The emergence of measurement techniques in the online space has opened up new ways of measuring effectiveness and efficiency, with new tools offering a wide range of possibilities to answer a wide variety of questions. There is no longer such a thing as unmeasurable, whether it's emotion, habit, consumer preferences, or even just what a customer thinks of you. But what do we do with this data? What should we measure, how deeply, and, most importantly, how?
In this article, I will introduce you to some measurement techniques, both quantitative and qualitative.
Types of measurement in the online world
Consumers, and visitors to our online store, can help us make the best possible business decisions with all their actions (e.g. clicks, scrolls, etc.) or identify changes needed to optimize operations and increase conversions. By understanding visitors' digital fingerprints, consumer habits, and preferences, we can find out what ergonomic or functional changes are warranted. To turn this to our advantage, measurement is necessary. In the online world, there are two main types of measurement: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative measurement
Quantitative measurements are typically highly structured and static. Dry, ice-cold facts, are just numbers. They aim to draw general conclusions and report factual data.
Its most common tool for an online store is Google Analytics, which can be easily plugged into any website or online store using a tracking code. Visitors to the site are then measured and grouped by Google according to various criteria, such as demographics, which website they came from, which device they use, whether they have shopped with before, and so on. Basic metrics give a quick, but less comprehensive, picture of a website.
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But before we get into the details, it is important to understand exactly what is meant by each indicator:
Page views: all website traffic to desktop, tablet, and phone within a given period. If a visitor visits a page 5 times in a period and opens 10 subpages each time, it is counted as 50 page views.
User, unique user: in contrast to page views, it counts 1 visitor as 1 time each time, even if he/she has opened more than one subpage or visited our site more than once within the same period. The analytics software identifies unique visitors based on so-called "cookies".
Time on page: the time interval between entering and leaving the page.
Number of sessions: a session is a period during which a user is actively engaged in some activity on the site. An activity can be, for example, viewing a sub-page, downloading a pdf, or even filling in a form.
Average page depth (page per session): shows the average number of pages a visitor views in a session. Multiple views of a page count for more than one time.
Return rate: Return rate is a particularly important metric. It shows the rate of immediate page abandonment. It is a key indicator of the number of visitors to a page.
In addition to the basic metrics, Google provides several interesting metrics that tell you a lot more about your online store and any improvements you may need to make.
Conversion rate
Perhaps the most important of all the indicators measured. Conversion rate is a ratio that shows what percentage of visitors to a business website have achieved the desired goal. This desired goal can take many forms, depending on the profile of the website, whether it is clicking on an image, subscribing to a newsletter, registering for an account, or even making a purchase. This is the indicator that can best determine how successful your online sally is. It is useless to have 100,000 visitors to a site per month if there are no purchases, subscriptions or other goals to be achieved. If you have a low conversion rate (rule of thumb ~ below about 3%) then you are probably driving the wrong traffic to your website, or the product or service you are offering on your site is not convincing enough in terms of presentation, description or pricing.
Exit rate
The exit rate is often confused with the reversal rate, but we are talking about two very different metrics. Unlike the bounce rate, the visitor makes a session, i.e. is active on the page, and then leaves the page. The exit page shows in percentages which pages are being left.says Jasen Edwards, chair of the Agent Editor Board at Agent Advice.
Let's now move on to a description of qualitative web analytics tools.
Qualitative measurement
Qualitative research aims to provide a deeper understanding and answers to questions that arise. The results obtained can contribute to the formulation of a new hypothesis to the foundation of quantitative research.mentioned by Eyal Elazar, Head of Product Marketing at Riskified.
However, as technology has advanced, tools have emerged that allow us to directly examine the activity of a person visiting our website or webshop. Quantitative measurement allows us to identify the problem from quantified data, while qualitative analytics can help us to identify the cause of the problem. For example, what is causing an increase in the number of abandoned shopping, carts, or why our visitors do not register on our website? An excellent web analytics tool for qualitative measurement, among others:
1. Session replay
A form of monitoring that allows you to replay the entire activity of your visitors on your website.
