Visitor Behavior Analysis: A Guide To Identifying Revenue Leaks

Understanding the reason customers visit your website, how long they spend browsing, and why they leave can be incredibly valuable to identifying revenue leaks–or rather, revenue opportunities.

In the past, this approach was used primarily by inbound marketers to create better landing pages and search engine optimization. Visitor behavior analysis has often been overlooked in favor of affiliate marketing and partner relationship management (PRM), but that appears to be changing.

Today, we are seeing more and more instances of digital marketers using visitor behavior analysis to maximize inbound traffic leading to conversions, whether for major companies or a small business website.

What Is Visitor Behavior Analysis?

Visitor behavior analysis gathers data from website visitors to better understand and deliver on their desired behavior by observing the typical behavior patterns, collecting this data, and tailoring marketing and product efforts.

Visitor Behavior Analysis Explained:

Visitor behavior analysis is a powerful strategy that companies can leverage with numerous benefits, such as allowing businesses to market their product effectively. Visitor behavior analysis reveals whether or not your marketing is successful based on visitor behavior, as opposed to purely by demographics or backlink profile.

The methodology is based on tracking a user’s browser interaction: specifically, the use of sessions and keystrokes. The basic idea of visitor behavior analysis is to set a baseline for how visitors interact with your website and then compare and observe how it changes over time.

When a visitor’s browser first connects to your website, it takes between 30 to 60 seconds to download the information required for the browser to access the web. This initial phase of a visitor’s web experience is called the “booking stage,” where the visitor’s session is created and stored.

The browser will only access your website on a user’s first visit and may only view the page layout and a few elements. Once this initial experience has been completed, the user will move to a more extended session called the “page view” or “cookie” stage.

This type of interaction can last anywhere from minutes to an hour, depending on the user’s visit. After this session, your visitor will move to the next session, and from that session on, they will perform any future interactions with your website.

A visitor’s browser will also enter the “scroll” phase as time passes. During this phase, a visitor’s browser will continuously scroll down a portion of the website’s home page to view any images, videos, and infographics that are featured on the page.

Finally, the “navigation” phase occurs when the user starts to move through your website.

Critical Elements of Visitor Behavior Analysis

Visitor Behavior Analysis is a study of user behavior. In essence, the process involves:

Visitor Demographics

What is the demographic of visitors coming to your website? Which browsers are they using and on which devices?

Visitor Behavior

What do the visitors do when they visit your site? What elements do they interact with, and which pages do they navigate?

Visitor Needs

How do visitors think about what they need to complete a particular task or solve a problem? What do they feel is missing from your website?

Visitor Desires

What is the visitor’s desired end goal? What was the ideal outcome from them visiting your website?

What Are Visitor Demographics?

It is essential to understand who your visitor is, what they’re looking for, and ultimately what drove them to your website. In addition, the demographics are also relevant in improving sales training and in building strategies to convert customers.

However, it’s important to note that the critical elements of visitor behavior analysis are the same whether you are targeting a specific audience or demographic or targeting a particular type of visitor.

Depending on your marketing strategy, it is recommended you work on optimizing your landing pages in accordance with customer feedback, consider virtual PBX providers to elevate all business communications, and monitor a visitor’s interests to garner a better understanding of your visitor demographics.

Identifying Key Demographic Types

You are interested in identifying a few key demographic groups for a particular campaign. For example, you can pinpoint highly targeted audience segments such as Gen X, Gen Y, Generation Z, and Millennials.

Below are a few categories to consider when identifying your visitor demographic.

Visitor Age

Age is a critical element in understanding the behavior of your target audience. It indicates how much time and attention a person is likely to invest in a particular website. For example, while older generations may have more disposable income, they generally don’t spend as much time online as the younger–digital–generation.

Visitor Gender

Gender is another significant demographic and has a big impact on the marketing strategies that benefit a company. For example, if your readers are predominantly women, the content you want to provide will have to be tailored more to them than men.

Additional Considerations:

Some other things that you may want to consider when drawing up your visitor demographics are:

1. What is their occupation or job title?
2. What are their interests and hobbies?
3. In which country are they visiting your site?
4. Which devices are they using to access your site?
5. How long do they spend on the internet?

Why Conduct Visitor Behavior Analysis?

User behavior analysis is valuable for business owners and employees alike, especially in identifying how best to scale marketing efforts. In fact, to ensure a successful scaling in business, you must pinpoint who your products or services are appealing to so you further personalize it to their liking.

