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Ecommerce and DX data: 3 struggles (and 3 successes) of today’s online retailers

The Fullstory Team
Posted May 11, 2022
Ecommerce and DX data: 3 struggles (and 3 successes) of today’s online retailers

In 2022, worldwide ecommerce sales are expected to surpass $5 trillion for the first time ever, and account for over 20% of total retail sales.

In a Forrester study commissioned by FullStory, retail and ecommerce business leaders shared their top challenges and success with DX data and analytics.

Here, we’ll dive into their responses, see how the numbers compare to other industries (specifically: consumer goods/manufacturing, SaaS/technology, travel/hospitality, and finance/insurance), and explore how Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI) can help organizations address those challenges.


3 DX data challenges for retail and ecommerce businesses

1. Privacy is a top concern

According to the survey, 60% of ecomm/retail leaders surveyed named privacy concerns as their biggest challenges with analyzing and managing digital experience data. On its own, this number doesn’t seem all that significant, but when compared to responses from other industries, we get a more surprising finding:

  • On average, only 53% of survey respondents from other industries named privacy concerns as a top DX data challenge.

  • While the difference isn’t huge, it’s telling that ecomm/retail respondents find privacy to be a challenge more frequently than finance and insurance organizations (54%), for instance.

Regardless of industry, privacy should be a top priority for any business that uses customer and behavioral data for any reason. This is why privacy and security are cornerstones of FullStory’s DXI solution. With FullStory’s robust privacy controls and Private by Default capabilities, businesses can be confident that no unwanted or sensitive data is ever captured. Learn more about Private by Default here.

2. Companies lack internal resources

Behind privacy concerns looms the second largest DX data challenge: 52% of retail and ecommerce respondents said their organizations lack the internal skills to analyze data and get meaningful insights.

For example, setting up FullStory on your site or app is as simple as dropping in a line of code. And as far as having the skills to extract meaningful insights from a DX data tool, FullStory does the heavy lifting for you.

FullStory is designed to automatically surface the ecommerce insights that matter. Find out how HBC’s Saks Fifth Avenue innovates its digital shopping experience with DXI.

3. DX data feels overly complicated

Finally, 50% of retail/ecomm respondents reported that their digital experience data is too difficult to navigate or to use cross-functionally. Additionally, only 27% of retail/ecomm leaders surveyed strongly agreed that their organization can get actionable insights from their DX and analytics tools, compared to an average of 39% who agreed across other industries.

Again, this is where the right Digital Experience Intelligence solution can act like a spotlight—illuminating the data trends that you should pay attention to based on your objectives and KPIs.

For example, imagine there’s a bug on your checkout page causing the “Confirm Order” button not to work—resulting in frustrated clicks and abandoned carts. FullStory’s Rage Clicks signal would immediately let you know exactly where the problem is, rather than requiring you to discover the issue through trial and error.


3 areas where retail and ecommerce excel at digital experiences


The good news is that, according to our survey, there are a few areas where ecommerce and retail businesses are ahead of the digital experience curve. Here are three areas where this industry is making the grade.

1. Breaking free of the red tape

Compared to other industries (and certainly with some exceptions), ecommerce regulations are relatively straightforward—which is reflected by respondents. According to our survey, only 40% of retail/ecomm leaders say their biggest challenge with DX data analytics is meeting compliance, regulatory, or governance requirements. On average, 51% of other industries ranked this as a top challenge.

2. Collecting the right data

Despite the data collection and analysis challenges described in the first half of this post, many retail and ecommerce businesses are successfully capturing valuable info. Only 42% of retail and ecommerce survey respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their organizations don’t collect the right data to get actionable insights, as opposed to an average of 50% of respondents from other industries who said the same. This disparity is likely due to the fact that purchasing a physical product online, like a t-shirt or a candle, is typically more straightforward than purchasing a digital product, like a SaaS platform.

3. Calculating advanced metrics

In the survey, on average, 51% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their organization lacks the staff to calculate and manage advanced metrics from their digital experience data. However, retail and ecommerce respondents reported that they fare better: only 46% of retail/ecomm leaders surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that they face this challenge.


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