In the current digital age, consumers have access to a lot of information about almost anything and everything. This has changed consumer behavior and purchasing patterns. According to 63% of U.S. senior decision-makers, big data is the most significant evolving technology that enhances the consumer experience.

The ability to extract and make use of actionable insights is a major problem that companies face even though they have a rich well of data. However, the extraction and appropriate use of actionable insights will deliver improved experiences online, augmented engagements, or conversions and provide a real competitive advantage.

The Problem

Organizations have a real challenge in terms of measuring and making the online experience better for the consumer. Issues such as fragmented and stand-alone digital intelligence and inferior and broken optimization programs make it difficult to measure and better online experiences.

Before such experiences can be made better across websites and apps, enterprises must first make sense of the data they gather and digitally optimize such data. Some companies will even incentivize current employees that hold degrees in computer science or similar a field to upskill through a professional certification in big data, or even to pursue advanced degrees to help prepare for the future. Though this may seem like a herculean task, it needs to be done.

What Can Be Done

With such knowledge, organizations can begin to use modified technology that will leverage intelligent investigative tools such as keyword level tracking, actionable analytics data, and designed tactics across different departments. To create constant engagement, increase conversions, and inspire customer loyalty, enterprises should follow the process below.

Definition of core metrics

Before you begin to optimize consumer experience, you must identify and align on a general key performance indicator (KPI). If not, any attempt at optimization will fail badly. With this in mind, make sure you settle on a KPI that ultimately measures the digital experience of consumers on your website or app. This KPI may include, time spent, conversion rates, number of visits, and gratification scores.

Though on their own these metrics aid in the measurement of the progress of optimization, they fail to conclusively quantify and adequately connect the unique experiences that come with each metric. Therefore, organizations should use an integrated and comprehensive metric that can automatically measure consumers’ online experiences. In this regard, it is best to go with AI-powered metrics that can analyze tons of data points from consumer engagement, navigation, and even frustration. Such highly powered metrics ensure no conjecture when it comes to measuring, managing, and bettering the consumer’s digital experience.

Know how existing experiences perform

After selecting your main KPI, the measurement of its performance across all single journeys on the website or app is next. This is fundamental for effective optimization. Over 70% of CX professionals believe that a journey-based strategy will drive the business’s overall success and other customer-related positives such as retention and satisfaction. Organizations see these journeys as mere transactions and conversions with linear conversions in the past.

This thinking should mean that the idea of an ideal user journey should optimize all experiences at every possible touchpoint. The effective way to carry this out is by evaluating existing end-to-end website or app performance. Using web analytics tools such as Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics to determine the present state of user journeys across apps or websites will help measure patterns by users across pages to show key journey flows.

With the unpredictability of consumers, both experience and web analytics tools will aid teams to narrow in on issues at the micro-level and optimize experiences at every touchpoint. Both analytical tools will deliver the requisite insights into the quality of an organization’s user experience and determine the performance following every user journey and will provide the basis for the next step.

Do not miss opportunities to improve

Now that you have a better picture of how well user experiences are doing, the blocks that are identified by the KPI’s can be investigated by the marketers. Digital intelligence needs to be at its best in this regard if the marketers are to succeed. The efficient use of data available and insights that are provided by analytics will lead to acquiring and retaining more consumers. To succeed in this regard, three basic resources need to be assessed and resolved.

Behavior Detection Analysis

This refers to how a user intends to analyze through tracking and evaluating “digital body language” to comprehend how an organization’s app or web experience affects the user. Behavioral data does not only just cover mouse clicks but also every movement between each mouse click. This depth of information provides a clear representation of a user’s engagement, frustration, or confusion.

Session replays

With session replays, marketers can review and comprehend how users engage at a case-on-case level and enable them to pinpoint issues that cause user frustration, such as cumbersome website navigation. Session replays are very time-consuming, and for organizations that have a high number of site visits, it is best if it is left for AI to sort through and analyze the data.

Heatmaps

This is a simple way to view user session data in an aggregate, making it much easier to map and visualize trends and patterns. Heatmaps help marketers to identify if a change on the interface drives more clicks by displaying mouse movement and click data. This makes it much easier for marketers to recognize issues with user experience and transform them into opportunities.

Implementation And Measurement

At this stage, enterprises must have noticed user experience issues and make user journeys difficult and must have resolved them. It is time to properly implement optimization and measure its results. The proper execution of better digital experiences will create a substantial hike in conversion rates. These are the three steps to get you over the top.

Plan priorities

Resolve issues according to priority, and that should center on their expected impact and difficulty. Make sure that digital teams immediately handle smaller issues such as broken links. At the same time, ensure that bigger projects such as interface designs are done properly and not rushed.

Use benchmarks to check progress

Always check your KPI results by comparing the outcomes of the optimized KPI as against the initial KPI. Use this as a benchmark for all your measurements, and you will be able to easily identify the areas that you had success, failure, or the need to re-strategize.

Keep monitoring and improving

Being persistent is vital to any app or website that generates high-performing experiences. Be sure to improve upon user experience, ease, and satisfaction to enhance the consumer’s overall digital experience.

Updated on February 22, 2022.