available data, Alteryx enables you to arrive at more intelligent decisions and tactics for business. 

The data it extracts let you make customized, easy-to-understand graphs, storylines, and other useful interactive visuals through its dashboard. This functionality allows for more streamlined collaborative work with your team and organization as a whole. 

Beside big data for small business, Alteryx can retrieve data that are specific to each specialized department such as operations, marketing, sales, and even customer support. 

This platform for data analytics for small businesses serves a myriad of industries: 

  • Retail and wholesale 
  • Food and beverage 
  • Entertainment media
  • Finance 
  • Bespoke packaged items 
  • Healthcare 
  • Manufacturing 

3. InsightSquared 

What is great about InsightSquared is automation and how its features can easily merge with other widely known business solutions. Some of which may already be in use in your organization: 

  • Zendesk 
  • QuickBooks 
  • Salesforce 
  • Google Analytics 

It is a powerful platform that saves you time invested in manual data-mining. It means small business data analytics made truly easy and uncomplicated. 

With InsightSquared, you do not have to painstakingly populate one spreadsheet after another before you can finally come up with data analysis for small business. It helps you instantaneously gather big data for small business, and provides actionable and workable information, too. 

As an example, if you are already using customer relationship management (CRM) software for your operations, InsightSquared can further equip you with an abundance of sales intelligence such as: 

  • Leads generation and tracking 
  • Activities monitoring 
  • Sales forecasting 
  • Profitability data analysis for small business 

From this small business data analytics, you can then find trends, discover strengths and wins, and spot weakness and losses. 

The suite of products offered by InsightSquared covers financial and marketing reports as well as support analysis tools. You can even customize the way your data reports are presented. 

4. ClearStory Data 

Sharing noticeable similarities with Alteryx, ClearStory Data integrates small business data analytics with publicly available big data for small business for the purpose of better decision-making. In addition, it also gives you clear insights on more department-specific information namely, marketing, sales, and customer data analytics for small businesses.  

5. Kissmetrics 

Kissmetrics is specially designed and structured to ultimately help your business accordingly to increase on ROI based on your marketing initiatives. 

This small business data analytics platform determines consumer behavior so you can better understand, categorize, and eventually generate more engagement from your client base. 

Through Kissmetrics, you can build, manage, and automate email deliveries and campaigns according to its customer data analysis for small business. It helps you track clicks, measure what the clicks means, and tally shares and other engagement activities.  

In addition, the tool has launched Kissmetrics for e-Commerce. This particular feature targets ROI from Instagram and Facebook marketing efforts. In turn, it helps decrease cart abandonment rates and boost repeat purchase rates. 

With Kissmetrics, you also get access to educational resources, how-to SOPs, and web-based training materials through which you can learn how to improve your marketing strategies. Moreover, you get support and strategic guidance from a dedicated client success representative in your first two months as a subscriber. 

6. Watson Analytics 

Watson Analytics by IBM allows better accessibility to advanced and predictive small business data analytics. It is especially helpful if you do not have extensive experience with data analytics for small businesses.  

It incorporates an array of data from your finance, marketing, HR, and sales teams, through which you can easily identify trends and determine a likely outcome based on the patterns that your business tactics follow. 

7. Google Analytics 

Collect data and gain insights straight from your website with Google Analytics. It is a digital platform for small business data analytics that equips you with the most fundamental, necessary tools for web data analysis for small business. Gather information from numerous sources and conveniently get them all in one place. 

Access expansive data that unveil trends and analyze website visitors’ behavior, and that are useful in the long-term. Data analytics for small businesses via Google Analytics points you to where your web traffic is mostly coming from, how engaged your visitors are, and how long your average audience stays to navigate through your site or online shop. 

Data on social media traffic and about the devices used for browsing by your audience are also available through Google Analytics. 

8. Qualtrics 

In case you do not hold that much big data for small business, you can resort to research instead. It is made easier and more focused by Qualtrics. 

You can use the platform to conduct surveys and studies to obtain insights and data analysis for small business for more data-driven decisions and strategies. The tool is rich in features that allow for real-time data analysis for small business, advertising testing functionalities, concept testing, and market research plan. 

9. Tranzlogic 

Tranzlogic makes big data for small business more conveniently available and accessible. It specializes in extraction and proprietary data analysis for small business, specifically from purchases made using credit cards. 

All you will need are login credentials and you are good-to-go. There is no need for installations or complex programming. Assess your sales performance to create more effective promotional campaigns and programs based on your client base’s credit card use. 

Get connected with the right digital marketing agency for your project.
GET STARTED

Why is Data Analysis for Small Business Necessary? 

Big data for small business pertains to the large amounts of structured information and targeted insights that you can retrieve and dissect to gain better understanding of how your business is performing. 

You empower your company when you find and leverage the correct and most appropriate small business data analytics solutions for your brand. The numbers, statistics, plus actionable insights you can obtain from a comprehensive use of small business data analytics tools are worth the investment. 

In the present dynamic digital age of innovation, data analytics for small businesses has never been more practical and necessary. Critical details such as buyer behavior, market trends, issues you may face, and many more are now within reach—conveniently handed to you through small business data analytics—when these used to not even be within imaginable reach.   

What to Consider When Employing Data Analysis Services for Small Business 

 Small business data analytics starts with a general description of your enterprise, followed by a detailed diagnosis. There is a scope around which the process is applied. You are presented with options for improvement, as well as data analysis for small business you can use to re-angle the way you manage your company. 

When these are stitched together, you position your organization with a significant competitive advantage on the market.  

Have a deep dive into these factors when you are looking to utilize a platform or to hire data analysis services for small business that work and deliver tangible results. 

  • Your business needs and demands 
  • The data you currently have in possession
  • The sources from which you have derived your present data 
  • The business model and analytical methods you are using 
  • The ideas you are looking to implement 
  • Problems you currently face and possible solutions you may have 

Takeaways on Small Business Data Analytics 

Data analytics for small businesses is a smart and steady route to making data-backed decisions for your company. Results extracted from proper data analysis for small business let you in on inside information on your brand and business that you may have been overlooking this whole time. 

Small business data analytics is a data-driven process that saves you from the pitfalls of guesswork. Browse through our selection of digital marketing companies that can help.

Solutions in the form of tools or data analysis services for small business greatly change the way you handle your business, in a greatly positive way. Make the most out of them and see how you can more efficiently promote your brand, provide seamless consumer journey, keep your costs lower, drive higher revenues, and more capably manage your overall finances.

Small Business Data Analytics FAQs

1. Can small businesses use data analytics?

Businesses of all sizes generate vast amounts of data, and using this data effectively can be the key to success. By utilizing data analytics, small businesses can improve their efficiency and productivity. Additionally, data analytics can provide a competitive advantage, leading to increased revenue.

2. How do you do analytics for small businesses?

The six steps to doing analytics for small businesses include:

  1. Data collection
  2. Evaluation of data relevance and accuracy
  3. Gaining better insights
  4. Improving in-house capabilities
  5. Data visualization and
  6. Turning insights into action

3. How do you evaluate Google Analytics data for small businesses?

There are a few tips to evaluate Google Analytics data for small businesses. These are:

  • Checking the goal conversion pages
  • Checking if the landing pages are getting traffic
  • Tracking the page site speed and website visitors
  • Checking page load issues
We’ll find qualified Digital Marketing Agencies for your project, for free.
GET STARTED 
Subscribe to Spotlight Newsletter
Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest industry news