How to leverage our gathered customer data? | UX research #6

What customer data can help us plan and conduct UX research? We are often unaware of how much information we already have about our users’ experiences. Read the article to learn where to get user data and how to apply it in the research and design process.

How to leverage our gathered customer data? – table of contents:

1. Introduction
2. Customer feedback
3. Data from google analytics
4. Eye-tracking and mouse-tracking
5. How to leverage our gathered customer data? Summary

Introduction

The first stage of UX research – or desk research – focuses on analyzing data we already have. This can be archived surveys, data from Google Analytics, or publicly available statistics and research within the problem or issue we are investigating. Clients are often unaware of how much valuable data they already have about their users in their resources.

Only after coming into contact with the UX team, do they realize how valuable data they have. Often, this information can help to identify the problem, define goals, research hypotheses as well as plan the UX strategy. Today, we’ll provide you with that knowledge as well as share a few handy tips on how to put it into practice.

Customer feedback

The first invaluable source of information about users and their experience with a product concerns reviews. We can find them on Google, on Facebook, in private messages on social media, in emails, as well as in data from customer satisfaction surveys or Net Promoter Score. Thanks to them, we can track users’ general assessment of our product or services and also learn about their more elaborate opinions, emotions, and experiences.

More and more people are expressing their opinion online, and for a manufacturer, this becomes a great indication of the future. An increase in negative reviews is often the first signal that something is wrong and needs to be changed or improved. The feedback given on the website or in Google reviews is often extensive – visitors describe a situation where the site malfunctions at the payment stage, they have trouble finding a particular piece of information on the site, signing up for a newsletter, they don’t receive a promised email with a discount on their first purchase, or simply the site is unreadable and slow, causing them to abandon their purchase.

These flaws give the UX team guidance on areas requiring more thorough research. Additionally, acquiring such feedback together as well as undertaking further UX research exhibits the company’s commitment that in turn increases among customers – supporting both customer experience and user experience.

Data from google analytics

Another valuable resource is Google Analytics data. Virtually all companies – both large corporations and small online stores – already employ this tool for monitoring website statistics. The analysis of the data collected by Google Analytics can track the growth or decline of customers over time, as well as pinpoint in detail how they found our site, how much time they spend on individual subpages, how often they make a purchase or how many of the initiated actions concluded successfully (whether it’s finalizing a purchase, submitting a completed form or signing up for a newsletter).

If, for example, we conclude that a lot of people enter a sub-page with a form, spend a few minutes on it while the conversion of correctly filled out and submitted forms is low – it may mean that our form is too long, too complicated or stutters at some point. Although we won’t find out from Google Analytics the exact nature of the problem, with such knowledge we can establish a research hypothesis and pose research questions. For instance, by knowing that we have a form problem on the site, we may plan and conduct research with users and resolve the issue. As the result, both the conversions and user experience should increase.

Eye-tracking and mouse-tracking

Another source of knowledge involves tools for so-called eye-tracking or mouse tracking. An example (and probably the most popular tool in this field) is Hotjar, which studies users’ behavior on our site. By recordings mouse movements and heat maps we’ll get the exact visuals on the user’s path through our site. We clearly see how visitors search for information, what they read, what they click on as well as what information, images or elements they skip.

This data proves invaluable for investigating behavior of users and to determine which elements on the site they pay attention to, what they read longer or just quickly browse or skip. Perhaps visitors click on non-clickable elements and the clickable ones escape their attention or even don’t seem interesting? What’s more, heatmaps are a great way to see if the information architecture on our site suits our the preferences of our customers.

How to leverage our gathered customer data? Summary

Nowadays, with technology so highly developed, it’s easy to find good (and often free too!) tools to gather information about users. We can already find out, not only where our customers come from and how much time they spend on the site, but what exactly they do on the site, what their path to purchase looks like, where they encounter difficulties, and what opinions they have about the service or product, what desires and expectations they have for the product. All of this information provides a solid base to justify the need for in-depth research to identify the problem, make improvements, and improve the user experience and the company’s image and position in the market.

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