Analysis of data coming from analytical tools or comparing current data with historical ones is something that e-shop owners must do daily. Soon, online entrepreneurs will be able to broaden their analysis with aggregated data for the entire e-commerce market. The research company Gemius has developed gemiusShopMonitor, a tool enabling e-stores to compare their performance against aggregated data concerning competition.

"Polish e-commerce needs a point of reference - to boost its growth, but also to strengthen the barriers against global corporations" explains Mateusz Gordon, International E-commerce Segment Manager, responsible in Gemius for developing the new tool. "Such point of reference may be an aggregated picture of a market with division into particular industries, enabling comparison of one company with others, hence improving sales process" he adds.

According to Gordon, the new tool will help e-businesses understand the market trends, and with the alerts signalling drops in the shop’s efficiency from a given source, quicker reaction to negative developments becomes possible.

"Let’s imagine an owner of an online pharmacy, who has observed a seven-percent increase in sales of dietary supplements with the price exceeding PLN 50, the source of which is traffic generated from a blog related to the store. Thanks to gemiusShopMonitor, the owner can check if the 7 percent result is satisfactory when compared to the competitors’ results. His analysis has never been contextualised to such a degree before" he sums up.

Paweł Fornalski, President of IAI-Shop.com, points out to the fact that gemiusShopMonitor is a tool greatly needed by the market. "The prevailing standard in shop analysis is Google Analytics. This is a wonderful solution, but suffers two disadvantages. Firstly, it is universal, so a lot of knowledge is necessary on how to configure it, in order to obtain the data one needs. The other, yet equally important, drawback is the Google’s engagement in delivering traffic and in selling advertisements. The lack of transparency as to how Google uses the Analytics’ information is a sound argument for providing shops with freedom of choice rather than limit them to one tool only. Stores should have an alternative and this is the reason why we have decided to integrate our platform with the new Gemius tool" says Paweł Fornalski.

GemiusShopMonitor is the first e-commerce research in the world that can boast such accuracy. Apart from the typical data generated through web analytics, the new product caters for the specificity of particular branches of industry, providing the client companies with reports tailored to their needs. The largest service dealing with professional internet sales – IAI-Shop.com – is engaged in the project. Gemius declares that the next step to be undertaken after ShopMonitor is implemented, will be the provision of aggregated data on foreign markets to Polish entrepreneurs – thus giving them a tool for comparing e-shops from other countries.

At present, the company is running a pilot research among e-shops of selected industries, i.e. fragrance, pharmaceutical and tourism.