How to Leverage AWS Retail & eCommerce Analytics with Looker

[LookerExperts]

This content, written by Joel McKelvey, was initially posted in Looker Blog on Dec 17, 2020. The content is subject to limited support.

Retail businesses gain a competitive edge through the intelligent use of data — and ecommerce businesses are collecting more data than ever before. In many cases, this data is stored in AWS S3 buckets or in an AWS database such as Amazon Redshift.

Looker is a data and analytics platform that helps retailers get the most value from their data. We’ve seen retailers leverage the combination of to discover profitable insights, closely understand customers, reduce risk and churn, and create opportunities for business growth.

Vivino is one such retailer. Check out to learn how they optimized the ordering process and improved customer retention, used sentiment analysis to increase their Net Promoter Score by 30%, and ultimately stepped up to delivering the best possible customer experience — all using Looker and AWS services as retail solutions.

Looker for retail — recognized by AWS

is proud to hold as part of our active participation in the AWS Partner Network. It means AWS recognizes us as providing offerings that accelerate data modernization and innovation across all areas of retail and ecommerce.

Further, we offer close integrations with as part of our partnership, such as , Athena, RDS, EMR, SageMaker, and more. It’s our way of investing in the success of our retail customers who rely on AWS.

Looker supports key retail data types in AWS such as advertising data, marketplace data, weather data, and geospatial data that can help retailers understand and predict customer buying patterns. By combining all these powerful data types in AWS and analyzing them in Looker, retail teams can uncover new business opportunities and drive greater customer loyalty.

Here are some common use cases we see among our retail and ecommerce customers who use AWS:

• Customer acquisition and retention. Using data to personalize marketing and provide superior support to convert visitors into loyal customers.
• Omnichannel commerce. Powering ecommerce hosting, AI-driven experiences, and digital shopping assistants.
• Store operations optimization. Reimagining customer experiences like BOPIS and on-shelf inventory tracking.
• Merchandising and assortment. Understanding inventory allocation and evolving dynamic assortment planning.
• Logistics, fulfillment, and delivery. Driving visibility and efficiency into all areas of the .

Why Looker for AWS retailers?

Looker offers AWS retailers much more than support for the right data types. With our powerful data platform, you can get the right data to the right people exactly when they need it. Think beyond traditional business intelligence (reports and dashboards), and instead imagine data experiences — baking insights into employees’ everyday workflows and making it easier to take action on what they see, all in the name of improving customer lifetime value, optimizing store operations, and increasing retail margins.

Using to build data experiences can mean:

• Integrating insights and analytics with the applications you use every day
• Building a 360-view of the customer and their journey
• Using AI to craft recommendations and deliver better
• Analyzing customer interactions to pinpoint supply chain issues
• Having near real-time visibility into inventory levels and product movement
• Tearing down data silos and putting accurate data in everyone’s hands

To learn more about retail and ecommerce use cases, please check out to Looker solutions for retail.

To see how online mattress retailer Tuft & Needle created data experiences with Looker to shift away from frustrating, bottlenecked analytics to using their data to secure the #1 rated spot on Amazon, check out the video .

Looker Blocks for retail/ecommerce

To help you harness the analytical possibilities as quickly as possible, we’ve developed several Looker Blocks focused on AWS and retail. are pre-built analytics models that give you access to useful analyses right away. In addition to a powerful suite of Blocks that help optimize your investment in AWS, Looker offers Blocks that cover virtually every aspect of retail and ecommerce data. As with all Looker Blocks, you can customize them as much as you want to reflect your specific business needs. By leveraging Blocks, you can deliver meaningful insights with minimal time and effort. A few of the most commonly used retail blocks include:

• . Access and understand user behavior data to discover what drives customer loyalty, and how you can encourage customers to make buying decisions.
• . Compare and contrast the behavior of one-time buyers vs. your best customers to figure out new promotions and marketing tactics — and drive more business.
• . Organize customer behavior data and sequence customer transactions to focus on the big picture and keep your customers coming back.

You can learn more about these and other Blocks on our .

Try Looker For Yourself

Seeing Looker in action on AWS with a retail (or ecommerce) data set is the best way to understand what it can do for your business. You have options for that:

2. for expert advice and best practices on how to use data to maximise revenue and gain a competitive advantage using Looker.
3. . We’d love to show you more of the retail Blocks, our integrations with Redshift and Athena, and how Looker can work for you as a retailer on AWS.