Why Digital Experience Analytics is Critical to eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization

In the current economic environment, optimizing conversion rates is not just nice to have, it is critical to the profitability and viability of an ecommerce business.  Do you have the people, processes, tools, and data in your toolkit to enable your eCommerce Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) program?  

Let’s start with data and work backwards.  To understand customer journeys as well as struggle and abandonment requires data.  We need a strong baseline of data on customer behavior, so we can understand the impacts of our optimization efforts. Traditional web analytics provides a base level of important insights but doesn’t really provide the information needed to understand customer struggle points and analyze why.   “Getting to Why” requires a more robust set of tools and data.  Combining web analytics with A/B testing, personalization, user feedback, heat maps, and digital experience analytics gives us the opportunity to gather the insights needed to truly impact Digital Experience and Conversion Rates. 

Digital Experience Analytics provides the glue to combine these tools and maintain a common view of the customer experience.  A robust testing program is a key part of an ecommerce CRO initiative and naturally ties together with an emphasis on personalization.  Digital Experience Analytics will enable you to link those efforts to the impact on site ecommerce KPI’s.  Customer surveys and Voice of the Customer are critical tools in understanding user frustrations and struggle points in the ecommerce process.  By combining survey tools with Digital Experience Analytics and session replay, we can jump directly to the sessions that have drawn negative feedback to the “why” behind the bad survey response. 

From a process perspective, we need to start with a baseline set of KPIs that are critical to ongoing improvement in our Conversion Rate Optimization program.  Without goals and KPIs to monitor our improvements or success, it is impossible to build processes that support continued optimization.  The ability to monitor those KPIs on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis is critical. Digital Experience Analytics enables the integration of data from these various tools to build a common strategic view of the KPIs and data directly tied to your CRO goals. 

Finally, we need people to use the data and gather the insights that will enable the changes to improve eCommerce Conversion Rates.  Digital Experience Analytics doesn’t solve the problem of having the right people.  However, it does solve the problem of giving your people the insights they need to improve Digital Experiences and optimize Conversion Rates.  Digital Experience Analytics provides the foundation to connect the dots and should be at the core of your Conversion Rate Optimization program.

 If you would like to learn more about Digital Experience Analytics and how it can help you to build and drive a Conversion Rate Optimization program, please click on the button below.