Master behavior analytics with this simple 7-step checklist

Behavior analytics shows how customers experience and interact with your website or product. It reveals what users care about, what they need, and what they struggle with, forming the foundation of impactful product improvements. 

Standard web analytics tools, like Google Analytics, provide valuable information about users but ultimately paint an incomplete picture of them. These tools tell what users do—but not why. 

Behavior analytics bridges the knowledge gap standard web analytics tools inevitably create. This method tracks actions traditional tools don’t (or don’t share with you)—things like: 

• Mouse movements

• Clicks and taps

• Scrolling

• Navigation through your website

We bet you’re eager to get started right this second. But before implementing behavior analytics methodology effectively, there are a few things you need to know. This guide presents you with a step-by-step behavior analytics framework to help you put your customers at the heart of your business and give them a user experience (UX) they’ll love. 

Benefits of behavior analytics

The field of behavior analytics has matured into a robust method for online marketing professionals and product managers whose work is impacted by user behavior. Analyzing user behavior allows them to create better products and market them more effectively.

We could go on and on about behavior analytics advantages—in fact, we already did, in our intro to behavior analytics. But it’s worth revisiting the 4 main benefits of data-driven behavior analysis

1. See what stops users from taking action, so you can make informed decisions about how to remove these obstacles and encourage users to navigate your site or product the way you intended

2. Understand what users pay attention to, ignore, and get distracted by, so you can pinpoint which parts of your product or website are the most engaging and where it could use some improvements

3. Get in-the-moment feedback, so you can respond to user needs and concerns in real-time, spotting issues as they arise and ensuring your users have a fantastic experience

4. Get buy-in for change, using data to support your proposed changes and easily convincing stakeholders to support your ideas. Plus, you can keep employing behavior analytics to show the impact of your changes and get even more support

Contentsquare’s Feedback Collection capability lets you ask users for instant feedback as they browse your website, so you can gauge user sentiment around your changes

Behavior analytics: your 7-step plan of action

Ready to reap the rewards of behavior analytics? Here’s your step-by-step guide to collecting, tracking, and analyzing user behavior.

1. Set your goals

The likelihood of success is always significantly higher when you set goals, so it’s crucial to clearly define what you’re trying to achieve with your user behavior analysis. 

Once you’ve set your goals, you’ll be able to choose the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will guarantee the success of your analysis.

For example, if your goal is to improve customer satisfaction, your KPIs might be: 

• Customer retention rate

• Number of customer support tickets

• Customer experience (CX) survey scores

If your goal is to increase revenue, one or more of the following KPIs can help you analyze your success:

• Conversion rate from visitor to free user

• Conversion rate from free user to paid customer

• Free user or paid customer churn rate

2. Map customer journeys

It often takes a lot of interactions, or touchpoints, with your product before a first-time visitor becomes an actual customer. We call this the customer journey, during which your users experience all kinds of emotions: happy moments, pain points, and everything in between. 

By creating a customer journey map, you put yourself in your users’ shoes, which allows you to empathize with them and visualize their motivations. 

Examples of touchpoints could be an online ad, an online form, a video, or a blog post. A point of exit, where a visitor leaves your website or app, is also a touchpoint. Once you’ve established the journeys your users take, you’ll have a deeper understanding of their pain points and your areas for improvement.

💡Pro tip: use Contentsquare’s Customer Journey Analysis capability to automatically create intuitive visuals of your customers’ experience with your website or product. 

Clear, color-coded visualizations that every team can understand create a full picture of their journey on-site, including which pages they visited and in which order. Within minutes, make decisions based on visual data to improve your customer satisfaction, remove friction, and increase revenue.

Customer Journey Analysis helps you experience the customer journey from start to finish

3. Collect your data

Now, it’s time to determine which data you want to analyze. You’ll be especially interested in events— actions users take at certain touchpoints in their customer journey. Some of these events could be

• Clicking an online add

• Filling out an online form

• Watching a video

• Subscribing to your newsletter

• Leaving your website

You’ll also have to decide which sources to pull these data from. Various tools help you track events: Google Analytics is a common source, but digital experience and behavior analytics tools like Contentsquare let you track custom events and set up triggers to see why a user took a specific action.

This way, you’ll understand the cause for the user activity, whether clicking a call-to-action (CTA) button or abandoning your site at checkout.

🔥 3 ways of using Contentsquare to track and analyze user behavior

Use Contentsquare’s capabilities to start capturing data when a custom event fires or filter your insights based on relevant events.

• Heatmaps, which show where users are clicking, scrolling, and hovering on your website: filter your heatmaps based on key user activity

• Session replays, which show a rendition of a user's session on your website, including their clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements: trigger a replay when a user takes a specific action

• On-site surveys, which allow users to rate their experience on your website or provide feedback on specific pages or features: trigger a survey when a custom event fires

Filter session replays based on custom events on your site or product for more relevant insights

4. Analyze your data

Analytics need some time before they tell you a story. Let 1 or 2 weeks pass so you have enough data to track and analyze. 

