A digital product is not simply a nice to look at, full of exciting features. The user should be able to locate things quickly, efficiently perform tasks at hand with ease and have a experience that would ensure their return.
But how can a company determine if this is actually the case for its product?
The answer is almost always in your product analytics.
All engagement is content. Whether it’s a user pushing a button then leaving a checkout page, or a user revisiting an element again and again, or a user filling in the first box of a registration form then leaving, every single one tells you a little more about how people are using your product. If you tune into that you can begin to diagnose problems, learn what people need and improve based on actions not beliefs.
But the data are the beginning. The trick is knowing what to do with them.
In this article we explore how you can turn product analytics data into your user experience, the metrics you need to look at and how you can use customer insight to develop digital products that people actually want to use.
1. The Relationship Between Product Analytics and User Experience
Product analytics refers to collecting and analysing data about user behaviour of your product (be it a website, mobile app, SaaS product or online store).
It allows the business to see what people are doing when they arrive on the website.
For example analytics can reveal:
What pages on a website draw the most attention?
What features do users use the most?
Page where people leave the checkout or registration process.
- How long does it take for users to perform the tasks?
What navigation items are confusing?
What brings your customer back?
What characteristics in a product make the customer satisfied?
This allows us to get an accurate picture of user flow.
Imagine for a second an e-commerce business that has a fair number of folks “shopping” and then abandoning their carts. Without any analytics you’d be under the very reasonable assumption that they are simply price shopping.
But if you look a little closer, you could notice that shipping costs show up rather surprisingly at checkout, while the whole payment process is also. The site is very bad on mobile.
Each option requires a solution.
Therefore product analytics and UX design should be working closely together. Analytics would define the issue, and UX would address the origin of the problem.
2. Begin With Understanding What Your Users Are Trying To Accomplish
Prior to collecting volumes of product data, make sure you’re very clear on what your users are trying to accomplish.
The visitor on the website may be there to compare services, discover the costs, download material or contact support. The user on the app may be there to perform a transaction, arrange some data or access an element.
These are important objectives as not every encounter is of any importance.
For example a user who spends 10 minutes on a pricing page isn’t always a sign of someone who is engaged. They may just be struggling to work out what the plans actually are.
It may be that the visitor has already read and found what he is looking for in an article that took 30 seconds or less to read.
10 Pro ten tips for success of treating every signal as a performance metric – couple the analytics to how users want to move through your product.
Start by identifying:
The purpose of your digital product.
Sorts of what the consumer should encounter.
The actions that demonstrate product usage.
The things that normally keep people from accomplishing their goals.
Customer expectations when they visit your site.
The right choice is often straightforward after you’ve settled on these stats.
3. Monitor the Necessary Product Analytics Metrics
One of the wrongdoings that businesses do is accumulating tons of information when they not have any clue which of the figures really matter.
Just one chart dashboard alone do not go bring insights. Should be measuring right metrics that describe user behaviour that will allow teams to take decisions.
Take a look at these product analytics metrics to track.
User Engagement
Customer utilization indicates how actively the users are using the product.
The metrics of useful engagement on the platform could include: usage of features, significant engagement, number of sessions, revisit frequency.
If the SaaS application the user engagement could be measured in terms of how often a customer is using the features. For an ecommerce website it could be product comparison, search, wishlist activity and order purchases.
What is most important is to be able to measure activity, not just clicks.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete the action.
It could be: purchasing a product, subscribing to a service, registering an account or completing a contact form.
When people land on the page consistently but are not completing the action then the experience is the problem.
Maybe the instructions are not clear enough here, e.g. you get asked information which is not needed or you are asked for what to do next.
Customer Retention Rate
Acquiring customers is good, but retaining customers is even better.
It can provide a company with insight into whether customers remain loyal to the product.
If retention is falling it may mean that customers aren’t finding value, that onboarding is hard to understand, or that features are hard to find.
Time to Value
Time to value is the amount of time it takes for a user to derive a quantifiable value from your product.
For example, a project management tool should enable a new user to set up a project and get on with their work, rather than spend long hours being trained.
The fewer steps involved, the more rewarding for the learner on first experience.
Drop-Off Rate
Drop off analysis will show you where in the journey the user is dropping off.
This is especially helpful for registration forms, subscriptions, checkout pages and multi-step processes.
Once you know where your visitors are dropping off, you can explore the reasons for their actions and enhance the experience.
