Getting Started With Behavioral Analytics
Scott Fillman, EdD
Analytics Tagging Expert | High Performance Team Builder | Data-Informed Strategist
Bridging the Gap
Bridging the gap between digital analytics and business intelligence requires new workflows, system integrations, tech-savvy search marketers and capable analysts who know how to interpret digital analytics. In addition, online marketers need to know and be able to parse out the separate layers of digital analytics reporting and analysis beyond traditional web analytics.
The maturation of digital analytics has enabled us to gauge user behavior, and we are now able to see online behavioral analytics via advanced digital analytics implementations.
What is the difference between web analytics and web behavioral analytics?
What to Track and Analyze
The average person doesn't know what they're looking for when they review digital analytics reports, and the average report doesn’t include behavioral analytics. Determining key performance indicators and dictating them to people who often get lost in the details of meaningless metrics (or vanity metrics) is essential. Giving too much useless data to clients opens the door for fruitless conversations, such as discussions that revolve around wallowing over why a certain page isn't being visited, or why the number of page views are down on some old blog posts that were written by the client years ago.
Digital analytics are often viewed in terms of number of sessions, average time on site, page views, and traffic sources (traffic from paid search and organic search efforts, etc.). There is little thought about experience or user behavior immediately following the landing experience, or even what features of the site users are interested in or not interested in. It is essential to understand what features lead to conversions by defining user flows and understanding pain points or barriers in the flow or aesthetics that turn off users and cause drop-offs. By aligning actual user behavior with the conversion flow, we can begin to offer solutions that make an actual difference in website performance in terms of driving desired user actions. Behavioral analytics also allow us to pinpoint reasons for low conversion rates and allow us to bridge the gap between digital analytics and business intelligence.
Look Beyond Traditional Web Analytics
“Every Facebook fan page, Twitter profile, and mobile app means that much more data about your customers. And if you’re going to win market share and better engage your customers, you’re going to have to look way beyond clicks and conversions…use customer data to drive engagement, fuel product development, and improve the user experience.”
“Understanding and engaging customers requires looking beyond traditional web analytics. To optimize and engage the end user experience across multiple touch points including the web, social sites, and mobile applications, companies must instead focus on user behavior dynamics to analyze and identify deep behavioral insights from their data.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/1788485/are-user-behavior-analytics-real-predictors-customer-engagement
As strategists we need to be able to have the confidence and the data to prove that one indicator matters and another does not. One perfect example of this is when a client might ask why people are not going to a certain page that may contain content that the client may have deemed important to the conversion process. We can use data to identify that the page actually doesn’t matter in the conversion flow and look for the indicators that do matter, based on most common conversion flows for the client’s site. Once we identify the most common conversion flows we can accurately identify the most important performance indicators for each step of that flow and truly understand what is causing a lack of conversions, based on the behavioral analytics of people who fall outside of that flow or are distracted by useless website features or conversion barriers.
Wrapping Up
What does this mean? It means that by tying traditional digital analytics and behavioral analytics together, we can offer clients actionable insights that will improve and enhance their site via micro on-website projects and content adjustments. It can create a workflow that allows data to drive dynamic updates to website content and features. It also allows data-driven recommendations that can concisely inform a client whether or not they need larger upgrades to their website.
It also means we need to prototype and test, and use data to drive decisions and recommendations.
