• Web analytics solutions have emerged as applications that provide extensive information and data about users visiting your webpage. However, many organizations are unaware of the capabilities of these tools and unsure how to leverage these new technologies to enhance user experience.

• Traditional solutions offer information and data about customers’ activity on the website but no insight into their motivations and behavioral patterns.
• In addition, an overwhelming number of vendors are offering various solutions. Understanding which solution best fits your business needs is crucial to avoid overspending.

• This research is aimed to help you understand what web analytic tools are and some key trends in the market space. Learn about top advanced analytic tools that help you understand user behavior. Discover top vendors in the market space and some of the high-level features offered.
• This research also explains techniques and metrics to gather critical insights about your website’s use and will aid in understanding users’ motivations and patterns and better predict their behavior on the website.

1. ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS

The first key step in implementing and succeeding with web analytics tools is to set clearly defined organizational goals, e.g. improving product sales.

3. KPI METRICS

Define key performance indicators (KPIs) that help track the organization’s performance, e.g. number of page visits, conversion rates, bounce rates.

5. REVIEW

Continuous improvement is essential to succeed in understanding customers. The world is a dynamic place, and you must constantly revise your organizational goals, business objectives, and KPIs to remain competitive.

2. BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

The next step is to lay out business objectives that help to achieve the organization’s goals, e.g. to increase customer leads, increase customer transactions, increase web traffic.

4. APPLICATION SELECTION

Understand the web analytics tool space and which combination of tools and vendors best fits the organization’s goals.

• Web analytics is the branch of analytics that deals with the collection, reporting, and analysis of data generated by users visiting and interacting with a website.
• The purpose of web analytics is to measure user behavior, optimize the website’s user experience and flow, and gain insights that help meet business objectives like increasing conversions and sales.
• Web analytics allows you to see how your website is performing and how people are acting while on your website. What’s important is what you can do with this knowledge.
• Data collected through web analytics may include traffic sources, referring sites, page views, paths taken, and conversion rates. The compiled data often forms a part of customer relationship management analytics to facilitate and streamline better business decisions.
• Having strong web analytics is important in understanding customer behavior and fine-tuning marketing and product development approaches accordingly.

Case Study

INDUSTRY
Aviation

SOURCE
AT Internet

Ryanair is a low-fare airline in Europe that receives nearly all of its bookings via its website. Unhappy with its current web analytics platform, which was difficult to understand and use, Ryanair was looking for a solution that could adapt to its requirements and provide continuous support and long-term collaboration.

Ryanair chose AT Internet for its intuitive user interface that could effectively and easily manage all the online activity. AT was the ideal partner to work closely with the airline to strengthen strategic decision making over the long term, increase conversions in an increasingly competitive market, and increase transactions on the website.

By using AT Internet Web Analytics to improve email campaigns and understand the behavior of website visitors, Ryanair was able to triple click-through rates, increase visitor traffic by 16%, and decrease bounce rate by 18%.

• Traditional web analytics allows organizations to understand what is happening on their website and what customers are doing. These tools deliver hard data to measure the performance of a website. Some of the data measured through traditional web analytics are:
• Visit count: The number of visits received by a webpage.
• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors that leave the website after only viewing the first page compared to total visitors.
• Referrer: The previous website that sent the user traffic to a specific website.
• CTA clicks: The number of times a user clicks on a call to action (CTA) button.
• Conversion rate: Proportion of users that reach the final outcome of the website.

• Traditional web analytic tools fail to explain the motivation of users. Advanced analytic techniques help organizations understand user behavior and measure user satisfaction. The techniques help answer questions like: Why did a user come to a webpage? Why did they leave? Did they find what they were looking for? Some of the advanced tools include:
• Heatmapping: A visual representation of where the users click, scroll, and move on a webpage.
• Recordings: A recording of the mouse movement and clicks for the entire duration of a user’s visit.
• Feedback forms and surveys: Voice of the customer tools allowing users to give direct feedback about websites.
• Funnel exploration: The ability to visualize the steps users take to complete tasks on your site or app.

• Heatmaps are used to visualize where users move their mouse, click, and scroll in a webpage.
• Website heatmaps use a warm-to-cold color scheme to indicate user activity, with the warmest color indicating the highest visitor engagement and the coolest indicating the lowest visitor engagement.
• Organizations can use this tool to evaluate the elements of the website that attract users and identify which sections require improvement to increase user engagement.
• Website designers can make changes and compare the difference in user interaction to measure the effectiveness of the changes.
• Scrollmaps help designers understand what the most popular scroll-depth of your webpage is – and that’s usually a prime spot for an important call to action.

