User tracking is the primary way for websites to gather their customers’ behavioral information. User tracking will collect so many kinds of information. For example, how long they stay on a page, how many pages they visit, and how many activities they perform, such as clicking a link or watching a video.
Almost all of us are aware that when we visit the internet, websites monitor us. We’ve all had the experience of searching for a product online only to have advertisements for that product follow us around for weeks.
What data websites acquire, why they collect it, and how they follow you may be unclear. We hope to address some of these questions and clarify the importance of specific individuals and their actions on user tracking on every website.
What is User Tracking?
When a website collects information about its users to monitor their online behavior, this is known as User tracking.
Many internet businesses, such as digital advertising and website analytics, rely on this approach. User tracking is viral; according to a 2017 poll, 79 percent of websites employ trackers to collect user data.
Here are a few examples of how websites track users in ways that aren’t related to advertising:
- When you want to eat lunch and search for a restaurant on Google, that’s when the service returns a list of eateries in your immediate vicinity since the search engine recognizes your location.
- E-commerce stores often track your previous purchases. Therefore they know exactly what you like and give you a list of recommended products.
Without website tracking technology, the two instances above would either not exist or exist in a less personalized—and hence less helpful—form.
Why is it Vital to Use User Tracking?
Businesses that are unable to follow their users are actually in the dark. They can’t discover issues like forms that never load, tell which features people like and dislike. Also, it will be difficult to market, A/B test their products or provide effective customer service efforts to enhance results.
Companies that employ a mobile user monitoring technology, on the other hand, have complete insight into their customers’ behaviors and data. User behavior data is precious since it is more accurate and illuminating than other forms of data, such as demographics.
Users’ activities reveal their intentions precisely, for example, what product they’re interested in or what genre of movies they like. On the other hand, demographics give us information such as age, gender, or geography, which might signal that they’re similar to past customers.
What Are the Benefits Of User Tracking?
Here we will mention some of the benefits of using user tracking for your business:
1. Improving Your Product
User flows, as depicted by tracking technologies, demonstrate how users move through the product. Positive behaviors, such as time spent on site, reveal which features or sites people enjoy. However, negative behaviors, such as drop-offs, may indicate a problem, such as a bug or a confusing call-to-action (CTA) button.
2. Increasing Marketing Effectiveness
Marketers can employ tracking tools to link their efforts, such as emails or discount codes, to specific individuals and their actions. They can then adapt based on which marketing or channels bring them the most profitable customers. Learn more about customer-centric marketing.
3. Increasing Customer Retention
Customer service teams can utilize tracking tools to determine what elements contribute to user retention and help more people adopt new technologies. For example, suppose a significant portion of new visitors who remained loyal customers after 30 days tended to watch the same onboarding video. In that case, the team may make it a mandatory step in the new user welcome flow.
4. A Great Guide for Businesses
Analytics teams can use tracking technologies to peel back the layers of the product. This can help you to examine everything from specific features to how the weather affects adoption rates. In fact, user tracking will give you so much information that can be used to provide your company with a complete roadmap based on it.
5. Automating the Customer Journey
Teams can utilize tracking technologies to set off events depending on user behavior. A streaming music app, for example, can send out in-app or push notifications to users who get lost or quit the app.
How to Setup User Tracking?
Now is time for a brief walkthrough over how to set up your website user tracking. Make sure to read our latest article for detailed information.
1. Create a Tracking Plan
Before teams can start collecting data from their users, they must first decide what data is essential. Not all data is relevant, and too much irrelevant data can make everything complicated. To establish a tracking plan, teams must first gather requirements from the product, marketing, customer support, and analytics teams. In addition, marketing teams must determine their goals and stories about how they intend to use the information. The team may use this information to generate a spreadsheet containing all the data points and establish a syntax for naming events in the product and the website user tracking tool.
2. Deploy Analytics
After establishing a tracking strategy, teams can assess user tracking options, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. A good website user tracking analytics platform should include the following features:
- Should cover both desktop and mobile versions.
- All desired data formats and sources are supported.
- Provide a user-friendly user interface.
3. Test, Adjust, Improve
3. Test, Adjust, Improve
Tracking website users is a journey and not a destination. Teams may need to validate that their data is firing correctly, that the team has been properly taught on the tool.
Once the data is gathered, teams can see their users’ behaviors in real-time and gain a deeper understanding of their product than ever before. They can tell what features people like the most or dislike and what they prefer to pay for. They can use that information to make data-driven decisions that improve the product’s usability, satisfaction, and success.
Best User Tracking Tool
You can utilize a variety of website analytics solutions. And some of them include extra functionality compared to others. Here we will introduce the best of them to save you some time and of course money:
WatchThemLive
WatchThemLive is a program that analyzes user involvement and interaction. You may use this tool for user tracking on your website and ensure that you won’t miss a single event. Furthermore, WatchThemLive will create heatmaps for your website and track user activity with session replays. Let’s see what these terms mean:
- HeatMaps:
You may use heatmaps to determine the most popular sections of your app. Users tend to tap in these locations the most. You can check whether users’ tapping interactions are as you intended. Consider the case where a heatmap reveals that an inconsequential element is getting far too much attention. To bring attention to essential features, you should make them less prominent.
- Session Replay
With session replays, you can track users’ movements across your website and see exactly what they’re doing. It’s a great approach to figure out when users exit your app, where they become confused, and what’s keeping them from converting. You’ll be able to detect these problems and solve them quickly if you use replays.
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Conclusion
Understanding how to improve your website interaction with your customers requires analytics services. It will show you how your website is being used and how well it is performing.
We covered the foundations of user tracking in this blog post to help you get started. We also introduced to you the best services to make it easier for you to start things up.