Businesses that hope to remain relevant must begin to leverage big data analytics to inform decisions that will foster greater user experience. Research firm Gartner reports that by 2020, customer experience will become the most significant competitive differentiator, outranking even price and product.
But because there is so much information readily available, selecting the most impactful analytics to track can be challenging.
When dealing with data, it’s not so much about quantity as it is about quality. You need to be able to discern what the information means, and how to translate it into actionable initiatives that will drive sustained, long-term growth.
Here are three important analytics that your business should focus on as you begin making data-driven UX decisions:
Bounce rates and exit pages
In an ideal world, every visitor to your page or application would convert and become a lifelong customer. But the reality is that every business can make strides to improve their conversion rates. One of the best ways to find out why people aren’t converting is to determine when they’re abandoning the process. If you know when they leave, you can then look to find out why.
Bounce rates and exit pages are two key metrics to track to help you determine the when and why. Bounce rates reflect the number of visitors who leave after reaching your landing page. High bounce rates suggest your landing page may have a number of issues:
· Confusing navigation
· Chaotic design elements
· Unmet user expectations
· No visual cues to foster trust
Exit pages, on the other hand, will tell you when a user abandons their task several pages into the buying process. By isolating those moments, you can go to those specific pages to conduct a more thorough user test to explain why you’re experiencing particular pain points.
New and return visitor conversions
It is exciting to get a new customer, but studies have shown that you’ll get a much higher rate of return from repeat customers. Nonetheless, both are important to the success of your business and must be studied closely. Looking at overall conversions, however, only tells half the story. For example, if you’re having trouble converting traffic into sales, you need to dig deeper into this data and determine whether the root of the problem is attracting new business or loyal customers beginning to lose interest.
Search and navigation tracking
The search function on your site or application can be a powerful tool for expediting certain processes that users might be trying to accomplish. If they’re looking for a specific item or piece of content, for instance, search can be an incredible solution. But, if you see a sharp increase in searches following a newly released design feature, it could suggest that the feature has undercut usability and has forced prospective customers to find a shortcut. If this is the case, users may be missing out on important information they would have found had they navigated to the desired location organically. You should be tracking data analytics on how customers use both search and general navigation, to make sure that they adhere to your desired path.
As your business grows and begins to put a larger emphasis on business intelligence, don’t forget about the actual users behind the numbers. Collecting data will not help your business unless you focus in on the right data to optimize the user experience. To learn more about how to improve user experience, review details on UX design and development services.
