What Data Should You Track During the Holiday Shopping Season?

Previews, bounce rates, time on website, conversions and average order value are all great stats to track - in fact you're probably already doing it.

Actionable Data Points During the Holidays

Search Data  — Unless you're only selling a handful of products, chances are that your search box gets a workout, especially during the holidays. While it's a good idea to monitor what's going on with on-site searches year-round and use the data to improve merchandising, it's especially important during the holidays. It's an effective way to make quick adjustments to your merchandising if something is not working. Here are a few things to track:

• What search queries are people using?
• Are there search queries that return too few or too many results?
• Which results are users clicking on? If they're not clicking on the first few results, it's an opportunity to reorganize.
• What facets are they using to navigate? Make the most popular ones more prominent.

Desktop Checkout and Registration Funnels  — Pay close attention to these during the holiday season. Also, track the difference in conversion rates and funnel drop off points for new vs. return visitors. Chances are you won't be able to make any major changes during the holiday season. However, you may be able to find an easy way to change messaging to add clarity and you'll get some great data points to optimize your checkout process next year.

Mobile Shopping Behaviors & Checkout Funnel  — 2016 is going to be the biggest holiday season for mobile to date. Take the time to track mobile behaviors and key performance indicators the same way you do overall site behaviors. Be sure to monitor the checkout funnel to identify where visitors abandon the site. If you see more visitors bailing out on the mobile version of your site as compared to the desktop, there's potentially a big opportunity for improvement.

If there are any metrics that are particularly important to your business, the holidays can be a good time to slice and dice them by customer type, channel and other demographic information. The data you collect this holiday season can help guide your priorities for next year.