Having access to great tools can be beneficial in growing your store. One of those tools is sales reports. In this article, we’ll look at 20 reasons why sales reporting is necessary for a WooCommerce store.
1. Improved Business Management
Access to multiple types of information is crucial for managing your store. Sales reports show you what’s working and what’s not, giving you a clear picture of where you need to focus your attention.
2. Assess Your Productivity
Tracking what you do and comparing that to sales helps you to know which activities directly affected the sales. This includes communication that you’ve had with potential customers, time spent helping others on social media, etc.
3. Set Smart Goals
Knowing your current sales statistics can help you know what goals to go after. For example, if you have specific sales goals but you don’t have enough traffic to meet your goals, then your current goal is to gain traffic. If you have enough traffic, then you might want to focus on gaining more sales from your current traffic. Each of these requires a different focus on skills, times, and dollars. Set realistic goals and don’t set too many at once.
4. Compare to Your Goals
You’ll be able to compare your actual sales with your sales goals. This will help you to troubleshoot problems in your sales funnel, re-assess your goals, re-assess your products, etc. You’ll have a better idea of which goals are working, which are the most important, and where to place your efforts.
We always want to sell as much as possible, but having a good understanding of sales shows us what’s possible for the amount of money and time we want to spend. It’s difficult to sell a million of something without spending money on marketing. It’s also difficult to sell a million of something if you’re limited in what you can order, store, etc.
5. Know Where to Spend Your Efforts
Sales reports help you to know your current situation, which helps you to know where to spend your time and money. If you have high traffic but low sales, then gaining more traffic isn’t going to solve the problem. Use the reports to ask questions to determine the problems. Are your products out of stock, are they in demand, do you need better photos or sales copy, do you need to adjust your pricing structure, is your website too slow, does your website have a bad design?
6. Realistic Projections for Business Loans and Other Business Activities
Sales reports are crucial if you plan to get a business loan, hire employees, obtain partners, etc. You’ll need your sales figures to show a snapshot of your business health and to justify sales projections.
7. Compare Shipping Methods
Reports can show which shipping methods are the most effective for sales. If products with a certain shipping method sell more than a product with a different shipping method, this could show the impact that shipping methods have on your sales.
8. Revenue Forecasting
Reports help you predict your revenue for the next quarter or more. To have a realistic idea of future revenue, you’ll need to look at recent trends and compare them to previous years if possible.
9. Understand the Performance of Sales Reps
If you have a sales team, knowing their performance can show the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. Maybe one person is better at selling a certain type of product, or better at selling in a certain region.
10. Improve Website Design
Knowing which products sell the best can help you determine page layouts, colors, products and brand placement, button design, and more. Place your best seller’s front and center in your shop’s home page. Use them as featured products and draw attention to them. Try different product page layouts. If one out-performs another, use that one as a benchmark and continue to improve the design. Look at the performance of your pages, such as your landing page, blog, shop page, etc.
11. Improve Your Marketing
Sales reports can help you understand which marketing efforts are effective and which are not. This includes the effectiveness of email campaigns, Banners, popups, ads, ad design, what type of offers are effective, which sales funnels work best, and on which social media platforms to spend your advertising dollars.
12. Create Better Marketing Campaigns
They can show which campaigns are the most effective, which will help you see how to design a more effective campaign. You can use this information to segment your lists to make your marketing campaigns more effective.
13. Improve your Email Lists
They can also help you create custom email lists. It’s possible to build a large email list of people that are not interested in your products. Maybe people have signed up just to get your list of tips. In this case, your email incentive doesn’t gel with your online store. Is your email list your ideal customer?
14. Know How to Forecast Deals
Sales reports can help you to know what products to place on sale and when. If a product doesn’t sell for a certain amount of time it might be a good idea to place that product on a special deal.
15. Understand Trends
Product sales history can help you spot sales trends to know when to stock certain items, certain colors, and know the quantities to order. You can also predict hot items and upcoming sales trends.
16. Product Performance
Understanding the performance of products, including categories, colors, brands, etc., can tell you where to place your purchase dollars and marketing efforts. This can also show similar products to stock, what types of markup you can obtain, and more.
You’ll know your best selling products. This shows which products to highlight on your homepage and in marketing campaigns. Products with no sales let you know what types of products to avoid, add to your marketing campaigns, etc. Products with a lot of returns can show which products or brands to avoid. This is a great way to grow your business by improving sales.
17. See Sales Fluctuations
If you have a lot of products, it’s possible to have sales fluctuations without seeing enough of a change in revenue to realize it. Sales reports can show you those fluctuations so you can plan.
18. Understand Seasonal Sales Performance
You don’t want specialized inventory left at the end of a season. Tracking sales data from previous years along with current sales trends can indicate the products and amount of inventory you need.
19. Understand Abandoned Cart Issues
Comparing product sales and with abandoned carts might reveal issues to deal with. For example, if a certain product gets abandoned while similar products are sold, this could show an issue with pricing, the description, product placement, etc.
20. Improve your Inventory Management
Sales reports can show the sales trends of your physical products so you’ll know which products to stock and in what quantities.
Ending Thoughts
That’s our look at 20 reasons why sales reporting is necessary for a WooCommerce store. Sales reporting is the best way to know what’s going on in your WooCommerce store. Sales reports can help you make good decisions about your business, such as what products to sell, how to improve your email campaigns, the promotions to run, and even provide insights on your website design.
If you’re interested in adding sales report features to your WooCommerce store, take a look at the WooCommerce plugins in the WP Zone shop. Get detailed sales reports, export them, see them on the frontend, receive them in scheduled emails, and more.
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For a Divi child theme to help you get your online store running fast, take a look at Divi eCommerce. This child theme is designed to increase sales and includes 2 home pages, a custom WooCommerce sidebar, custom product pages, and more.
We want to hear from you. Can you think of more reasons why sales reporting is necessary for a WooCommerce store? Let us know in the comments.
I agree with you that sales report indicates if we exceed our expectations and customers expatiation as well. Thanks for sharing.
This is great, I have to do this every month for my woocommerce clients. They really appreciate it.
great article… covered mostly all…. thanks for this…
Sales report shows if what you are doing is really working. It also helps to know where to make improvements. Thanks for sharing