Last updated - April 11, 2022
When shoppers enter a store, they won’t necessarily buy a product. They may simply be looking around or familiarizing themselves with the offerings. Similarly, a visit to your website won’t guarantee a sale. Still, it’s crucial to ensure that your visitors are satisfied with their digital experience from the get-go.
When customers are happy, they are not just more likely to make a purchase but they’re also be encouraged to visit your site again. However, since it’s not possible to physically watch people as they explore your website pages, it can be tricky to know exactly what your visitors need and want. The good news is you can address your limited access to users by studying their behavior.
Below, we’ll discuss how this process works and how you can utilize it to develop an effective customer experience strategy.
Understanding User Behavior
User behavior pertains to any action a person makes on a website, such as where they click or tap, how they scroll down pages, or how much time they spend on specific sections. User behavior may also encompass the sections where they stop momentarily and where they finally decide to leave the website.
The method of gathering, compiling, and evaluating all this user data is called user behavior analytics (UBA). Through UBA, you can get an in-depth look at how your visitors interact with your site. Also, it will allow you to identify any issues they encounter during their visit. Hence, you can resolve these problems and give your customers a more seamless experience moving forward.
Customer Experience Strategy
E-commerce customer experience refers to the entirety of experiences, engagement, and interactions your customer has with your brand throughout the customer journey, from the first contact to the post-purchase stage.
Accordingly, a customer experience strategy pertains to a company’s tactics and plans to provide a good customer experience. For your strategy to be successful, you have to consider vital factors such as marketplace data, consumer research, and competitive insight.
Additionally, to develop a more precise strategy, it’s essential to analyze your current customer journey. For brick-and-mortar stores, an analysis can be done with the help of the company’s customer service representatives. However, since e-commerce shops are virtual, owners turn to UBA.
As stated previously, UBA gives you an inside look at the users’ browsing journey. Thus, you can determine the obstacles they encounter while maneuvering through your website. By incorporating this knowledge into your customer experience strategy, you can make changes to improve customer communication and ensure a smoother user experience on your website.
In addition to optimizing customer journeys, UBA also enables brands and marketers to make informed decisions on how to engage with their target audience to get the best results. By regularly tracking user activity, you can determine strategies to heighten conversion rates and encourage desirable client behaviors, including purchases, sign-ups, and engagement.
Understanding your customers in this manner can help boost brand loyalty. If you understand what your users want, you can provide them with positive online shopping experiences. This keeps users engaged with your website and more inclined to visit it again, laying the groundwork for brand loyalty.
Analyzing User Behavior
Depending on your goal, UBA can pertain to many things. As explained earlier, it can mean tracking user behavior on the website, such as where they tap and click. UBA processes this information to determine how certain behaviors vary by user demographic, type, or other attributes.
It can also mean assessing the identities of visitors. While most tools can’t identify individuals, they can identify regions, companies, and other essential information about website visitors.
UBA can also entail measuring website analytics. This includes both conventional and advanced analytics tools that can track and evaluate funnel analytics, the behavior of user cohorts, and more.
Getting a Closer Look at User Behavior
Let’s begin with the fundamentals. The tracking of information starts with a visitor’s arrival at your website. Then, you can move on to how visitors spend their time there and how they leave, such as via bouncing. This behavior will help determine which aspects of your website require modification, whether it is a single zone or the overall design.
Here are some metrics for tracking user visits:
- Visit time refers to how long each visit on your site lasts. As for the average time that visitors spend on a site, this is called the exit velocity. It can show you how visiting time differs depending on an individual customer’s journey.
- Bounce rate is used to measure stickiness as well as user interest in your website. A bounce occurs when a user scrolls through graphics and reads materials but doesn’t make it to the second page. Hence, the bounce rate pertains to the number of single-page visits by your visitors. It informs you about the visitors who arrive on your website and leave without making any other action.
