In a world where experience is king, every interaction matters. From in-person shopping in brick-and-mortar stores to customer service phone calls, businesses know that experience can be a differentiator between business growth and failure. Of course, with so many of today’s customer experiences happening online, a strong understanding of digital experience analytics is critical.

What is digital experience analytics?

Digital experience analytics (or DXA) revolves around customer experiences on mobile devices, apps, and websites where stakeholders and managers measure, quantify, and interpret data to improve customer journeys in the technological arena. Typically, user experience (UX) reflects on an integration of touchpoints prospects and customers travel through from the time they log on to an app, deciphering its instructions, entering the prescribed steps essential to secure a benefit, figuring out how to navigate the dashboard, and more. It boils down to whether or not the UX delivered customer satisfaction.

Digital experience analytics is a customer data-centric activity that applies technology to create meticulously detailed insights into user behaviors, covering quantitative and qualitative fields. Solutions and capabilities surround tools that measure and analyze customer experience issues, emerging from reputable software providers like Sogolytics. Expect to discover categories such as funnels, conversion measurements, heatmaps, click maps, and user journeys—real-time engagement data resources.

Ultimately, digital experience analytics’ most valuable feature rests with its seamless ability to evaluate multi-billions (and even trillions) of user sessions and individual user behavior patterns in a fraction of the time it would take a team of humans to do. Information access in real-time is arguably companies’ most coveted asset, opening doors to new opportunities fast and furiously ahead of less aware competitors. The latter are generally unconscious of the incredible insights begging for discovery within their business records, so take advantage of this while it lasts. Understanding customer digital experience analytics is the ticket to making a massive ROI difference via improving customer engagement.

Why use digital customer experience analytics?

A primary objective of marketing entities in every industry is to energize online traffic. Statistics reveal that with digital experience analytics in one’s corner, traffic grew by 25% in 2020 alone–but that doesn’t necessarily mean there were improved sales (i.e., converting the accelerated flow of visitors into customers). The next logical step—optimizing traffic growth—is a vital success requirement, with digital data analytics front and center.

Did you know that customers dissatisfied with their user experiences (UXs) bounce off platforms and buy carts 67% of the time as an endemic customer behavior pattern? That’s a mind-boggling statistic, indicating the chances are heavy it’s happening to your brand if you’re marketing blind without digital data analytic insights. Engaging customers when they enter your site revolves around allowing them to navigate seamlessly, knowing their hot buttons and turn-offs. Digital experience analytics delivers the openings you need to design high-conversion UXs—dissuading your customers from abandoning their journeys through your site’s web pages or apps.

Benefits of digital experience analytics

The impact of DXA deployment on almost every business operation is stunning. Consider the following:

• Increased revenue is a reflection of improved customer experiences.
• Personalizing the brand presentations promotes customer retention and, with it, ROI acceleration.
• Customer retention is a function of expanding brand loyalty:
  • It leads to word-of-mouth recommendations – the most persuasive and credible promotion any marketer could wish for.
  • It brings friends and family into the brand arena, solidifying a product’s positioning without spending a dime on paid advertising.
• According to Forbes, “existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more, on average, compared to new.” This is an extraordinary benefit in competitive situations where one’s competitors’ functional features and pricing are distinguishable only by brand name.

Who uses a digital experience analytics platform?

Every business participating in digital experience analytics will benefit to a point, from mom-and-pop stores to Fortune 500 enterprises. According to a reliable report, 4 out of 10 companies used big data analytics in 2022, with 90% of companies stating their intentions to enter the DXA arena over the next year.

The Big Data trend has caught on, so the operational transformation will likely be revolutionary. Moreover, 80% of the pro-DXA entities involve multiple teams within the organization, adopting the stance that the broader the employee involvement, the more compelling the benefit.

