Updated: Jan 03, 2023 By: Dessign Team
The key to success in an eCommerce business is to feel the pulse of the potential customers and then design the website to meet their level of expectation. User behaviour analytics is the most widely used tool to read the minds of the target groups. It gives you a detailed picture of the needs, preferences and expectations of the prospect customers. In this article, we will tell you about how to use user behaviour analytics to improve your online business. At the end of the article, we will also guide you about how to conduct a behavioural analysis of your visitors using a free tool with a step by step illustration.
What is user behaviour analytics?
User behaviour analytics is a way to get a deep insight into the user experience. It helps in addressing critical website errors. Such issues are problems that are faced by website visitors. These issues together lead to a large number of cart abandonments. Hene, our primary objective of user behaviour analytics is to optimize a website conversion.
What problems do users face on a website?
- Complex navigation
Navigation is one of the most crucial elements of a website. It helps users go to the desired pages and find the information they came looking for. Hence, It must be simple and smooth. If website users face any difficulty in going to the inner pages of a website, it is quite obvious that they will leave the site. Many times people don’t even understand how to find a specific page due to the complex navigational menu.
It is a responsibility of the website operator to guide users in the right direction. For this, there is a need to implement smooth navigation on a website. If you fail to do so, no wonder, you will face the problem of cart abandonment and low conversion rate.
- Inactive CTAs
Unresponsive call to action buttons are the most common issues that the customers face while completing the transaction process. If the buttons are inactive, it is impossible for the visitors to complete your desired action. You have to keep checking whether all the buttons on your website are functioning properly or not
- Broken Checkout
Many times people face technical issues and get stuck while completing the transaction process. Sometimes they face difficulties in making the payment. You have to make sure that the checkout flow works properly.
- Too Many Pop-Ups
Repetitive pop-ups irritate the viewers most of the time. People are seen to complain that it breaks their concentration. If there are too many popups, users will feel like switching to some other site. To retain the website users, you should be careful about how many popups you are using and at what intervals.
- Unclear Buying Process
If the buying process is not clear to the customers, how will the sales increase? A shopping website must be simple. The elements on the screen should be self-explanatory. The visitors should get a clear picture at the very first glance about where to go to find what they are looking for. There should not be any scope of ambiguity or confusion. Otherwise your sales will go down.
- Cart Page Issues
On many eCommerce websites, customers face difficulty while proceeding to make the payment after adding items to their carts. Sometimes users can’t even add products to carts or make changes to the existing cart or order. Empty carts are another common problem. After adding products to cart, you find that there is nothing in cart. A thorough user analysis is required to fix these problems. Cart page is one of the important pages of the checkout flow. Hence, it shall be given importance and made sure that it functions correctly every time.
- Too Slow website
No one likes a slow website. Nowadays all people are busy and have tight schedules. If they have to wait for a long time for a web page to appear, it is quite natural for them to leave in between. A fast loading site is everyone’s preference. Check the performance of your site and take all the necessary actions to speed it up for the better result.
- Miscellaneous
All the above-mentioned issues are very generic in nature. These are the problems people usually face while shopping online. There are many different types of problems that the customers face. You need to see what issue your website has and then take corrective actions to fix it.
Ways to analyze user behaviour
Here are the most popular ways to analyze user behaviour –
- Session Recordings
Visitors’ session recording or session replay is the process of recording the movements of the users on a particular website. It is done with the help of a specifically designed software for the purpose. Studying browsing patterns, marketers come to know about the interest of the visitors. Session recordings give us very useful insight into user behaviour. Visitor recording is a crucial factor in user behaviour analytics.
- Checkout Flow Analysis
Checkout flow analysis helps marketers find out whether all the features and elements of a website are functioning properly. Many times people leave because of facing problems while checking out. A smoothly functioning website is a must for holding back the visitors and compelling them to buy what they came looking for.
- Cart Abandonment Analysis
Cart abandonment analysis gives you a deeper understanding of why people are not converting. It helps you find out what stops them from completing the buying process. For increasing sales, analysing cart abandonment is very important. There could be many reasons why a visitor decides to cart products to the cart and leave without buying. User analysis along with cart abandonment is an important study to conduct in behavioural analytics.
- Feedbacks & Surveys
Feedback and surveys are one of the most effective ways of user behaviour analytics. It helps you to know thoroughly what your users want to have on your websites. What problems they face and in what way you can help them.
