This article generously contributed by Tom Shapiro, CEO, Stratabeat
When I met with executives from a company with a seemingly popular knowledge center, they were thrilled with the content hub’s mountain of page views. According to the company executives, it was one of the company’s key marketing assets.
But as soon as we applied behavioral intelligence analytics to the knowledge center, we realized that visitors were frustrated with the experience. They didn’t scroll far down the pages. They hardly clicked on any of the resources. They skipped over some of the most important resources without even noticing them. And then they typically abandoned the website altogether.
The knowledge center was driving lots of clicks, but then damaging the brand by delivering a poor user experience. The knowledge center design was outdated, the layout was inadequate, and the content pieces missed the key pain points of the audience.
While Google Analytics reveals page views and other surface-level metrics, it doesn’t reveal the digital body language of your site visitors. That’s where behavioral intelligence takes center stage and helps you transform your content performance.
Behavioral Intelligence Tools
With behavioral analytics, you can reveal the quality of visits to your website, and actually quantify your findings. Popular behavioral intelligence tools include Decibel, FullStory, Inspectlet, Heap, Hotjar, Mouseflow, and Smartlook. When considering which software is right for your own business, consider the functionality and types of insight you’re looking for.
While all these software packages offer some form of heat mapping, session recordings, and form analysis, there are variances between the tools. Decibel, Mouseflow, and Hotjar offer cross-page funnel analysis and on-site surveys, for example. Smartlook allows you to identify users and look up replays by their name or email. Decibel offers a proprietary “Digital Experience Score” for each page, crunching billions of data points in the process. Inspectlet also offers A/B testing of pages.
Determine your priorities and what you’re looking to get out of a behavioral intelligence tool prior to making a purchase.
Capitalizing on Behavioral Intelligence for Greater Performance
Behavioral analytics data includes heat mapping, scroll mapping, click mapping, and attention mapping of your site visitors. The data provides you with the insight for optimizing your pages and funnels in order to 1) deliver a better user experience and 2) increase your conversion rates.
For example, there was a company that approached our agency with only 20% of page visitors scrolling far enough down the page to see all the products in their product suite. Obviously, you’re going to limit your sales if four out of five visitors don’t sufficiently learn about your product offerings.
After a restructuring of the page, the company now introduces the full range of products within the suite higher on the page and includes additional guidance for site visitors in the site navigation as well. The result is that 70% of those who visit the page now see the ENTIRE suite.
With most behavioral intelligence packages, you can also view a screen recording of your site visitors’ journeys through your site. The ability to view actual recordings of actual user sessions is invaluable, as it helps you understand exactly what to optimize within your site to eliminate friction and to better achieve your site objectives. It’s a true game-changer.
For our agency, session recordings have revealed a range of issues, as well as opportunities, for clients. We’ve uncovered content layouts that tend to reduce session time, while at the same time identifying other content types that lead to greater engagement and/or conversions, as revealed through the recordings. With session recordings, you can see far deeper into your site visitors’ actual visits, enabling you to improve your site and your content for greater performance.
Summary
If you’re looking to improve the performance of your content, use behavioral intelligence software. You’ll be able to go deeper than standard web analytics in uncovering audience insight. In addition, through behavioral analytics and session recordings, you’ll see where to customize your website to drive greater engagement, eliminate friction, improve the site experience, and increase conversions
Tom Shapiro is CEO of Stratabeat, a B2B branding, web design and marketing agency. Through his career, Tom’s clients have included AT&T, GE, Intel, UnitedHealthcare and Hewlett-Packard. Previously, while Tom was Director of Digital Strategy at iProspect, the number of employees grew from 85 to 700+ within five years. Tom is the author of the book, Rethink Your Marketing, available on Amazon.