User Feedback: Adding a New Dimension to Your Analytics

The original blog post appeared on the Usabilla Blog.

Today’s companies know they need to be optimizing their digital channels to stay ahead, but how exactly do they do it? And where do they start? Some will tell you that there’s no better method than hard, quantitative data from analytics tools. Web analytics are a great source for identifying how your platform is being used or where your users are getting stuck. This is great input for improvements, but, do you know why your customers display certain behaviors and patterns? Probably not. Because most of the actions we take based on our analytics are derived from interpretations of the data. We don’t actually have the contextual evidence we need to verify our assumptions. By combining analytics together with user feedback, you can stop guessing and start understanding the why behind your data.

Now that we caught your interest, let’s dive into how user feedback works in combination with your data management and analysis platforms.

Connect user feedback to your analytics

Whether you’re using Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics as a source for your daily stats, you can integrate user feedback with your analytics data by simply sending a custom variable to your analytics solution. The variable ensures the feedback is connected to a session ID. Adding qualitative data to your analytics gives you more insights and opportunities to improve your products.

Fill in the gaps

As mentioned before, qualitative user insights tell you the why behind your data. Analytics data shows you how customers navigate around your platform or website: where they spend a lot of time, where they drop off, and where they run into potential issues going back and forth in between certain pages. But do you really know why?

By connecting feedback to your analytics data, you are more likely to start understanding why users are experiencing these issues. If you’re still not clear, this is the time to start asking your customers. Find out what holds customers back from continuing on the page, or completing their task by targeting a survey right on that specific interaction. Let’s take a simple example: the purchase funnel. Why are customers dropping off in the last step of the funnel? A quick question will help you stop guessing and gives you a clear overview of why it’s happening.

Start journey mapping

The most effective way to get the information you need to optimize your digital channels is actually a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Now, you can start mapping the different customer journeys on your platform.

Define the different stages in which your customer are and identify which journeys are the most critical. How satisfied are your customers at every stage? Which journey scores the best? You are now able to create an internal benchmark for the different journeys and stages. Feedback collected from customers will provide you with the in-depth information on how satisfied they are with the interaction.

Validate & Prioritize

The customer journey maps show you the most critical obstacles for your customers. This will give you the information you need to start understanding where to direct your optimization efforts. The scores of the journey stages and the overall scores form a benchmark for validating your future improvements. Close the loop of your development cycle by continuously prioritizing, validating, and improving customer journeys.

By combining user feedback and analytics data, you can ultimately make better-informed decisions. Quantitative data from your analytics tools may tell you what is happening, but integrating this with qualitative user insights will tell you why. With user feedback and analytics, fill in the gaps in your data set, map out the most valuable points in your customer’s journey, validate assumptions, prioritize improvements, and then do it all over again to continuously improve your customers’ experience.

Meet Usabilla this Saturday at the third MeasureCamp Copenhagen!