• Marketing teams leverage the data to uncover segment preferences, guiding them to customized promotions.
• Website content and design teams align with desired “voice,” colors, images, and specific pain points to engage their audiences quickly and sustainably.
• Sales teams can personalize their presentations, selling customers how they want to buy. Which is? Digital experience analysis reveals modern buyer preferences for podcasts, YouTube videos, Zoom conferencing, and other virtual-reach methods.
• Customer support teams await in readiness, knowing the most obstructive and customer dissatisfaction touchpoints.
• Any stakeholder or manager responsible for projected budgets, sales revenue, and asset allocations finds digital experience analytics tools indispensable.

How do digital experience analytics tools work?

Customer journeys are crucial for every marketer, mapping out the customer experiences (CX) touchpoint by touchpoint to uncover a behavior pattern. DXA tools maximizing AI technologies are perfect for:

• Defining customer experiences, scanning their component parts quickly and accurately
• Highlighting the obstructive moments that slow down or frustrate customers 
• Confirming the touchpoints that enhance engagement

Touchpoint mapping is severely complicated, especially when they zigzag, double back, hesitate, skip through steps so fast it’s hardly detectable, and go off the grid into non-digital connections. The complexity escalates when a visitor jumps from app to app with a PPC (pay-per-click) entry to navigate various online stores.

Sophisticated digital analytics tools do all the heavy lifting seamlessly, accurately, and insightfully without getting thrown off by erratic actions. The challenge is deciding which works best for your industry and unique situations. Sogolytics’ guidance removes the guesswork from the equation, directing your team to tools with intuitive dashboards that generate the data you need today to make decisions impacting the future.

Finding the right digital analytics tools to meet your goals

While every organization has its own goals, a few key similarities are likely to be on the wishlist of those shopping for digital experience analytics tools.

• Cost, speed, and capacity to cover data fields
• Relevant key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Overlap with earlier editions of the same tool (and others in the pool)
• Operational tool efficiency dependent on identifying the data to collect and analyze
• How fast you want insights after the event (ranging from almost instantly to minutes, hours, a day, etc.), and how deep you want to go

Nothing beats arranging the right tools for the job, but it takes preparation and patient planning.

What role does DXA play in user journey design?

With the right digital customer experience analytics tools at your disposal, penetrating a fertile digital data field, you can expect an extraordinary analytics experience. After entering mobile apps, websites, and other digital platforms, the latter maps out your audiences’ journeys. Indeed, it’s called user journey mapping—putting critical touchpoints together in a desired and logical fashion. The latest software in skilled hands:

• Creates a bird’s-eye view of user movements from touchpoint one to the cash till (and beyond) into the after-sales arena
• Allows you to identify obstructive touchpoints that derail digital user journeys or stop them in their tracks (the most significant churn influencers)
• Streamline the touchpoint map to optimally take customers from A (paying attention to the brand) to Z (brand loyalty) with minimum interference probability in between

Digital experience analytics is the architectural framework and step-by-step process that impacts journey design, allowing it to emerge as the best it can be.

DXA best practices

Of course, you must leverage experience analytics properly to see significant benefits and avoid turning your target audience participants away. To do that, you should keep these best practices in mind:

• Decide on the data that points to different customer journey aspects.
• Select the tools that connect to metrics relevant to your customers/organizational goals.
• Translate all gathered data into new journey maps and user experience designs.
• Test all new hypotheses with A/B testing to identify the touchpoints your users respond to positively, negatively, and undecidedly.
• Keep improving by eliminating new friction points as they arise. Thus, stay steps ahead of your competitors.

DXA’s most effective tools and features

Assuming everything described so far resonates, expect to interact with a tool range that includes the following (many of which overlap with each other):

1. Session replay
We frequently refer to session replay tools as “success or failure tools.” Why? They rate every touchpoint on customer journey effectiveness from “creating the most forward momentum” down to “derailing the journey.”

It provides insights into “bounce” or “cart abandonment” touchpoints (Category A) and those that seamlessly and quickly move your audience to the next desired stop-over in the designed journey (Category B). So, your team instantly knows what’s working for the brand and what’s hindering progress.

Typical examples of each category are as follows:

• Category A – An impatient, technologically ill-equipped, rude customer support agent; confusing user instructions; over-complicated dashboards; malfunctioning website bots; and generic presentations.
• Category B – A patient, technologically knowledgeable, supportive customer support agent; easy-to-follow user instructions; intuitive dashboards; malfunctioning website bots; and personalized presentations.

