Google Cloud Platform Based Analytics for Proving ROI in Retail

Project Summary: Consulted a US retail startup on utilizing data from A/B tests, building ETL pipelines and developing dashboards for proving the ROI from their products to their customers.

Project Duration: 5 months

Team Size: 1 team member

Industry: Retail

Customer

US startup providing an AI-powered style discovery platform for home furnishing retailers.

Client Testimonial

Business Case

The company’s customers integrate the AI-powered modules into their e-commerce websites. The modules provide online shoppers with a better customer experience. The value for retailers is the increased customer lifetime value, ticket size and repeated visits on the website.

The challenge is to prove that the AI-powered modules actually deliver that value to the retailers. The retailers want to see how significant the ROI from those modules is. A/B tests are used for collecting data when the modules are active or inactive. However, the raw data is too complex to provide insights directly to the stakeholders.

Solution

The developed data analytics solution is a set of Google Data Studio dashboards powered by ETL pipelines for preparing the data into a usable form.

The dashboards provide proof of the significant ROI that the AI-powered modules bring to the retailers. The insights are based on revenue and other metrics comparing the 2 sides of the A/B tests. Some of the metrics are the lift of customer lifetime value, ticket size and repeated visits on the website. The metrics are updated on a daily basis, so stakeholders can see the latest state every morning when they open the dashboards.

Tools & Technologies

  • Google Cloud Platform
  • Python
  • Google Cloud BigQuery
  • Google Data Studio
  • GitLab CI / CD

My Role & Responsibilities

I was a single data science consultant working directly with the CEO of the startup. My responsibilities were:

  • Communication with stakeholders and business analysis
  • Data analysis
  • Development and deployment of ETL pipelines
  • Building interactive dashboards
  • Training client’s employees

Results

The data analytics solution is used by the startup leadership to measure the ROI of their products and to prove it to their customers. This improves the trust and retention rate of the customers.