• Funnels are graphical representations of a customer’s journey while navigating through the website.
• Funnels help organizations identify which webpage users land on and where users drop off.
• Organizations can capture every user step to find the unique challenges between entry and completion. Identifying what friction stands between browsing product grids and completing a transaction allows web designers to then eliminate it.
• Designers can use A/B testing to experiment with different design philosophies to compare conversion statistics.
• Funneling can be expanded to cross-channel analytics by incorporating referral data, cookies, and social media analytics.

• Session recordings are playbacks of users’ interaction with the website on a single session. User interaction can vary between mouse clicks, keyboard input, and mouse scroll.
• Recordings help organizations understand user motivation and help identify why users undertake certain tasks or actions on the webpage.
• Playbacks can also be used to see if users are confused anywhere between the landing page and final transaction phase. This way, playbacks further help ensure visitors complete the funneling seamlessly.

• Feedback can be received directly from end users to help organizations improve the website.
• Receiving feedback from users can be difficult, since not every user is willing to spend time to submit constructive and detailed feedback. Microsurveys are an excellent alternative.
• Users can submit short feedback forms consisting of a single line or emojis or thumbs up or down.
• Users can directly highlight sections of the page about which to submit feedback. This allows designers to quickly pinpoint areas for improvement. Additionally, web designers can play back recordings when feedback is submitted to get a clear idea about the challenges users face.

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Description

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Case Study

INDUSTRY
Real Estate

SOURCE
Crazy Egg

Challenge

Miller & Smith had just redesigned their website, but the organization wanted to make sure it was user-friendly as well as visually appealing. They needed an analytics platform that could provide information about where visitors were coming from and measure the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns.

Solution

Miller & Smith turned to Crazy Egg to obtain visual insights and track user behavior. They used heatmaps and playback recordings to see user activity within webpages and pinpoint any issues with user interface. In just a few weeks, Miller & Smith gained valuable data to work with: the session recordings helped them understand how users were navigating the site, and the heatmaps allowed them to see where users were clicking – and what they were skipping.

Results

Detailed reports generated by the solution allowed Miller & Smith team to convince key stakeholders and implement the changes easily. They were able to pinpoint what changes needed to be made and why these changes would improve their experience.

Within few weeks, the bounce rate improved by 7.5% and goal conversion increased by 8.5% over a similar period the previous year.

1. ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS

The first key step in implementing and succeeding with web analytics tools is to set clearly defined organizational goals, e.g. improving product sales.

3. KPI METRICS

Define key performance indicators (KPIs) that help track the organization’s performance, e.g. number of page visits, conversion rates, bounce rates.

5. REVIEW

Continuous improvement is essential to succeed in understanding customers. The world is a dynamic place, and you must constantly revise your organizational goals, business objectives, and KPIs to remain competitive.

2. BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

The next step is to lay out business objectives that help to achieve the organization’s goals, e.g. to increase customer leads, increase customer transactions, increase web traffic.

4. APPLICATION SELECTION

Understand the web analytics tool space and which combination of tools and vendors best fits the organization’s goals.

Establish baseline metrics

Baseline metrics will be improved through:

1. Efficiently using website elements and CTA button placement
2. Reducing friction between the landing page and end point
3. Leveraging direct feedback from users to continuously improve customer experience

1.3 Establish baseline metrics that you intend to improve via your web analytics tools

Software Selection Insight

Balance the effort-to-information ratio required for a business impact assessment to keep stakeholders engaged. Use documentation that captures the key data points and critical requirements without taking days to complete. Stakeholders are more receptive to formal selection processes that are friction free.

The Software Selection Workbook

Work through the straightforward templates that tie to each phase of the Rapid Application Selection Framework, from assessing the business impact to requirements gathering.

The Vendor Evaluation Workbook

Consolidate the vendor evaluation process into a single document. Easily compare vendors as you narrow the field to finalists.

The Guide to Software Selection: A Business Stakeholder Manual

Quickly explain the Rapid Application Selection Framework to your team while also highlighting its benefits to stakeholders.

Drive higher user satisfaction and value through UX-driven websites.

Your website is your company’s face to the world: select a best-of-breed platform to ensure you make a rock-star impression with your prospects and customers!

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