2. Heatmaps
Heatmap tools provide “at a glance” visions that highlight heavy website on-page behavior patterns. These range from red-hot (heavy traffic) to ice-cold, navy-blue spots (zero visitor activity) and every in-between interaction-hue (e.g., orange for warm and green for tepid) based on evaluating millions of individual touchpoint stops.

Segmented heatmaps go even further, reflecting user intensity on activities and pages such as scrolling, CTA clicking, services perusal, about us, and live chats. Sogolytics recommends integrating heatmap applications to overview visitors’ behavior characteristics comprehensively.

3. Form analytics tools

These are digital experience analytics tools that measure journey design success by the outcomes involving form-based submission pages, such as (to mention a few):

• Email newsletter sign-ups
• Brand membership sign-ups
• Subscription applications
• Coupon acquisition pages
• Contact me to provide more information pages

Discover which form pages work best and worst, those which enhance journeys, or those which detract from them.

4. Journey discovery tools

Journey discovery is an optional tool, among others described above, that assists teams in visualizing user touchpoint paths through the website or application, pinpointing delays, hesitations, and abandonment junctures. It’s a resource that slots into the tool armory to streamline or improve journey designs.

5. Segmentation tools

Segmentation is a core driver of modern marketing strategy. Thus, segmentation analytics integrates with other software options to cut and dice broad audience definitions into targeted segments. Indeed, it functions as a content management system facilitator, directing your messages at specific users and delivering new dimensions of customization. Segmentation can take on many shapes or sizes, such as separating:

• New users from repeat users (brand loyalty segmentation)
• Mobile users from desktop users (i.e., device segmentation)
• Business prospects from personal inquiries (i.e., behavioral segmentation)
• Users by city, age, language, religion, married, single, etc. (demographic segmentation)
• Users seeking to remedy loneliness, non-recognition, boredom, frustration, unacceptable ROIs, etc. (pain point segmentation)

Selecting the best DXA apps and platforms for your business

Looking for additions to your digital experience analytics tool suite? Connect with the Sogolytics team to deepen your toolbox, with high-quality tools to help streamline user journey designs from corner to corner, seamlessly share data with team members, and continuously improve moving from touchpoint to touchpoint over customer lifecycles. Looking for a quick list to start with? Check out a few of the many digital experience analytics platform on the market today:

• Decibel – A tool that focuses on weeding out unwanted digital experiences)
• AI-driven tools like Glassbox, embracing compliance and user journey parameters
• Contentsquare for in-page interactions and micro gesture analysis by scoring customer behaviors for faster team understanding
• Amplitude for cross-platform tracking, behavioral analytics, and customer support features
• Google Analytics—the free and versatile DXA toolbox for small business owners and enterprises alike—for improving online conversion rates (but lacking some of the more sophisticated features described above)

Digital experience analytics FAQs

As experience management continues to evolve and digital experiences become even more central to our lives, digital experience analytics will be critical. To recap a few items from the detailed descriptions above, here are a few frequently asked questions.

Q: What are digital analytics tools?

A: Organizations use digital analytics tools to understand the experiences of their customers or other key stakeholder groups when interacting with the brand on web, mobile, or other online applications. By better understanding these experiences, companies can streamline user experiences and remove any points of friction impacting their conversion, loyalty, or other target metrics.

Q: What does a digital analyst do?

A: A digital analyst utilizes one or more tools to pull together a comprehensive view of how an organization is performing in comparison to its digital experience goals. The analyst will be able to uncover areas of concern and opportunity, and to identify the actions and drivers that may impact the relevant experiences.

Q: Is digital analytics a good career?

A: A career in this arena offers incredible opportunities, being at the cutting edge of new-age technologies and marketing insights around data fields yielding hidden treasures never imagined even a few years back.

Contact Sogolytics to uncover deeper insights on your customers’ digital experiences so you can keep them coming back for more.