Reviewing User Awareness
It goes without saying that if your website visitors do not understand and appreciate your content, they will not engage with it, let alone be converted as a customer. This is why you need to know which specific elements they see and how much time they spend looking at them. It’s important to observe this behavior since it shows you how much of your content is valuable or useful for your visitors.
Users come into contact with your material before they engage, hesitate, or leave. Thus, understanding their awareness of your content is crucial to driving optimal outcomes.
To measure user awareness, take the metrics below into account:
- Exposure time: This metric provides the average time a zone is viewed, thus showing which zones are seen longest by users. With the exposure time, you will be able to identify which areas visitors are skipping over, giving you an idea of the content they are disregarding.
- Exposure rate: The exposure rate measures how far down the page your visitors scroll to. Thus, it determines how much of your creative content your visitors are exposed to.
Engagement: Demonstrating How Well Website Elements Are Recognized
Engagement encompasses the instances in which visitors take action with website features. It’s an important behavior to monitor since it reflects how user-friendly your site features are.
When an element is intuitive, its design alone is adequate for explaining how it should be used. A call to action, for example, should be and look like a clickable element.
Metrics for capturing points of engagement include:
- Engagement rate: This is determined by the number of page views with a click on the zone divided by the number of page views with a hover on the zone. It tells you how intuitive an element is and informs you of the site’s user engagement.
A better understanding of this behavior provides insight into whether or not your site elements are functioning properly. Elements must look clickable, or else, no one will click on them. - Click recurrence: This covers engagement and irritation, indicating the average number of times an element is clicked while on the page. The score is determined by the total number of clicks on the zone.
Recurring clicks inform you if a page element is functioning smoothly or being a hassle to your users. It also shows you if non-clickable components are being interacted with. Therefore, modify these parts as needed.
Google Analytics: A Tool for Analyzing Visitor Behavior
There are other analysis software solutions, but Google Analytics (GA) is the most widely used. It tracks traffic to your website and provides information on how well it is functioning.
GA also showcases how customers find your site and how long they stay on a page. You’ll also discover demographic information about your consumers, such as where they live in the country. Furthermore, Google provides the following tools for analyzing customer behavior:
- Google Survey Forms
You can construct bespoke surveys to learn more about your consumers and segment them into certain audiences.
- Google Trends
You’ll be able to see which themes are most popular with your customers. Keeping up with industry changes is critical for maintaining effective and positive communication with customers.
- Google Funnel
This is a Google Analytics tool that displays a customer’s shopping process. You’ll be able to identify where they stopped shopping during their visit, which can help you optimize the purchasing experience on your site.
You should try using some of the tools listed above together to determine which customer experience strategies are best suited for your company’s needs.
The Significance of Positive Customer Experience for Your E-commerce Business
Providing an excellent customer experience is critical for every organization. The better your website visitors’ experiences are, the more repeat business you’ll have. Not to mention, the number of customer complaints and product returns can potentially decrease.
To sum up the advantages, a positive customer experience helps build customer loyalty, improves client satisfaction, and encourages word-of-mouth marketing, favorable reviews, and recommendations.
What comprises a good customer experience?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach for ensuring a positive customer experience. Your company is unique, just like your customers have varying needs and preferences.
However, there are some generic steps that you can take to improve the e-commerce customer experience.
- Make listening to customers a top priority across your organization. Ensure that all contact information on your website is easy to find and accurate.
- Use feedback to gain a deeper understanding of your customers. You can try adding a feature for leaving comments after purchases or implementing a rating system on how well their shopping experience went.
- Create a system to help you collect and analyze input. Review and improve this system regularly.
- Reduce friction by addressing your customers’ specific issues and concerns effectively. Make sure to always provide quality e-commerce customer service promptly.
The Takeaway
Creating an excellent customer experience strategy is just one step. It’s also crucial to continually assess and revise your strategy to keep pace with your customers’ changing needs and preferences.
To do this properly, it’s important to continue analyzing visitor behavior and use your findings to further improve your website. With a site that is more efficient and user-friendly, you can gain satisfied, loyal customers and grow your e-commerce business.
Further reading