Did you know that there are over 1.8 billion websites on the internet? Thanks to DIY construction sites such as WordPress, almost every business has a website to host their brand.
If you want to get your business out in front of the crowd, you need to know your target audience and what they want. How can you get this information? The answer is by understanding their consumer’s digital behavior.
Understanding visitors’ behavior to your site can give you an insight into how to create a better experience for them.
Why not read on to find out how and why you should do this?
1. Employ powerful digital tools
The first and most evident way to understand consumer behavior is to study it, understand it, and deploy what you learn. There are many ways to do this.
An old-fashioned and straightforward method is to employ simple cookies to track the number of visits that a person will make to your site. This is the oldest trick in the book and does not provide a great depth of information.
In addition to this, why not employ heat maps to tell you how much time on average visitors to your site will dwell on each page. This is important for product pages.
The next step to this is a product provided by decibel.com called Session replay. This tool allows you to see your customer’s behavior using a screen recording. You know what your visitor sees. For instance, does their cursor move frantically around the screen in a manner known as “bird’s nest behavior”?
By using this service, you can observe where customers are struggling to make progress.
This can help in several scenarios. For example, does your site have a high rate of cart abandonment? If so, you can follow site visitors’ progress and see where they typically abandon their purchase. This may be because of a design flaw or technical problem that means that a simple step is not so obvious.
Employing the many powerful digital tools available today can help you gather the needed information regarding your target audience.
2. Embrace feedback
After understanding their behavior, now try to find out their impressions. What does your customer base think about your site? This is a significant factor that impacts your digital experience score.
Do not be afraid to hear your customer’s thoughts, even if they are not positive. How can you do this?
Satisfaction surveys are a great way to invite feedback. Customers can anonymously tell you their worst experiences on your site. This is the best thing that they can do. From here, you get a clear direction as to how you can improve your site.
The more specific the feedback, the more you can learn from it. This means that you should craft your surveys to glean the most from each entry. However, this free information can be one of your best sources of guidance.
3. Leverage the power of forums
If your website has a forum section or there are forums, such as Reddit, dedicated to the sector your business operates in, you have a free source of information.
From here, you can learn your customer’s thoughts on how your product could be improved or even what subsequent products would be popular.
The beauty of forums is that your target audience does not feel that they are under the influence of a company. They are just sharing their precious thoughts. When they talk about your site and their experiences with it, you essentially have a focus-group free of charge providing feedback.
4. Connect data, do not silo it
As you gain more information from these various sources, you must have a method or program that will unify it and make it available across the board.
Companies would have a website analytics program, marketing strategy system, and CRM program working simultaneously and separately in times past. This meant that while each was working efficiently, they were gathering information separately. This would lead to siloing. Information was not shared, and so it was only of limited benefit.
In recent years, however, companies have embraced the “voice of customer” approach. Under this system, they make information regarding customers and their behavior available to all departments needing it.
The company as a whole grasps the demographic of the target audience and so is able to provide better products and services.
5. What can you learn?
Accurate data regarding customer behavior will give you key advantages when making big decisions regarding marketing and products. There are three main ways that this data can be deployed:
- Social
Creating a popular brand will influence groups of people. This means that a person will start to use a product or service based on their family, school, or workmates’ decisions. Social media is incredibly effective.
Psychological
One of your key goals is to learn what the pressing needs of your target audience are. If you understand their needs, you can learn to tune your marketing campaign to meet those needs.
Personal
What is the average age of your customers? What is their gender? Culture?Language? Understanding each of these elements will help you create the most accurate and appealing advertising campaign possible.
Accruing this information continually helps to keep your marketing relevant and in touch with your customers. Further, by continually tapping into these information sources, you can map out any changes that occur and future-proof your decisions.
How to understand consumer digital behavior and much more
Understanding consumer digital behavior is the key to creating great marketing strategies. Why not apply some of the suggestions we have discussed here? You might find that you can make fast progress in a short time.
If you would like to know more about these kinds of topics, why not check out our blog page? We write articles that we know you will benefit from.
