Evolving analytics for e-commerce applications: Utilizing big data and social media extensions

Abstract

The evolution of an Analytics Application is presented in this work. The recent technological advances and popular applications, like mobile devices and social networks, generate huge quantities of data that keep growing in exponential mode. Unstructured social media data, distributed in multiple computer systems, act as sources of both relevant and irrelevant information. References of an e-commerce site in social media applications act like advertising and may generate traffic and improve revenue. Both traffic and revenue are measured by the Analytics Application in order to evaluate the impact factor of each medium. Postings containing direct links to preselected specific product lists, groups of products or special offers are automatically generated and posted using the available Application Programming Interfaces of the social media services. Big data techniques allow the dissemination of metrics and visualizations of performance and statistical reports and evaluations in near real time. Issues regarding data replication, data transfer and selection are presented.