Customer Behaviour Analysis

It is almost impossible to build and maintain a dynamic website that works flawlessly every moment and for every customer. It is not a surprise that online customers often face problems such as messages, navigation errors, purchase difficulties, usability issues and much more.

Furthermore, consumers usually share their experiences through social networks and blogs. Additionally, they have the tendency to discuss more about bad experiences rather than good ones. Consequently, one poor customer experience can damage brands, their customer loyalty, and their bottom line.

Talking with numbers, according to a Digital Customer Experience Survey which was conducted for IBM, 63% of website users that had a poor experience moved to another website offering similar products or content. Even worse, 17% of them shared their bad experience on social media or posted a comment on the site.

 

What can website owners do? Customer behaviour analysis

Every e-commerce website should look for practical ways to improve and promote a better online experience for its customers. With a customer behaviour analysis, marketers are able to gather both quantitative and qualitative data about what each customer sees and does during each visit.

With customer behaviour analysis marketers can answer the “why” questions about their website such as:

• Why my potential customers abandon their cart?
• Why consumers search multiple times but do not add any items in their shopping carts?
• Why visitors leave the site?

Insights that are fundamental for an effective website optimization and can also be the best competitive advantage and industry differentiator. By putting a strategic energy into the customer experience and optimizing websites some of the anticipated business rewards are:

• Drive word of mouth (The most credible and inexpensive form of promotion)
• Build Customer loyalty
• Boost revenue and cost saving.

 

But how can you perform a customer behaviour analysis?

Nowadays marketers are able to understand and analyse their customers effectively both with Google analytics and a number of third party tools which are able to fill the gaps in which google analytics has not excelled. (e.g. heat maps, scroll maps, recordings etc.)

During the last couple of years, Google analytics have released a number of reports that allow marketers to gain insight on how they can improve their website design and website content. More specifically with Google Analytics behaviour reports online marketers can reveal data and discover in the quickest way what is it that website visitors want and how you can convert them to leads or customers.

 

Let’s review part of the report and try to understand why every analyst must use them.

1. Behaviour Flow Report

The behaviour flow report illustrates a flow diagram showing how website visitors enter and move through a website. By analysing these insights, you can gain knowledge regarding visitors research process and answer questions such as:

• Are they doing what I want?
• If not what should I change to influence them?
• Should I remove or add alternative call to actions?
• Change the internal linking strategy?

2.Site Content Reports

These reports can tell you what happens and how visitors interacting with websites content. By identifying and analysing your most visited content you can prioritize in the future topics and sections on your website based on popularity and interest. Additionally, it helps marketers determine which pages need additional content or revisions.

3.Site Speed Reports

These reports give you information on how fast your pages’ load and provide help on how you can improve the site load time. Why is it important? Site speed is a ranking factor. Minor changes and simple fixes can make a big difference.

4.Site Search Reports

These Reports tell you what terms people are searching for on your website. There is no need to mention the importance and the value of this information. It helps you learn what visitors want from your site. Since these searches are coming directly from your website visitors they offer you a fantastic resource for future content or product ideas.

5.Events Reports

Those reports pinpoint how often and when analytics events have been triggered. In other worlds you are able to track how users interact with the website. For instance, you can measure when a visitor started or stopped a video and the impact of each action. Furthermore, by setting custom events such as forms of conversions or website clicks you are able to get a deeper look into the user’s behaviour and content performance.

With all these reports and data at hand, marketers are able to attract visitors with the right content and guide them down the paths they want. These lead to a better user experience and consequently to higher conversion rates.

If you are not convinced for the effectiveness of customer behaviour analysis check the documented Business results citied in a Forrester Report regarding usability fixing issues:

• By adding a tool which allowed users to browse products by fit the number of orders has increased by 160 %
• By offering the ability to save preferences and settings between sessions the goal completion rates and the website satisfactions increased by 48% and 28% respectively
• By shortening the order process and adding markers to help users understand where they are in the overall process the conversion rate increased by 20%
• By improving and simplifying the site navigation the product views and the page views increased by 11 and 18 percent respectively.
• By changing the placements of sign-up links, copies and buttons on the site, opt in registrations increased by 590%.
• By moving the “narrow your search tool” to a more prominent place the use of tool increased by 500% and sales went up by 400%.

 

To Sum up

Google analytics are able to provide solutions or answers for almost every question such as how customers move through the website, how they interact with the website, where they fall off before making a purchase and much more.

We have only scratched the surface of the capabilities of behaviour report. By combining dimensions and segment with the right metrics you can extract meaningful data.

Each company is distinct. Create and monitor customers experience KPIs that are important for your organisation. Analyse the performance of those KPI’s and provide solutions. It is sure that very soon you will see your sales and revenue increase sky-high!!!