First and foremost, visitor behavior analysis provides insight into your user’s behavior patterns and what they need or are looking for—which allows you to develop campaigns, site features, and content that is personally relevant to them.

Visitor behavior analysis is easy to implement and can be incorporated into any website and marketing strategy. By developing your understanding of how and why a visitor came to your site, you’re able to provide them with the necessary information and resources to stay–or better yet, visit again.

Additionally, the metrics can help you understand which aspects of your public engagement are working and which parts need improvement, improving your users’ overall experience and providing the potential for new levels of interaction on your site.

How Does Behavioral Analysis Improve Conversion Rates?

It’s no secret more than half of website visitors never actually engage with a website, but you can still identify your site visitor’s behaviors.

By understanding and using the data you collect from visitors, you can personalize your website or re-activate prospective customers—both of which will ultimately lead to sales and conversions and build your brand’s online reputation.

So, by targeting user behavior, you improve your conversion rates and increase your return on investment (ROI) at the same time. In return, you provide a personalized experience for your users that would be otherwise impossible using traditional ad campaigns.

What Are Some of the Best Tools to Evaluate Visitor Behavior?

Listed below are some of the best visitor behavior analysis software, and while some are free and others are paid, they all provide a similar level of assistance and functionality.

These tools can be used to monitor the behavior of visitors on any site and can track everything from scrolling speeds and element interactions to time spent reading content or on the site altogether.

Google Analytics

If you’ve ever wondered how to manage a small business, SME, large business, or even an enterprise, Google Analytics is ideal for you. Google’s state of the art software enables your users to generate and analyze inferences from your website’s traffic and other data.

Countly

Countly is a comprehensive web analytics software tool for anyone who wants to track a website’s traffic and conversions and receive feedback on the performance of a website. Web analytics predicts the growth of a website for the future and is considered very easy to use as you only need to input the necessary data–like your website URL.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Conducting Visitor Behavior Analysis:

1. Not Including Comprehensive Traffic Statistics

The best way to collect accurate visitor behavior data is to obtain accurate data from Google Analytics. When doing this, it’s crucial to include the relevant traffic information for your site and your competitors. This will ensure you’re measuring the proper steps in the visitor’s journey in the correct sequence.

Remember, traffic statistics can be impacted by a variety of factors, from broken links to bugs in a recent update. For this reason, it’s recommended you don’t update the live version of your site and software until adequate regression testing has been completed and you are certain it’s safe to deploy.

2. Not Using Easy-to-follow Navigation Menus

Your site should be navigated using intuitive menus that your visitors can quickly follow, allowing you to gather accurate information from your users. For example, when visitors move from your site to a specific element, such as a particular page, it’s crucial to streamline the user journey and highlight the relevant information so users can easily understand and follow.

3. Not Asking Visitors What They Were Searching For

Asking the visitor what they were searching for when they visited your site is one of the best ways to use visitor behavior analysis. For instance, is the visitor simply an unproductive employee who feels burnt out or someone who is genuinely interested in your product.

You can then incorporate this information into your marketing strategy and advertising to drive more traffic to your site and make future product recommendations.

4. Not Tracking the Direct Result of Each Action

The visitor won’t visit only one element of your site; instead, they will navigate through the pages and hopefully open internal and external links. Because of this, tracking these movements is essential to ensure you know exactly how your visitors are engaging with your content and identify any elements that cause visitors to engage with your site more or, inversely, leave the site altogether.

To maximize the benefits visitor behavior analysis provides to your business, you need to implement various tools and tactics into your strategy, including visitor tracking, contextual information, segmentation, and behavioral profiling—this is called user-agent tracking.

5. Not Taking Risks With Content Styles

Don’t be scared to experiment with different styles and content strategies. What appeals to some people may not appeal to the masses and vice versa. High-quality content can easily be made by using free images, free videos, or free soundtracks—and since everything is free, it is very cost-effective.

So, Does Visitor Behavioral Analysis Work?

According to recent studies, behavioral analysis can increase conversion rates by 23%. However, there is no clear data yet regarding its impact on conversion rates over more extended periods of time. In fact, until now, it has only been able to be conducted on a microscopic scale in comparison to other counterpart techniques.

But now you’re all clued up, why not find out if it works for yourself?

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About our Guest Author: Jenna Bunnell is the Senior Manager for Content Marketing at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated best small business VoIP platform that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. She is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility and visualizing how content can be presented in creative and comprehensive ways. She has also written for sites such as Spiralytics and Codemotion. Check out her LinkedIn profile.