4. Uncover issues through analyzing user behavior
Occasionally, they don’t express dissatisfaction with a product at all. They simply give it up.
This makes behavioural analytics extremely valuable.
Naturally a good feel for things can also be obtained by taking everything on-board just from the customer’s point of view. Things do jump out at you if you look carefully enough and you can see confusion, frustration and even unnecessary complexity.
Several analytical techniques can be of assistance.
Funnel Analysis
Funnel analysis is understanding the user’s path through the various steps that a user takes to complete a task.
For example an ecommerce purchase funnel might consist of:
Visiting the website.
Opening a product page.
Add to cart.
Starting checkout.
Entering delivery information.
Completing payment.
If the stage is losing loads of users when it is between the delivery info and payment then that is the part that needs investigated.
For instance, maybe you have only one choices for payment, the form is tough to fill out or “unsuspected” billings pop-up.
Funnel analysis can be used to direct teams’ energies towards the sections of the funnel which would have a real impact if improved.
Heatmaps
This kind of heatmap shows you where visitors are looking on a page.
They help to detect:
clicked elements.
Sections receiving the attention.
Buttons that visitors overlook.
Zones where users are set grinding and make nothing end.
For example if visitors are consistently clicking on a non-interactive image then it would indicate that they are expecting there to be more information accessible from it.
Just a change in design would have fixed that.
Session Recordings
Video recordings let product teams view selected user sessions of your site or application.
They may also identify issues that a traditional report simply cannot help to explain, such as poor navigation, repeated form errors or a struggle to find information.
Business should beutilising session recordings with appropriate masking of data etc and within their privacy obligations.
Cohort Analysis
Cohorts analysis is created by segments of users with common traits, whether sign up date, acquisition channel, plan or initial product engagement.
Which is far easier to compare the behaviour of the various groups over time.
For example, customers who complete onboarding as part of the session will have different retention profiles to customers who do not.
This information can help companies enhance the onboarding and customer experience.
5. Enhance Website Navigation with Real User Data
Navigation impacts the usability of a digital product.
A site that looks good but can be very frustrating for the visitor if they cannot locate the important information.
Product analytics will tell you what navigational items are confusing and which pages are difficult to locate.
Let’s say the analytics reveal that folks are hunting down pricing info and that they can land on the pricing page from the main nav.
Perhaps this indicates that pricing isn’t set in an adequate location.
Equally, if people are bouncing in and out of another page between their actions then your information architecture could be improved.
Real-world enhancements are:
Keeping the navigation options easy to find.
Using familiar menu labels.
Organising related information into categories.
Reducing navigation steps.
Making search more useful.
Ensuring it works on mobile devices (navigation).
It’s not about having more options in your menu. It’s about making the experience that you already have more approachable.
6. Use Analytics to Improve Product Onboarding
The initial encounter with a product determines the customer’s expectations.
If you’re in the process of installing an application and are faced with a barrage of complex instructions, a heap of needless configuration steps or just plain baffling options, then you probably feel the product is not worth your while.
How product analytics can help you identify why new users are leaving.
For example, a SaaS company may discover that a large percentage of customers are signing up and creating an account, but never complete the onboarding process at all.
7. Behavioral Data To Create Personalized User Experiences
Few customers get to use or touch the product.
Some will want all the data in advance before they make a decision. Others will want a comparison and straightforward buying.
This is where product analytics comes in to help you differentiate.
Using browsing behaviour, features used, purchase history and customer preferences companies can then tailor the right kind of experience.
For example:
A website shopping platform can recommend items related to items you’ve viewed or bought.
A learning site may advise a student on which classes might be appropriate based on the work the student has completed.
The software service may be able to show features that suit the customer’s plan/workstyle.
Related Suggest reading on your news site based on what customers viewed
Personalisation should be there to assist the user, not to hinder them.
Businesses should never bombard visitors with recommendations and should certainly never use personal information without a clear reason. It’s essential to be transparent about obtaining consent and how you plan to use data.
Great personalisation should enhance the experience – not break the ice.
8. Transform Customer Feedback into Actionable Data Insights
Numbers will show you how. But they don’t tell you why.
This is where having a conversation with your customer becomes crucial.
Customer surveys, support chat transcripts, interviews, reviews and testing will all tell you why people do what they do.
What if the data revealed that many people leaving the sign up page.
The figures are telling. Customers say the prices are impossible to compare and there are important billing details that are missing.
Combining both gives a picture.
Here are ways that organisations seek feedback:
Short customer satisfaction surveys.
