An astounding 92% of customersOpens a new window report that they have had a poor customer experience in the past. This poor experience could have been caused by a website that takes too long to load, is difficult to navigate, or simply doesn’t feature the right information.
In fact, of the people surveyed, about 1/3 of them said they had abandoned a purchase in the past because they weren’t able to find the information that was needed for them to make an informed decision.
With that in mind, it’s easy for companies to begin questioning the user experience (UX) design of their own website, but what exactly should you be looking for during your next audit?
Using Data to Reveal Issues
There is no better way to analyze your company website than to dig into the data that you already have. This data can help your team identify the areas that may be frustrating customers during their journey.
As one example, if an eCommerce store finds that the majority of users are putting items into their cart and then abandoning them, the checkout process itself may be to blame. The more in-depth analytics the site has, the easier it will be to understand the issue.
Drilling down to the specific hang-up customers are experiencing can be difficult. Are they having trouble with the cart feature itself or does the issue lie in the checkout process? If the latter, which step in the process is causing purchase abandonment?
These are questions that can be easily answered if a site is tracking information at a deeper level. For instance, some webmasters may be able to see exactly what step of the process the majority of people stop and click away or how many seconds/minutes a shopper stays in the checkout before they decide to leave.
With that information, a company can derive some critical insights. They may find that the checkout process is too long, too complicated, and/or has too many pages or sections so people leave in frustration.
Some simple changes, like removing unnecessary fields and using auto-complete where possible, can make the checkout process that much more user-friendly. That can help the company greatly reduce cart abandonment and the data analysis will pay for itself time and time again.
Which Data Points Matter?
As demonstrated in the above example, in-depth data is definitely the way to go. However, a company can easily begin drowning in datasets if it’s tracking such in-depth information for every page on its website.
That’s why you should look to where it matters. Squeeze pages, opt-in boxes, the cart, the checkout, and other key sections where a user has the option to convert should be your top priority for tracking.
#1 Complete a Funnel Analysis
When it comes to crafting the perfect user funnel, you need to complete a funnel analysis. Fortunately, that’s pretty simple. You just need to determine the journey a customer takes to go from site visitor to successful conversion. Lay out these steps and that will guide you in figuring out what to track.
Visiting the website, executing a search, viewing a product, and adding it to the shopping cart is a general overview of one common user journey.
#2 Collect Detailed Data for Each Step
The next step is to figure out the data specific to your website so that you can track users through this journey at a more detailed level.
For instance: What terms are they searching to find products? Do the product pages have enough information? This data will be useful when you find the biggest drop-off points later on and work to identify the problem.
#3 Understand What The User Wants
Today, it’s all about getting information quickly and finding a solution that’s near-instant. Understanding the industry trends and what your users want and expect from your site will help you craft the perfect user journey.