Focus on the questions you asked yourself when setting your goals in step 1: how can your data answer these questions? Then, compare the tracked events with the customer journeys you mapped out. Are there behavioral patterns that indicate friction points? Alternatively, are there successes that can be replicated elsewhere?

How Orvis boosted cart conversion by 5% with one simple fix to their checkout flow

The challenge: in 2019, Orvis embarked on a major ecommerce overhaul, aiming to understand how customers wanted to shop with their brand in 2020. The UX team’s first step was rolling out a new checkout process. However, session replays revealed an issue: some customers clicking the cart icon were landing on a blank screen, leading to lost conversions.

The solution: using Contentsquare, the team identified friction points and analyzed user behavior during A/B testing to see how customers interacted with the updated checkout flow.

The results: after fixing the issue, Orvis saw a 5% boost in cart conversions, with desktop conversions jumping by 16% and mobile increasing by 2%.

5. Implement changes

This step is all about taking action based on your insights. Once you've gathered data on user behavior, it's time to identify areas where you can make improvements. 

For example, you might notice users dropping off on a particular page or struggling to complete a certain task. These insights help you identify concrete areas where changes are needed, from something as trivial as a button text tweak or title rewrite to major changes like a UX design overhaul. 

When you’ve established changes you want to implement, test them against the original version by running A/B tests. A/B tests or split tests randomly assign real users one of two versions of your web page. This gives you a direct comparison of new vs. old, so you can determine which one is more effective and have 100% confidence in your data-driven decisions. 

🧪 5 tips to enhance your A/B tests with Contentsquare

Hotjar is a fantastic complement for A/B testing, integrating with popular tools like AB Tasty, Omniconvert, and Optimizely. Here’s how to get started with A/B testing in Contentsquare:

1. Define your hypothesis

Before you start running A/B tests, have a clear hypothesis that outlines what you’re doing and what you’re hoping to achieve. For example, you might want to test UI design tricks like changing the color of a button to see if it will increase click-through rates (CTR). 

2. Set up Contentsquare as a complementary tool

Combine the power of Contentsquare’s user behavior analytics with the precision of A/B testing tools. Integrate Contentsquare with your A/B testing tool of choice.

3. Monitor your results

As users interact with your A and B versions, monitor your results closely and keep track of metrics like click-through rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates. 

4. Analyze your data with Contentsquare’s capabilities

Once you've gathered enough behavioral data, examine your results and determine which version is more effective. Contentsquare provides a range of capabilities to help you do this effectively. You can:

• Show a feedback collection widget or survey on a variant

• Compare heatmaps on your control or variant

• Watch session replays of users exposed to a variant

• Compare customer journeys of different variants

5. Implement your changes

You’ve settled on the most impactful changes, so it’s time to push them live. Whether you're tweaking some text or revamping your design, an effective A/B testing methodology leads to better user experiences and higher conversion rates.

6. Measure the results

Now that you've implemented your changes, it’s time to see whether they're having the desired impact.

You might look at key metrics like CTR, bounce rates, and conversion rates to determine whether your changes result in increased engagement and revenue. For example:

• If you've changed the copy on a CTA button, measure the CTR to see if the new copy is more effective

• If you've rearranged the layout of a page, measure the bounce rate to see if users are spending more time on the page

7. Repeat and iterate

Improving the user experience and giving your users a voice is not a one-time event: the economy changes, demographics shift, and user preferences evolve. That's why behavior analytics—and the actions it inspires—should be an ongoing process, taking you from one iteration to the next.

To keep your marketing and product strategies current, continue analyzing user behavior, running A/B tests, and gathering feedback from your users. This way, you’ll identify new areas for improvement and continue optimizing your user experience over time. Remember

• Don’t ignore your users. Continuously gather feedback from your users. Conduct surveys, user tests, and focus groups to better understand your target audience’s desires and preferences. Use this feedback to inform your marketing and product strategies and create an experience that truly meets their needs.

• Don't be afraid to take risks. Be brave in your approach, and don’t shy away from trying new things. Sometimes the best way to stand out in a crowded marketplace is to try something new. A/B testing can help you assess the effectiveness of your ideas and decide which ones to pursue.

• Don’t get left behind. Keep an eye on industry trends and new technologies that may impact user behavior. By staying up to date with the latest developments in your field, you can better anticipate your users’ needs and make informed decisions about your product or service.

Using behavior analytics to continuously improve your strategy

There’s a wealth of behavioral data that you can collect from website visitors and users, helping you piece together a puzzle that answers questions like:

• What catches users' interest, and what do they ignore?

• Where on your website or app do users encounter difficulties or get stuck?

• What actions do users take just before leaving your website or app?

• What are users searching for or not finding on the pages they visit?

By using the 7-step plan in this chapter, you answer these questions and more. And with this knowledge, you’ll learn how to create customer delight, encouraging more people to interact with your business again and again. Ultimately, improving the user experience is the key to hitting your business goals.

As the online landscape changes, businesses using behavior analytics will be more likely to keep up and thrive. But remember, it’s an ongoing effort, and standing still is going backward.