From Warehouse to Your House: Data in E-Commerce

In this episode of Data Driven Discussions: find out how e-commerce companies use data.

In this episode, I speak with Ari Akerstein. Ari is an expert on e-commerce and — most recently — a product leader at Walmart.com. We all buy things online, but may be unaware about how data is used to turn clicks on a website into cardboard boxes on our doorsteps. Ari walks us through how one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies uses data to build and optimize e-commerce products.

In this discussion we’ll answer a lot of questions about this industry, including:

• Overview of the complexity involved in measuring how a product flows through all touch points on an online retail site. (1:07)
• A discussion on first-party vs. third-party sellers and the nuances involved in showing the right offer on an item page. (3:28)
• How organizations work to make data-driven decisions. An example of using data in working with buyers on a major site redesign. (9:55)
• Where data goes wrong or can lead data-driven organizations astray — how dashboards can mislead an organization. (11:52)
• The future of data-driven organizations: using data to create feedback loops to improve decision velocity and effectiveness. (17:51)

Listen to the episode below:

https://soundcloud.com/outlier_ai/103-from-warehouse-to-your-house-data-in-e-commerce

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