Site analysis. Where to get the data?

Each decision must be reasoned and justified. In order to have a clear idea about the development of your resource, to create a hypothesis for testing and other similar actions, it is necessary to gather sufficient information base.

This article lists the main sources of information about your site. A post does not claim to be an instruction, but is a collection of various methods of collecting data. In addition, there are no detailed instructions on their use, since all the necessary information is presented on the websites of companies that provide relevant services. In the process of writing, we set ourselves the goal to systematize and put together the main methods of site analysis.

Quantitative data

Here are two ways to get them:

1. Google Analytics
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Use data analytics services to determine your main sources of traffic and other key indicators. Pay special attention to the speed of your site, the average cost of the order and conversion rate.
Lead an analysis of what exactly your users are doing on the site. Collect and analyze all the data in order to understand what works and what needs to be changed.

The conversion funnel analysis provides excellent information on where you lose customers. The standard funnel consists of four stages:

- first contact;
- purchase decision;
- purchase;
- repeat purchases.

For each stage, you need to pay attention to specific data:

- at the first contact you should understand how a visitor learned about your brand and how it came to your site;

- during the decision making by the visitor, it is worth paying special attention to his behavior on the site, the time spent on each page, quoting and comments;

- to evaluate the purchase, analyze the size of the order and the average cost of the order;

- for re-buying is of great importance is where the visitor came from to your site, the frequency of such purchases, their size and composition.

2. Segmentation

Universal Analytics is another effective source of data needed to understand how different users interact with your site.

Many use segmentation to better understand users, and this source makes it easy to gather information about unique and repeat visits, rejection of the cart, loyal customers and much more.

Qualitative data

Statistics is just one side of the coin. A huge part of the information is in your visitors, and you should get it. You need to understand what your customers need, how they evaluate your level of service, what they lack.

The main sources of necessary information:

1. Your support service

This is the best "internal" source. The support staff, if you have one, daily communicate with customers and receive from them a lot of various information. Use this data, collect and organize them. Highlight the negative and positive points indicated by users, identify the main issues that caused difficulties and use this information to improve your resource.

Some analogue is the search field. You should pay attention if visitors are often looking for functional elements, such as "help", "contacts", etc. using search.

2. Contact customers directly

This method requires special care. Direct communication is always an invasion of personal space, and no matter if you called or e-mailed, you risk being intrusive every time. Therefore, the use of this method should be left to the most extreme case and for the most necessary data.

Carefully consider your message and weigh the potential value of the information you receive during the study.

3. Create a survey

We have already written about what should be a survey. The problems of this method of obtaining information is akin to the difficulties of the previous method.

There are several options for displaying your survey:

- directly on the site, preferably after purchase or before leaving the resource;
- when you re-visit your site;
- on the landing page.

In addition, you can motivate a visitor to answer questions with a discount or other small bonus.

4. Use tools

Activity charts and heat maps will provide you with information that will help you understand the behavior of visitors to the site. What exactly attracts their attention, what objects are of paramount importance, what does not fall into their field of vision.

To obtain this information, you can use the services of Google and Yandex or other services that provide such services. At the heart of such maps is tracking the movement of the user's mouse during a visit to your site.

Data visualization provides a qualitative analysis of the pros and cons of your site. In addition, you can customize these tools to get exactly the information you need from the type of users you need.



5 Usability Testing

For some reason, this is not the most popular way to analyze a site. Despite the fact that it has a low price and a fairly high accuracy of the results.

In the domestic market, such services are provided by many companies. A review of some of them was given in the article .

In the course of such testing, real users should be involved, who are initially faced with the task of assessing the convenience and understandability of the site interface. At the same time, of course, there is the problem of “pickiness”, which occurs when a person is appointed as an “expert”, but its influence is not critical.

The main types of testing:

• Qualitative testing is aimed at evaluating visitor behavior. It gives an opportunity to check the functionality of functional elements and their degree of convenience for the user.

• Comparative testing - used to compare key indicators for your site and competitors' sites. Such testing has great value at the planning stage of the product in order to avoid the mistakes of your predecessors.

• Cross-cultural testing allows you to assess how your product is adapted for a foreign user. The need for such a procedure arises if you plan to enter foreign markets, or vice versa, adapt their product to the domestic market.

6. Use experience cards

User experience research takes place in two stages:

- Where exactly do users contact your site, how do they get there and what do they expect from your resource?

- What elements of your site do they interact with and where do they expect to see them?

This method, in fact, is a synthesis of the two previous ones, but it has a significant difference, which is that not only the current state of affairs is assessed at the input of the analysis, but also users' expectations for each stage of interaction with your product come to light.