Personalisation is a strategy that can really drive eCommerce growth and success. But if you’re going to provide your customers with relevant content, the kind that they’ll actually be interested in, you need to know what they want to see. That means you need to track customer behaviour analytics.
Here are some metrics you should look out for.
- Types of customers
- Dwell time
- Types of purchases
- Number of returning customers
- Website traffic patterns
Oh, before we start, we'll just throw it out there that you can also watch this in video format. Perfect for all you video lovers out there.
1. Types of customer
First things first, you want to identify your customer audience. This will set up a foundation on which to start your customer behaviour analysis.
Typical categories can include demographics such as:
- Gender
- Age
- Location
However, the broader the categories in which you segment, the easier it is to personalise your marketing campaigns later on. Try to include engagement patterns too (more on this in point 5). Once you’ve identified your customer characteristics, you can perform a RFM analysis. This outlines how recent and frequent a customer buys from you.
2. Dwell time
This is how long your customers spend on your website. Theoretically, the longer the dwell time, the more likely a customer is to make a purchase (although you can still get customers who pop onto your website, search for a specific item and purchase within minutes).
One important factor is your website design. Aim to design a great eCommerce website experience. This can lead to a streamlined, excellent user experience and a greater chance that a customer will buy something from you.
Just think: Are you more likely to purchase something from a site that’s confusing and difficult to navigate or one that’s refreshingly user-friendly? 
3. Types of purchases
Following on from point 1 – now you know what types of customers you have, the next question is what kind of things are your customers buying?
When you know which products/services are typically bought by what demographic, it suddenly becomes much easier to tailor your offerings. For example, you can tweak your product information to make it more detailed and ensure the messaging resonates with a specific demographic.
4. Number of returning customers
It’s five times more expensive to attract new customers than it is to retain your existing ones. That’s why it’s so important to focus on retaining your current customers. It starts with ensuring they’re satisfied (though delighted is even better).
A happy, satisfied customer is more likely to turn into a loyal one who consistently turns to your brand, trusting you to provide them with the products/services they need.
An easy way to check brand loyalty is to look at your customers’ purchase histories.
Focus specifically on purchases from customers who have already bought from you - such as any repurchases of the same product/service. If a customer repeatedly comes back to your site and purchases more products/services from you (whether it’s the same thing or new), it suggests they enjoyed the customer service and experience they received before.
5. Website traffic patterns
If you were monitoring traffic patterns in-store, that would mean looking at how your customers are moving across your shop floor. You’d then use that knowledge to tweak your store layout. You want your customers to notice and move to your best merchandise soon after entering.
It’s a similar principle for online. But you can discover even more about your customers and their buying habits. Let’s discuss four more metrics (so actually, we’ve given you eight metrics in this blog!) …
Heatmaps
This is similar to monitoring traffic patterns in-store. Web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, allow you to view how your customers navigate your website. Or in other words, a heatmap. For example, are your customers regularly dropping off your website on the same page? Is there a correlation between drop offs such as the type of page (certain layout) or the buyer's journey stage?
This can help you understand where to optimise your website and ensure it’s as simplified and user-friendly as it can be.
Number of active users
Knowing what time your customers typically come online can be very valuable. For instance, when you know what time the majority of your customers visit your website (even better if you can map this to a demographic), you can tailor your online content to them.
They could be presented with different offers and promotions depending on the time of the day. Combine this with additional insights like whether they’re a returning customer, their past purchases and search history and you can really boost sales.
Pages visited
In addition to seeing the order of the pages your customers typically visit via heatmaps, it’s useful if you can also see which pages are the most clicked on. This indicates which of your pages are the most popular.
With this information, you can:
- Analyse why those pages are so popular
- See what kind of pages they are - e.g. product/service page (and if so, for what products/services?), a page about your company, etc
- Track what pages customers viewed before and after these pages
- See whether there’s a recurring theme between the most popular pages - e.g. whether they all have a video embedded or they all mention a particular product/service
Types of content consumed
Leading on from the last point of the above metric, you should look at the types of content your customers typically consume. Here are some examples of content:
- Videos
- Blogs
- Downloadable assets
- Interactive content - like a quiz or poll
- Podcasts
Once you know the format, you can dig into the topics and themes. Understand what your audience actually want to see/read and build your future content on top of that. It’s about basing your content strategy on data analysis, not a hunch.
And once you know the type of content your customers want to see and the format they want it to be presented in, you can provide them with more of that. With powerful, customer-centric messaging, you’ll have your existing customers coming back for more while attracting new ones at the same time.
Let’s tie this back to personalisation…
It’s important to know your customers, from who they are and what they want to what they like best about your company. Know what they’re buying from you because this indicates why they’re coming to your brand (and website) in the first place.
With this knowledge, you can offer them personalised product/service suggestions (based on past purchases, search history, heatmaps, customer service interactions and more). This can boost your average basket value as well as the likelihood of the customer purchasing from you.
If the customer signs up to receive marketing emails, you can send them content that they might be interested in (based on the types of content they’ve consumed in the past). It’s about providing your customers with more value each time so you build a strong relationship and your brand becomes their go-to.
Looking for more ways you can remain competitive in today’s marketplace?
Analysing your customer behaviour is one way you can stay ahead of the competition. But there are other things you must consider. You have to ensure everything is seamless internally too. That's why it's important to create the perfect partnership between your customer service and sales teams. Check out our guide - Keeping customers for life - below:
