Cut through the noise when choosing your big data solution providers

It can be challenging to determine what distinguishes big data solution providers from one another, and it can be even more confusing to sift through the marketing noise to understand what a company actually offers. In the stream of transaction data, snapshots are not enough. It is important to know what you are getting from your big data provider and that you are getting all the data you need.

What kind of shortcuts might big data solution providers take?

Providers may take one or more shortcuts to save time and money, each of which can lead to incomplete data and less accurate analytics for you. The following are some shortcuts to watch out for when looking for big data solution providers.

Sampling (aka snapshots)

Increasing amounts of data means increasing storage costs. To cut back on costs, some companies take a sample snapshot of data every once in a while instead of recording every single transaction. This sounds like a reasonable tactic until the data you need is the data they did not capture. Did their snapshot happen to capture that sales spike? Did it capture the abandoned cart data to show you lost revenue? What about the random high-dollar purchase? Snapshots can miss loads of important data, particularly relevant anomalies.

One trick pony

Some providers specialize in mobile app data or web browser data and only capture one or the other instead of both. To get a full picture of your revenue stream, you will need data from every channel your customers use to make purchases.

Generic reports

Custom reports require extra effort. Some companies take a shortcut on their reports by only providing generic reports with little to no customization options. This makes it more challenging to get the data you need in a way that makes the most sense for your business.

The full story of your revenue stream requires capturing all transaction data

What if you could get complete, timely data, and customizable reports to view an accurate picture of your revenue stream? The good news is – you can! It is entirely possible to gather complete, real-time big data of customer journeys from start to finish.

Complete data

Capture all customer transactions instead of occasional samples of data. For example, Glassbox Cashbox captures every transaction your customers attempt and complete, which provides an accurate total accounting of revenue gained and lost. Do you want to know how much revenue was lost when a customer abandoned their cart due to technical errors? What about an item they tried to add to a cart but couldn’t because they received an error due to low stock? Glassbox captures all of these actions and more. It provides a full picture of the revenue stream, including technical errors that block the stream’s flow.

Think of it like a video recording of a stream that you can rewind and replay, as opposed to a series of photographs of the same stream. Photographs are great if you are looking for a snapshot, but video is necessary if you want to see all the activity of the stream. What might you miss with a random photo? River otters, jumping fish, the beaver that constructed a dam, the random bolt of lightning that struck a tree which fell in the stream and blocked the water for an hour. You might miss all of that activity if you take sporadic photos. The same is true of your revenue stream. To catch each spike in sales, increased activity, higher dollar purchases, and even the events blocking a transaction, you need to capture all the data in your revenue stream, not just snapshots.

Multi-channel tracking

You should not have to choose between tracking data only in web browsers or only on your mobile app. To get the full story, you need to see customer actions and transactions across all your channels. Very few solutions capture both mobile and web transactions, but with the combined power of Glassbox and Mobilebox, it is possible to capture a complete and accurate picture of revenue across all platforms.

Customizable reports

With customizable reports you can see what matters to your business rather than what the big data provider thinks is important. Glassbox reports are customizable with a variety of optional widgets that support different capabilities. When viewing reports, users have the ability to toggle between different regions, browsers, operating systems, and more. Do you have a custom need for slicing and dicing your transaction data? Then you will want customizable reporting.

No matter what is happening with your revenue stream, whether it is a raging rapid or a babbling brook, you will be able to make better decisions if you have complete and accurate data from your customer journey analytics software. You need data on every transaction to find out exactly how much income your site is generating, to keep track of the true average sale (rather than an average of snapshots), and to keep tabs on how much revenue was lost from abandoned carts and transaction errors. Why rely on snapshots when you can get the full story?