User Analysis: How Customer Data Can Help Optimize Conversions

When developing a software platform, the needs of your users are paramount.

Every decision should be guided by user information if you are to overcome the hurdles of building an efficient service platform. This is where user analysis comes in. 

With the help of customer data, developing a SaaS application or e-commerce platform becomes much simpler. This is because user data gives you the tools and feedback you need to optimize a product for seamless efficiency spanning everything from UX to SEO. 

As you assess your customer data and integrate insights into the development process, it helps to understand how data analysis supports higher conversion rates and how you can improve the process. Here, we dive into the details.

How Does Customer Data Help Conversions?

The world revolves around data. Anyone operating in business or technology understands that data is the currency that allows for innovation and financial flexibility, enabling all kinds of solutions from marketing to production strategies. In software and e-commerce, big data and its tools empower businesses by providing invaluable insights into customer behaviors.

In turn, big data can be applied in any effort to boost conversion rates on products, services, and software marketed to businesses or consumers. Whether you develop technology for a B2B or B2C marketplace, understanding and utilizing customer data is a key aspect of your success. 

But How Can Customer Data Really Help Conversion Rates? 

By applying the insights gleaned from data, you can evaluate every stage of the customer experience, analyzing where users drop off and helping developers improve on weak spots. No matter what your customers’ journeys look like, data informs the process to help you capture more sales.  

Here’s where customer data helps conversion rate optimization:

1. Identifying Problems

The first stage of any customer journey entails the identification of a problem. For your users, maybe that problem is navigating their own data, finding good management software, or integrating mobile solutions for their employees. No matter what the problem, customers begin looking for a solution by exploring the products and services out there.

This is where customer data first comes in handy. There are plenty of tools available for exploring what customers are looking for through keyword search data. You can analyze this data for insights that can lead to better products and marketing campaigns by directly addressing what customers need. 

2. Finding Information

Once your customers have identified their problem, they are in the information-gathering stage. This entails sweeping the internet, social media, and multi-channel platforms for potential solutions. This is also where you want to reach your audience if you hope to increase conversions.

Luckily, customer data makes this possible. By using analytics, you can better understand everything from who your target users are to how they search and interact with the web. Demographics, purchasing behaviors, actionable traits — all these and more inform a more specific customer experience. 

3. Evaluating Alternatives

Then, there’s the customer exploration of alternatives. What are your competitors offering? What features have they designed? Is their UX efficient? What kind of traffic are they drawing in? 

Your customers want to know the answers to these questions and so should you. By evaluating the industry through data, you can align your offerings to better reach customers. This way, you’ll be better optimized to bring in conversions. 

4. Making a Purchase Decision

With conversions, your focus is on this stage of the customer journey. Ultimately, what drives your audience to go from prospective customers to loyal ones? Customer data is vital in understanding this process.

There are a wide variety of factors that play into a purchase decision. For any web commerce-based platform, however, there are a few that carry special weight. These include:

• Website and application performance
• UX design
• Personalization
• Customer service
• Responsiveness

All these metrics and more can be evaluated through customer data to improve the effectiveness of your platform and increase sales.

5. Reflecting on a Purchase Post-Decision

Finally, customers will reflect on their purchases and in doing so will influence both other customers and loyalty sales. You need to understand the customer experience at this stage of the journey if you hope to keep conversion rates up. Examine how well you keep and satisfy customers, complete with A/B testing and satisfaction surveys, to optimize for conversions.

By collecting and evaluating data around each of these stages in the customer journey, you can better develop a path towards higher conversion rates. But what metrics should you track?

What Customer Data Metrics Are Worth Following?

The answer to this question might look a little different for every platform and business model. However, there are a few metrics worth tracking regardless of your strategy, as they can help shed light on problems that might be hurting your ability to make a sale. 

The metrics worth following can be categorized as quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative data entails information that can be given a direct number, like revenue values and costs. Meanwhile, qualitative data is more nuanced, requiring some subjectivity to process. For successful analysis, you need to understand the following:

Quantitative

The quantitative metrics worth tracking for conversion rate improvements revolve around measurable customer success. These are numeric scores that you can apply as a combination of data points or on their own. A customer health score, for example, can be gauged from polling customers after a purchase, considering acquisition costs, and assessing churn rate.

Here are some important quantitative metrics to follow when boosting conversion rates: 

• Customer health score
• Customer churn rate
• Monthly recurring revenue

Qualitative

Qualitative metrics require more analysis to apply to an actionable marketing strategy. You’ll need to use every tool at your disposal — from social media insights pages to email surveys — to better understand how customers feel about their experience with you. From there, you can streamline your platform to create a more highly optimized sales process.

Here are some valuable qualitative metrics:

• Customer feedback
• Customer satisfaction
• Net promoter score

But collecting data at all these stages of the customer journey isn’t enough to boost your conversion rates on its own. Rather, you must apply business analytics to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive better decisions. With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data generated each day, business analytics is the lens through which you can narrow your efforts and produce greater results.  

Successful analytics requires expert attention to detail and the ability to spot patterns in nebulous assortments of information. Data professionals may be required to optimize your conversion rates to their maximum potential. However, there are also plenty of data management applications and tools to help any user grow their conversion rates. 

So make use of the tools and expertise now to generate insights and apply them to a better platform, application, or e-commerce page. By understanding the customer experience, you understand sales.

Wrap Up

There are a virtually unlimited number of use cases for data analytics when it comes to optimizing for conversion rates. From the problem identification stage in the customer journey to the post-purchase evaluation, tracking and assessing data insights can make all the difference in your overall revenues. Use a combination of qualitative and quantitative metrics to make the most of your user analysis. From there, you can apply actionable strategies to optimize for conversions and truly thrive in a digital economy.