Forms after a purchase.
Website feedback options.
Customer interviews.
Analyzing support tickets.
Product. Scores.
Testing sessions.
The key is to ask questions.
Instead of asking ‘do you like the website?’, ask ‘which bit of the buying process was the hardest’ and ‘what did you expect to find’.
Focused feedback translates much more easily into behaviour change.
9. Test if UX Improvements Work with A/B Testing
A possible insight from the data could be a change that is beneficial. Guess should never be a substitute for tests.
With A/B testing you can test two different versions of a page, feature or tool.
For instance a certain company could experiment with these two buttons
Version A: Get Started.
Version B: Create your free account.
You can view which version is superior for this purpose.
Additional great A/B testing ideas are:
layouts for landing pages.
Shorter versus sign-up forms.
New navigation setups.
Different ways of showing products.
Simpler checkout steps.
Alterations in the manner people get started working with the product.
Prior to you start testing you will need to choose the measurement and who will be the person measured.
Be patient, too, and collect enough data to get a meaningful comparison. Don’t choose just the version that proved to be more successful in the initial hours.
More significant changes may require a combination of real user testing and controlled experiments to give you the confidence.
10. Enhance Mobile Experience With Data
This needs to be taken into consideration because a mass amount of people will be visiting websites via their phones.
It may work on a computer but it could not work on a phone.
Data can assist a company in finding a specific issue.
For example a website could be seeing thousands of visitors but most of the sales are coming from desktop users.
This difference needs to be checked.
Reasons might be:
Buttons that are too small to tap.
Pages that load slowly.
Product info that’s not properly formatted.
Difficult-to-navigate phone from mobile.
Forms that require a lot of typing.
Payment options that are difficult to use.
Content that doesn’t fit on screens.
Companies should compare how they perform on different devices and screen sizes.
Making the site work better on phones is simplifying the essentials and removing some material will in itself make for a better experience.
It’s about creating the experience independent of how users choose to access the product.
11. Integrate Product Information with Your Website Design & Development
Being plugged in is so much more meaningful when it’s catapulting real work into the real world.
All of those designers, developers, marketers and product managers need to understand what the data says.
For example people are leaving a page all the time so the designers can look at how the page is formatted.
Developers can identify problems with slow loading pages, form errors and design problems on other screens.
The product managers can determine which changes are relevant based on how much of an impact they will have on the customer and the business.
Together we monitor the operation of the countermeasures, which allows the company to implement adjustments that are necessary and avoid costly modifications that don’t really solve the problem.
And it perpetuates this circle:
Collect some data on the product.
Look for behaviour or recurring issues.
Look at why these patterns occur.
Make the changes that fix the issue.
Test the version.
Check how it works.
Keep making changes.
This means that rather than just being viewed and then forgotten, the data is transformed into part of the product.
12. Choose Appropriate Product Analytics Software
The best analytics platform will be hugely product-dependent, life-dependent on the size of the business and the level of technical expertise and hugely life-dependent on the questions that the business needs to actually respond to.
Some of the available tools are:
Google Analytics 4: for monitoring traffic, activity and conversions on your site and app.
Mixpanel: For teams to analyze the flows users take within a product, define user actions, and measure user retention.
Amplitude: reveals how people are using your product, including feature usage, retention and user behaviour.
Hotjar: provides data through heatmaps and recordings of user sessions.
Microsoft Clarity: offers insight into a website’s behaviour through heatmaps and session recordings.
There’s a place for every tool. You have to weigh out what it is you truly need before you run out and get a tool. There’s no reason to be running around with a dozen different tools.
You will want to ensure tracking is installed, that you have uniform naming conventions for your events, and also review your data frequently.
Always keep in mind that bad tracking results in bad decisions.
13. Respect User Privacy When Collecting Product Data
Experiences should not translate to more time for the customer.
Organizations must look at what they’re capturing, and what they’re doing with it.
Good practices include:
Getting those data that are valuable for the business.
Providing privacy information.
Getting permission when needed.
Being considerate of the user’s preferences. Abiding by the privacy legislation.
Limiting who can see the data.
Securing the analytics systems so that only authorised persons can access them.
To establish guidelines regarding the period for which data shall be preserved.
Avoiding collecting personal information.
It will obviously depend where the business is operating from and where customers are based, as different data laws, like GDPR, US state privacy laws etc may be applicable.
Trust is at the core of what makes up the user experience Users just feel a lot better when you’re handling their data well.
