"A database is a data structure that stores organized information. Most databases contain multiple tables, which may each include several different fields.
For example, a company database may include tables for products, employees, and financial records. Each of these tables would have different fields that are relevant to the information stored in the table."
To create a database, we have a lot of tools at our disposal. Indeed, most E-commerce sites use Database Management systems such as MySQL, FileMaker Pro or Firebase.
Today, we will be using Firebase as it is a simple and intuitive tool to use to create databases. Here are the steps to follow to start using Firebase:
- Click on the link and connect to your Google account, or create an account.
- Once this is done, click "Get Started" and "Add a project". Choose a name for your project and follow the instructions.
- Once your project has been created, click "Database" on the left side and go to "Real time Database", create a database and start in test mode.
- From there you can create your very own database for your store. We will show you in the next part how to link your database to a code page and extract the information from it.
Before you start, you can learn more about databases and how they work on this video:
The objective of our project is to allow stores to target their customers adequately without driving the one's who would recieve badly targeted advertising away. The goal is to
make every business efficient while showing them that databases and simple codes to take inventory of their different types of customers are not that complicated and technical,
and are rather pretty simple to put in place with the right tools. By following the next steps and the instructions on the Firebase website, you will be able to quickly make up your
own database and start developing your business, as Christmas is an important holiday for a lot of business's, making most of their revenue.
Lets imagine that you are a men's and kids clothing store. You are trying to boost your sales as Christmas is approaching. To keep up with the competition, you decide to make targeted discounts to your customers.
For this, you will have to use the information you have about the clients who have visited and bought clothes in your store, as well as the ones who have subscribed on your website.
Therefore, you create a firebase database with all the information you have collected about your clients. Databases allow one to select the information they need to create a segmentation within their customer list.
Here is what your database could look like
Using these informations, you could only select men and use the emails you have collected to create a personalised email that you'll send to every man you think it might drive to a purchase.
Regarding coding, you will first need to export the data as JSON. Then, you can add the piece of code provided by firebase to automaticaly select the population you need. You dont need any advanced
skills in coding as firebase creates the codelines you need to link your database with you population selection. The code lines could look as follows:
To create your own segmentation, choose your criteria and add the choice to the code. The page will then create a personalised list of all the people within your database who
correspond to the criteria specified. Firebase's documentation page gives information, codelines and guidelines as to how to create your own list based on the criteria you selected.
Here is an exemple if you wanted to create a list of only people with 1 or more children.
There are many different situations where a store will gain from using databases to target a certain type of customer to drive to more sales.
Indeed, we have thought of multiple applications where you could make use of this.
- If we take the previous example, you could only select people who have children and use the email they provided when they registered to send the a
Christmas discount for children's clothing. This will create a need they didn't think about before and will gain you sales that you wouldn't have had otherwise.
- Another application could be using the date of registration of their account in the store. For example, as people reach 6 months, 1 year, 2 years of registration ;
the store could send them an anniversary discount to thank them for their fidelity. One could also track how many purchases are made by a customer and how often.
This could help the store thank the valuable customers that buy a lot in the store by giving them a discount.
- We also thought that, using the customer's adress that was provided, big stores could create special offers where they offer the possibility for the customer to get exclusive items
that are usually only available in another region or country. This would contribute to increasing the fidelity of the customer and to make him feel priviledged.
This article details the benefits of Database development