As more and more companies continue to leave store-front businesses in exchange for e-commerce sites, one important question that these businesses must ask themselves is if they really understand their customers. While it is easy to say you made a hundred sales in one month, the more important question is why your customers chose to buy your products and how you can replicate the same results.

With user information becoming increasingly valuable, being able to understand your customers behaviors, trends as well as likes and dislikes can be the key to whether or not you have a successful business. With this problem though, comes a possible solution thanks to social media and more specifically, Facebook.

The Importance of Data

As a business, each and every user that visits your website forms a relationship with you. Some may be long-lasting, while others may be one time ‘flings.’ Whether it’s long-lasting or not, understanding the reasons behind this is important. By capturing visitor data, businesses can learn how to better improve both their marketing and product development.

On the marketing side, by analyzing data to find correlations between purchases, you can determine how you should proceed as far as allocating funds for online advertisements, adwords, and how items are presented to visitors. Additionally, product development can benefit from knowing specifics such as what accessories are most often purchased with certain purchases as well as how often users come back to buy a particular type of item.

Facebook’s Solution

Now that the importance of understanding a user has been laid out, Facebook presents businesses in different markets a chance to solve this problem. Thanks to recent developments announced at Facebook’s F8 conference, brands will soon be able to cater their own websites toward the personal preferences of their visitors. For example, if User A ‘likes’ a certain pair of jeans, a type of music genre, and also a type of drink, brands can in turn analyze this data and develop their own user profiles so that they can present a more enticing experience for customers.

When a consumer first arrives at your website, you typically only have between 1-3 minutes to ’show’ them something relevant to what they are looking for. If you don’t, the chances of them coming back your website are drastically lower.

Facebook’s realized this important need and has decided that now is the time to capitalize on it.

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While it may seem difficult, Facebook is making strides to helping brands and businesses better understand who their customers are are and how to best sell to them. Being able to tell others how much money you made is great, but being able to tell them how and why is even better.

Joseph is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com & works in social media & sports consulting. Read more about him at http://JosephAYi.com

Tags: Business, Customer Relations, Social Media