What are some uses for web analytics?

Web analytics is a useful user experience research tool for micro-level research* where we investigate and evaluate current state features. For micro-level research, you can use UX metrics such as visits, unique visitors, click paths, and time on page.

For example, you might do a click path analysis. A click path analysis can show how many users start and/or finish a flow, comparing these two figures to get a conversion rate. If the conversion rate is low (ex/ under 70%), you can do a deep dive to see where in the flow the users are dropping out and thereby find where the issue exists.

What is a disadvantage of web analytics?

An issue with using web analytics in user experience research is its inability to gauge intention.

Consider an instance where a user begins a form submission flow like submitting a claim or purchasing a product on an e-commerce site. If the user were to drop out of this flow at the first step, it would be difficult to determine why. It may be tempting to assume there’s a problem with a step in your flow (and there very well could be). However, using a metric like drop rate, or even a more in-depth web analytics report, will not reveal the users’ intention behind their actions. You can’t gauge whether the user stopped at that step because they intended to complete the flow, if they were curious about the start of the process, or if they discovered they needed more information to finish the step.

There is no way to distinguish between these possibilities with the standard web analytics offered by Google or Adobe.

How to gauge intentionality?

To gauge intentionality, you could add some event level tagging to the page to determine if users engaged with the page and what field they dropped out at. This approach would help you further find potential pain-points in the experience. However, the users that drop at a particular field might be doing so for a reason not related to the user experience.

Triangulating the data from web analytics with another UX Research method is the best way to distinguish the UX issues from issues caused by happenstance.

One method you could use would be to set up a survey that initiates when the user signs out or abandons the flow. By doing so, you can receive direct feedback from users about the specific pain points they encounter in the flow.

Another method you could use is call listening. Listen to recordings where users call your call centre about the flow you are examining. Listening to call recordings will show the main pain points users experience and triangulate that information with the web analytics. The call recordings will also help you understand how your call centre representatives were helping users with the issue which will help you understand how to solve the issue.

Triangulation is key to get micro-level insights

So, web analytics is a useful user research tool because you can use it to find issues in a flow or transaction, which you can then triangulate using surveys and call listening. Using these three methods, you can determine pain points that occur in a flow and start to solve for those pain points.

References:

https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ux-research-reckoning-is-here-judd-antin-airbnb-meta/