Data-driven brands are the next winners
Being data-driven is becoming a must-have for all successful eCommerce businesses. The most ambitious ones at the forefront involve data into every decision making process to ensure the most accurate results for their desired goals. The lack of data knowledge and optimization is a real issue that many businesses want to tackle. In a fast-paced business environment where processes are becoming more complex, it's difficult to keep on top of where to focus. Many businesses are not trained in data analysis or using data tools correctly.
Unlike these brands, Woolman has been happy to work with few data-driven forerunners such as Acon. Already being an international success, it was obvious that they wished to work even more with data and joined Ellis developed by Woolman.
Reducing manual work and optimising data
Acon has been on a substantial growth run in recent years. They had earlier made the decision to migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus. During the pandemic the brand grew exponentially - expanding worldwide selling trampolines to millions. With the immense growth we have seen, this superstar player in the sporting goods industry shows ambition and willingness to continuously innovate for better solutions for further success in eCommerce.
What enticed Acon to test Ellis - the data-driven business intelligence platform?
“As a part of our strategy we have been wanting to utilise AI and that's how Ellis became a part of our conversation with Woolman” -Marjo Piirto / Director, Digital Sales & Marketing
Ellis was built by a team of data experts at Woolman who had a passion to make data more digestible and easier to utilise. The Ellis platform combines data from multiple sources such as multiple Shopify stores, Google Analytics, third-party apps, and social media platforms - providing insights around predictability and growth.
With multiple stores, unifying data was the answer
With the internationalisation of Acon, came along 7 different stores to operate on Shopify Plus with 5 different languages. This meant that the analytic applications were all native for each country's website. With the data being scattered across different platforms, seeing the full picture of how the business is doing as a whole became more of a challenge. It involved a lot of manual work with Excel sheets to be able to compare the performance results of the different stores.
This is where Ellis came in to save the day. With Ellis platform's capability to unify data sources, Acon was able to have a dashboard where the performance results and figures of all the different stores could be viewed in a single place. This has reduced immense amounts of manual work as the platform helps to automate processes, provide transparency and fill in blind spots in the data. As a cherry on the top Woolman’s data team has also been providing Acon customised dashboard views as an additional service.
Increasing efficiency with more centralised data reporting
Acon team’s have been very capable of data already during their whole history, but they have been at times struggling with so many places where data lies. This is extremely time consuming and with Ellis, Acon has moved step by step to a more centralised data analysing. So far Ellis isn’t yet the only place to stay up to date, but Ellis has managed to help them with multiple reporting issues especially in cross-border eCommerce.
Woolman’s dedicated data team has also helped to provide insights of additional perspectives on data and provide their expertise of other D2C cases running Shopify Plus. With Acon's strong foundation in the US, they decided together with Woolman to start a common data study on the Texas market. With specific market studies like this, Acon can start to gather important data about their customers in a specific area; who they are, which product preferences they have or is word-of-mouth a substantial customer acquisition trigger. These kinds of studies allow A/B testing in customer acquisition for these specific locations and additional support for growth tactics.
“Ellis has been helpful for us. We have been happy to see the new features being added after the summer. And especially the service provided by Jani and other Ellis data specialists.” - Marjo Piirto / Director, Digital Sales & Marketing
Working together hand-in-hand
Woolman and Acon hold regular feedback sessions, where Woolman takes into account Acon’s unique needs as a company. Acon has the opportunity to tell which dashboards are useful to them, which ones are a distraction, and what wouldn't exist that could be useful. Woolman takes this feedback to make the necessary adjustments in the next development phase. The beauty with Ellis and the Woolman team is the possibilities of endless customisation suited to the unique needs and preferences of each client.
So what does the future hold for Acon?
“Our vision is to be the most wanted trampoline brand in the world, to grow and expand into different markets for example to other European countries with data-driven strategies.” Marjo Piirto / Director, Digital Sales & Marketing
Acon is ambitious about growth and therefore knows that data-driven decision making is an important part of their business strategy. The goal is to build more predictive models, where the focus is not in looking in rear view mirrors but rather being able to forecast into the future, which Ellis has all the capabilities to do.
Would Acon recommend Ellis (and whom to)?
“I would recommend Ellis to any ecommerce business looking to optimise their business, especially those who deal with a multi-channel environment. Having the right system in place is one thing, but also learning the analytical skills for understanding the data, understanding what is relevant in weekly, monthly or yearly monitoring is really important. “ Marjo Piirto / Director, Digital Sales & Marketing