What are the key elements of user behaviour analytics?
- Buying Process Experience
User experience is the most important factor behind the success of an eCommerce or a business website. If the users are happy with a site, they keep coming back and also recommend the site to their peers. If the online shopping experience is smooth on your site, revisits will increase. Also, people will appreciate the smooth experience through positive reviews about the store.
- Clicks – Dead, Rage, etc.
The actions your visitors take on your site, speak quite a lot about their likings and dislikings. It gives you an idea of what they expect to see on your site. This data is of the utmost importance for user tracking. Clicks, Scrolls and Moves on a given webpage can tell us about the shortcomings of that particular page. If there are any prominent areas that are most favoured by the users, the click tracking can help us find it out. That is why Clicks and Scrolls are important for user tracking and to be able to optimize a website to become more user-centric.
- Clear Navigation
You must ensure that your site has a smooth navigation pattern. It helps the users to visit the inner pages easily. You can drive the navigation by many tools like a well-crafted menubar, nicely designed buttons for specific purposes etc. The most important navigational aspect is to be able to find out the correct information on the website. In case of an eCommerce website, it can be the right product or product-related information.
- Conversion Rate
Boosting up conversion rate is the ultimate goal of any eCommerce website. Conversion rate is the most powerful metric to measure the success of a website. If the rate is nor increasing, you should definitely do something about it. If it is increasing, you should attempt to keep it stable and to increase it further.
HumCommerce for user behaviour analytics
HumCommerce is an all in one WordPress Plugin for user behaviour analytics and conversion rate optimization. It is a free plugin for visitor recording and user tracking. It’s advanced session recording features help you to study the activities and navigation patterns of the users on your site minutely. Based on the detailed report, if you can redesign your website for its users, the conversion rate is bound to increase.
What makes HumCommerce different from the rest of the plugins in the market is it lets you replay the visitors’ sessions at different speeds. You can go directly to the more specific pages and skip the less important ones. You can find out exactly at which stage of the conversion funnel visitors are leaving and why. In the process, you can discover the best-performing pages and also the underperforming ones. This gives an idea of what elements work better for your target groups. If you increase the number of those types of elements, it will improve your click-through rate, decrease the bounce rate and finally boost up conversions.
Here is how to use HumCommerce –
User behaviour analytics has never been so easy before. With HumCommerce, you can fix whatever issues your visitors are facing following just four easy steps – Install the plugin, start visitors’ recording, replay and analyze the sessions, & take corrective actions. Here, we will discuss all the steps in details –
- Step 1 – Install the plugin
The first and foremost step is to install and activate the plugin. For that, you need to follow the steps below –
- Download the plugin from its official website www.HumCommerce.com
- Go to your WordPress dashboard
- Go to Appearance – Plugins – Add New
- Click on the Upload button
- Look for the HumCommerce plugin zip and click on it
- The installation process will begin
- After the installation is over, click on the Activate button to get the plugin activated
- Step 2 – Start session recording
The next step is to start the session recording. Here are the steps to follow –
- After installing the plugin, click on the “Click to complete” button and accept the terms and conditions for starting the session recording.
- After 24 – 48 hours, the data will be ready to view on your WordPress dashboard
- You will get an email notification once the sessions are ready to view
- Data for the last 7 days will be stored
- The process will continue on a regular basis unless you deactivate the plugin
- Step 3 – Analyze the session
To replay and analyze the sessions, follow the steps below –
- On your dashboard, in the left sidebar, you will find the HumCommerce icon.
- Click on the icon to get started
- You will be able to see 20 session recordings at a time
- Find the pages you want to study
- Replay the recording at a convenient speed and analyze the visitors’ movements on your site minutely
- Step 4 – Take corrective actions
The final step is to take corrective actions. Once you find out what problems your users are facing with the help of HumCommerce daily reports, fixing them is not a big deal. See the issue and get an easy solution. Never forget to notify the abandoned visitors the issue has been resolved. Also, make use of remarketing to recover the abandoned carts.
Conclusion
In this article, we gave you an overview of the process of user behaviour analytics. We have given a detailed account of how to use it to make your site popular and boost up your sales. We have also suggested a free tool for user analysis. The plugin is beginner-friendly and well documented. You can install it with just a few clicks. It will give you a detailed report on the browsing patterns of your users. You will be able to find out why people are leaving. Accordingly, if you take corrective measures, your conversion rate will start increasing in a few days.