6 ways to discover and analyze valuable user segments in Contentsquare

Effective user segmentation analysis requires more than just categorizing users based on arbitrary metrics: you must truly understand your customers—their jobs-to-be-done, preferences, and online behavior—to find meaningful segments and optimize their experiences with your brand.  Contentsquare’s advanced segmentation filters, integrations, and quantitative and qualitative tools make it easy to analyze user segments from every angle and generate a roadmap for growth by putting users first. 

1. Filter session data to monitor valuable segments 

The Contentsquare tools Session Replays, Funnel Analysis and Dashboards all allow you to create custom Segments by applying session filters to your data.

Filters include:  

• Behavioral segmentation: filter by the page they landed on, session duration, whether they rage-clicked (clicked an element at least 3 times in less than 2 seconds), their frustration score, whether they’re new or returning users  

• Geographic segmentation: filter by country

• Technographic segmentation: filter by device, operating system, browser, or Used ID (a unique identifier that Contentsquare assigns to all users)

Use these to create lists of users with a combination of different attributes. For example, if you’ve just expanded your ecommerce business into the Peruvian market, you might like to create a segment for people who rage-clicked your site whilst browsing from Peru.

Alternatively, if you aren’t ready to create a custom Segment, you can also use any of the aforementioned settings as a one-click predefined filter. 

2. Identify characteristics of valuable users from your survey responses 

If you’ve used Contentsquare Surveys to ask your customers directly about their opinions, you can set up User Attributes to identify the responses of valuable user segments, and discover what these users have in common. 

Set up custom User Attributes for qualities such as:

• Total spend

• First purchase date

• Is a repeat customer 

• Completed onboarding 

Then, you can filter your survey responses to see only those from users in this category. 

This can produce surprising insights, especially if you’ve sent out surveys with a lot of open-ended questions. For example, if you’ve asked users about their brand perception, you may learn that your top spenders consider yours a luxury product. 

3. Use funnels to compare segment performance

Contentsquare’s Funnel Analysis gives you a visual overview of how different segments perform as they move along the customer journey, allowing you to identify your best-converting segments, spot issues before they escalate, and share segment success with stakeholders. 

Select page groups to define each funnel step and define what a conversion is (e.g. a CTA click or trial sign-up). With Comparison mode, you can compare the performance of several segments in a single funnel. 

For example, set up a funnel to compare how traffic from social media, organic search, and paid campaigns convert new visitors into trial sign-ups. You can even click through to relevant session replays of:

• Users who dropped off—see if they encountered errors or got confused by specific UI elements 

• Users who converted—see if you can determine which element(s) in the customer journey persuaded them to continue

4. Identify user personas to use as segments

Quantitative segmentation data like customer lifetime value (CLV) or onboarding completion status isn’t enough to help you identify your most valuable audience and its primary goals and challenges. 

Use Contentsquare Surveys to build accurate user personas by asking users and customers short open-ended questions about their needs and pain points.

Contentsquare has more than 40 free survey templates to choose from, including one specifically intended for building user personas. Alternatively, you can use our AI tool to write questions bespoke for your user persona survey. Either way, you can choose to send your survey via email or pop it up on your site or product when users visit a specific page (for example, the pricing page).

You’ll learn:

• Who your users are and how they describe themselves

• What their main goals are

• The barriers they face

• How they use your product 

Next, use the one-click AI-generated survey report to quickly summarize responses and create one or two simple user personas—use these as needs-based segments to better position your messaging and product offering, and improve retention.

5. Target surveys and interviews to understand your market segment

The previous step was about surveying your website visitors and existing customers and then grouping them into segments based on their answers. Here, you take the opposite approach: identify key customer groups first, then collect targeted feedback from them.

Collecting qualitative feedback from your most valuable customer segments helps you identify customer needs and understand what drives loyalty in a way that numbers alone cannot. 

Do this in Contentsquare by: 

• Using Surveys to target on-site surveys to visitors or users who take specific actions or match your segment criteria

Using Interviews to interview users who match your ideal customer profile

Target Contentsquare Surveys to any user on your website or product using session filters, including custom user attributes like logged_in or on_trial. For example, you can apply value-based segmentation by asking questions to customers with the highest lifetime value. 

And when you need in-depth, in-person (well, on screen!) conversations with existing or potential customers, Contentsquare Interviews lets you recruit participants or find matches from a pool of 200,000+ people. 

You can apply several customer segmentation models to make sure you only recruit people who fit your criteria including:

• Demographic segmentation: screen for participants based on their age, gender, and job title

• Psychographic segmentation: screen for participants based on their interests, lifestyle, and opinions

6. Combine data to see the customer behavior behind segments

Combining qualitative and quantitative data sets from different tools helps you carry out deeper customer segmentation analysis, like viewing behavior from specific customers and getting real-time alerts when your target audience leaves feedback.

Here are a few ways to amplify segment data collection in Hotjar:

• Use Contentsquare’s Google Analytics 4 (GA4) integration to filter heatmaps and replays using customer data from your GA4 segments, including user city, gender, campaign manager ID, and user ID. Do this to investigate the reason behind changes in your Google Analytics user segments, like an increase in bounce rate or a dip in conversions.

• Create custom dashboards to monitor your segments’ performance across Contentsquare tools in one place—track funnels, survey responses, session replays, and frustration scores so you can attribute what’s leading to segment success and spot bugs quickly 

Use Contentsquare’s Slack integration to get alerts when users matching your key segments start to behave differently. This way, your team will spot a sudden drop in performance early and have the data on hand to troubleshoot issues before they escalate.

📖 Case study: How Early Settler used segmented data to optimize their site for conversion 

Early Settler is one of Australia’s leading homeware and furniture stores. When they started using Contentsquare to analyze their website performance, they segmented their user data between two factors: 

• Users who clicked on the “Shop Catalog” title

• Users who clicked on the “Black Friday Favourites” product carousel

They found that the Black Friday Favourites product carousel demonstrated higher conversions, even though it was less exposed. With this insight, they decided to re-arrange the home page.

Through Contentsquare, we transformed our digital space, bringing hidden gems to light, removing our internal bias on content and ultimately driving revenue for Early Settler.

Dean Boudewyns, Head of Digital & Ecommerce, Early Settler

Understanding > categorization

User segmentation analysis is not a one-off box-ticking exercise: it’s an ongoing process to understand who your best customers are and what they need from your business so you can deliver it to them. 

Ultimately, there’s more to growing your customer base than just using automation to categorize your audience into random traits like their marital status. Instead, focus on analyzing user experience, listening to what your customers say, and understanding where they get stuck. 

By optimizing for customer joy, you’ll win more business, even if the segments surprise you.

FAQs about user segmentation analysis