How can we use the data in Google Analytics to optimize the customer experience of our visitors? Adinah Brown, content manager at Leverate, explains.
Almost every online company is putting customer experience (known in the industry as CX) at the center of their marketing strategy.
The world of online financial trading is no different.
Being part of a particularly competitive and crowded industry, means brokerages need to provide a top customer experience in order to stay ahead of the game. Consistently delivering to their customers what they want, when they want it.
Studies have found that most companies fail to deliver the type of customer experience that they would like to provide. Not because they don’t have the data to enable them to do so, but because they don’t know how to use, analyze and integrate the data that they have. While Google Analytics provides a remarkable source of data about visitor habits on your website, are you any closer to identifying whether their experience on those pages is a satisfying one? Are visitors finding what they are looking for, or on the contrary, are they haphazardly browsing through your expensively constructed website only to call customer support, or worse abandon it all together?
The underlying question here is how can we use the data in Google Analytics to optimize the customer experience of our visitors?
Bounce Rates
Your bounce rate will vary widely on your website depending on the type of traffic you attract and how you acquire that traffic, thus there are no good and bad bounce rates. What is important to track is how your bounce rate is performing historically. Static pages, such as the About Us and the FAQ should not experience a growth in bounce rate, if it is, than it is a certain indicator that the content is not proving to be useful. The best thing to do, is to select a number of pages and compare the bounce rate against each other. See if there is a great deal of variation and take a page with a low bounce rate as a standard in which to similarly optimize other pages.
Action: Track the bounce rate of the site overall for a continued period of time, especially pages that are focused on customer service. Over the period of review, identify if there is a variation between pages and adjust weaker pages for improved optimization.
Engagement Rates
The engagement rate is identified through two primary indicators; the time spent on the page and the CTR (or Click Through Rate). These engagement indicators provide more information about the time that visitors spend on particular pages and the number of pages that were viewed. The results will depend on the goals that you have identified for each page, in terms of how it will service your brokerage. A longer time on a page is generally a good sign, but if the page is relatively simple with an easy call to action, a longer linger time may indicate confusion.
Action: Consider the objective of the page and determine what the ideal time duration should be. For pages that perform well with an optimal engagement time, try to replicate the success on other pages.
User Flow
Depending on how well structured your site is, the user flow analyses can be the most useful page. From the outset, the user flow is able to indicate where visitors typically go on your site to get what they’re looking for, but gradually it also provides you with the insight to spot patterns, identify potential problems as well as define good outcomes.
Action: For each key page identify a goal that will enable you to determine good and bad outcomes then analyze the user flow of your website in detail. You may find that some pages prompt more web chats and calls to customer support. Whether that’s ideal depends on your marketing objectives, but what’s important is that your pages are working efficiently and as intended.
Establish Goals
Goals are an essential part of effectively monitoring the customer experience of your site. Identified goals will make it easier for you to track conversion to a designated outcome, which should effectively mark the end of the customer journey. Google suggest two goals to measure the quality of the customer experience.
Inquiry Goal – Did the visitor read reviews and ratings? Encourage visitors to engage more deeply by reading and submitting reviews.
Engagement Goal – Did the visitor play any media content, such as video’s or slideshows? Provide compelling visual content to deepen user engagement”
Action: Develop practical and workable goals, but be careful not to have too many as they will become difficult to manage and measure over time. A few strongly identified goals are better than a wide sweep of wishy washy ones. The customer journey to achieving those goals, including the successes as well as the failures, will inform your website’s ability to provide optimal customer experiences along with clear directions on how to improve it.