How to use it?
First, you need to split your website, and visitors according to whether they are new to the website you’ve built or have visited before. Once you've done this, you don't have to solve all the problems at once, as that won't do any good. Prioritize the things you want to solve the fastest. Make a list of the importance of the problems.
Then all you have to do is take advantage of session replay.
Here are some benefits of why it's worth investing in a session replay web analytics tool:
- Session replay can increase the conversion rate
- Session replay can help users to better understand your business
- Session replay can detect user frustration
- Session replay can help password protection.
- Session replay can improve your company's customer service
- Session replay can fix bad UX design
- Session replay helps your presentation
Session replay can help you in many areas, whether it's customer service, product management, A/B testing, or even CRO, i.e. conversion rate optimization.
Customer service
Customer service agents can monitor users' browsing "live", helping them to solve problems quickly. This saves time and leads to good and efficient results. Not least, it also increases customer satisfaction.Customer feedback software is an essential part of your business for improving your customer experience and making necessary changes.
Product Management
In product management, an important factor is that the product or service we offer is fully adapted to the needs of our target group. Using session replay, the product manager can identify errors and design a better website. Our goal is to guide our customers through the steps of the conversion funnel and convert them into real customers.
A/B testing
A/B testing is most commonly used by marketing professionals for the placement of Call-To-Action buttons. Why? It's important to test which text, and which CTA text leads to more conversions. Let's say we want to sell a service to web browsers using a CTA button. It makes a difference whether this button says "Buy this" or "Don't miss this opportunity". Test which is more effective for your customers and which leads to higher conversions.
Conversion rate optimization
CRO is a structured and systematic approach to improving the performance of your website. With CRO, a higher percentage of visitors will find your website useful and informative and take the desired action. You can improve your CRO in many ways, and one of the most trusted & used platforms is Twitter. If you schedule your Twitter post using schedule tweets, you gain a higher chance to boost engagement and get more traffic, which can boost your CRO.
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2. Heatmaps
Heatmaps provide a visualization of the behavior of visitors to a website. They use colors and their shades to express the results of the data being analyzed. Several types can be distinguished:
Segment heatmap: allows you to segment visitors to your site by the source of traffic and by different criteria.
Scroll heatmap: if you're interested in how far your website visitors scroll, this tool is for you! You can find out which sections are the most likely to leave your site without the visitor having taken an action of value to you. This will help you decide where to place your most valuable Call-to-Action buttons. For example, it is a common problem that blog content is not read by users, which the scrolling heatmap provides useful information about. Place visual images in critical areas, such as human faces, to attract and retain attention.
Click heatmap: as the name of the tool suggests, this heatmap provides information on the exact location of clicks on the website, showing which areas of the page attract the most clicks and where on the page visitors expect to find clickable items.
Using it, you can find out what motivates your visitors and learn about the process of what we might call the buying decision.
The benefits of heatmap analysis
At first glance, you might not realize how much you can tell by looking at where visitors click on your site and move their cursor on the screen. But using a heatmap can tell you and your frontend developers a lot of useful things.
For example, it may reveal if an important page element or menu item is not working properly. You may find that the CTA buttons you are using are not visible enough or are positioned incorrectly. All of these findings will help you to effectively improve the user experience and make your website more attractive to potential customers. Website design companies can also use heatmaps to understand user behavior and make design decisions that will improve the overall user experience of their clients' websites
Summary
Quality measurement provides a wealth of useful information that can be used to identify the changes needed to optimize operations and increase conversion. The web analytics tools presented here will help you to position Call-To-Action elements, position visual elements, optimize content and abandoned baskets, and optimize the layout of your website.
You cannot rely on just one method to achieve the best results, both quantitative and qualitative measurements are an integral part of any research and it is only by using each other properly that you can achieve maximum effectiveness and the desired profit.
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