14. The Most Common Mistakes Made When Using Product Data
Even with tools to manage data, companies can be challenged in leveraging it effectively.
Here are some mistakes to avoid.
Pay attention to the numbers that appear impressive but don’t necessarily mean success. Wacky traffic, loads of click rates, etc. don’t necessarily translate into happy people or people doing stuff successfully with the product.
Collecting for the sake of collecting – tracking all your key metrics just creates more work for yourself. First you decide what you want to learn, then you select the metrics to help you learn it.
Brushing off customer feedback: the evidence will reveal the patterns. Making the customers talk: they’ll tell you why those patterns are there.
Slow to decide: a small difference in the number might not really matter.
Some data should never be implemented as a feature. Sometimes, it could be appropriate to even start to eliminate a step.
Not applying the changes to see if they are really effective: once you make a change, keep a check on the numbers and see if it’s had any effect.
Avoid these blunders and your data will be of little value. Stay centered on the customer need.
15. How Digicleft Solution Can Help Make Better Digital Experiences
Data to action is not just about collecting the data. You need a plan to include design, development, usability and continuous improvement.
This is where the digital experts can assist.
The underlying principle of How to Create: Engaging and Intuitive Websites for Maximum Impact is similar to knowing how people use tools.
A great website is not just a reflection of information. It has to be leading the user, directing them on a way to arrive at the article they are searching for. It has to be delivering the same experience whatever device they happen to be using.
Some of the best plans for website enhancement might be:
Reviewing the performance of the site and traffic that it generates.
Encountering issues related to navigation and convenience.
Enhancing the structure of the pages as well as the content.
Making layouts that work on devices.
Breaking down the steps that result in the behavior.
Improving website speed and technical performance.
Have a specific call to action. Make your calls to action obvious and targeted.
Using data to monitor progress of improvements.
A Digicleft solution is all about ‘sympathetically’ tying in what the customer wants with what the business aims to do.
For example if the findings indicate that people are regularly exiting the service page before even trying to request some help, then perhaps reformatting the page, providing a stronger explanation of how this could be useful and providing more ways to contact the business may be beneficial.
To be as natural as possible and to ultimately work towards the goals of the business.
For the organizations wishing to push up the rankings, investing in clever designing and developing can help to lay the groundwork for enhanced customer experiences.
Conclusion:
Ensure Product Data is Included in Continuous Enhancement
Product data is most valuable when it results in action.
Collecting information about customer behaviour is helpful but the business must go beyond that. They need to understand what is it that the customer is looking for, what issues does he have, what are the stages and does what the business has done really matter.
Weave in the customer feedback. Get the right stats first then follow them, because what gets measured gets done. Tweak things and test them before you launch, oh and don’t forget to maintain the privacy.
Remember for the important thing about product data is that we want to make that number not on the screen.
It’s about making products easy to use, websites more intuitive to navigate, and interactions more enjoyable.
As long as you’re listening to the data and making decisions accordingly, you’re delivering digital experiences your customers will want to come back to.
Want to improve your website and deliver your customers a better online experience? Discover how clever design, clever development and data driven change can all help your business to build a better online presence.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is product analytics in the context of user experience?
Product analytics refers to the process of gathering and analysing data related to the usage of a website, a mobile app or any other digital product. In essence, it involves understanding how your customers use a product, determining where they encounter trouble and making better decisions to enhance the offering.
2. How does product analytics improve UX design?
Product analytics reveals to designers what parts of the product are being used by consumers, where they are encountering barriers and where they’re abandoning the process. It is a huge benefit to design teams when it comes to enhancing navigation, streamlining workflows and creating a more intuitive interface.
3. What are the top metrics of product analytics?
The key metrics are: engagement (how many people are using it), conversion (how many people are achieving the goal), retention (how many people return), frequency (how often are they using it), time to value (how quickly do they get value) and abandonment (where do they abandon it). The right metrics depend on what the product actually is trying to do.
4. What tools can firms use for product analytics?
Popular selections might be Google Analytics 4, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Hotjar, and Microsoft Clarity. But each of them has their pros and cons in terms of how they can help a site owner understand how a website operates, how the customer proceeds through the website, how engaged they’re and how they behave.
5. How does analytics help to lower abandonment?
Analytics will show you where people are leaving the site. Head back to those pages to have a look and see if it’s the navigation, is the page slow to load, are the forms too complex or are there hidden costs etc. and then work to address those issues.
