🔢 Data Nuggets for Breakfast

Data is important. We’ve covered that. Now, let’s just have a coffee and bask in some tidbits.

Note on data sources: all of this information comes from Jane’s aggregated, anonymized analytics. Jane supports online (and in-store) orders from about 1,800 retailers in the United States - meaning the dataset is robust enough to be representative of the overall market. We are also the market leader in each of the regions I’ll highlight, meaning the insights are driven by numerous high-volume operators.

👀 What’re You Looking For? (Searches)

What do your customers want? What delights them? What products fit your market dynamics and target demographic?

You can imagine that purchase intent is quite high when someone actually, actively types words into a search bar (vs. scrolling and browsing). In that vein:

The top 5 search terms in Illinois revolve around category buckets, and flower is obviously at a major premium in The Prairie State - the number one search term, believe it or not, is “Shake.”

Shake! I thought that was funny.

Folks from Pennsylvania love RSO, and they flirt with power brands like Moxie, Cresco, and Pax.

In Cali, we put brands first, apparently - Stiiizy and Raw Garden lead the charge, followed by Edibles, Pax, and Vape. Curiously enough, Flower doesn’t crack the top 5 in California, probably due to the relative age of the legal industry.

🕵️‍♀️ Speaking of Searches

We spend a lot of time looking at the reasons why some people place an order and some people don’t. Sometimes, we can predict conversion rate based on behavior; one metric is particularly powerful:

Customers that search for products are 2x more likely to place an order. That’s across all searches, so it really doesn’t matter what they’re looking for.

These customers are showing off their purchase intent; it’s your job to make the search results compelling enough to encourage a hassle-free checkout.

🎩 Premium Performance

One thing we do for fun is measure retention rate against sales; this provides an indication of how many return customers brands have, and how often they are buying.

Obviously, you want a high volume / high loyalty kind of situation. Here are Michigan’s top performers from Q4 2020:

☀️ Being Loyal in Arizona

AZ is the new kid on the rec block, but it is no stranger to brand affinity. Here are the top-selling brands with the highest reorder rate within the last 30 days (any category):

iLAVA has an 84% reorder rate within 30 days. Huge.

🚙 Nevada Went Curbside

The pandemic caused major disruptions to shopping patterns - for one, customers flocked to digital environments and started shopping online en masse. For another, customers demanded (and retailers delivered) a safe way to pick up their cannabis products.

Prior to lockdown programs, curbside pickup was a fringe case in Nevada. Shopping at a Nevada dispensary is fun, after all - especially in Vegas. But now, as you can see from the change highlighted above, curbside pickup is the primary fulfillment method.

As I’ve said before, at least some of this behavior is sticky. Once your customer base trains themselves on a new behavior that just so happens to be more convenient - you gotta keep accommodating that behavior.

🗣 Reviews, reviews, reviews

I’ve opined on the importance of verified product reviews, both from a UX and conversion standpoint. Now, let’s dig in to some specifics and give some awards. (All metrics based on trailing twelve months)

🏆 The Highest Cumulative Rating Winner

🏆 “Ease My Mind” Winner

🏆 “Get Intimate” Winner

📚 Tl;dr

• Interesting data insights are everywhere; to extract them requires standardized data at scale

• Each state market (and even sub-markets within states) exhibit drastically different search and purchase behavior

• Curbside ain’t going anywhere

• It is Wednesday