The concept of POP marking is nothing new for traditional in-person businesses. Cardboard displays in grocery stores have been used for decades to help drive up sales of certain products.  For ecommerce sites, there are different techniques to use POP marketing on customers.

What Is POP Marketing?

The strategy of targeting users while they’re already shopping is POP marketing. This is a late-stage form of marketing because users are on your site and in the process of purchasing. POP marketing would not be considered top of the funnel marketing. 

The idea behind POP marketing is you target users that are already in a buying mood, making it potentially easier to add on to or upgrade the product they plan to purchase. Pop marketing could be signage around the product showing more details or suggesting complementary products to what’s already in a customer’s cart.  

The strategies for POP marketing are things you may see every day and not even realize. Signs at gas pumps offering a sale on soda inside the convenience store would be considered POP marketing. Customers are already stopping to purchase gasoline, so getting a soda would be a “might as well” purchase. Candy placed by registers is also a form of POP marketing. 

In essence, they’re items that didn’t bring you to the store to make a purchase, but you end up grabbing them out of impulse or ease of access. 

For ecommerce sites, POP marketing would be suggesting similar products or showing opportunities for an upgrade. It may seem more difficult to market products to someone at the checkout online, but there are techniques to get customers to purchase additional products. 

What Is Point of Purchase (POP) and Point of Sale (POS)?

The point of purchase is a marketing term used to describe the placement of products or advertisements around point of sale systems. POP would be considered product displays around the checkout area or at the end of an aisle in traditional brick-and-mortar shops. 

POP can also be considered any promotional activity to help sell a product, such as a two-for-one sale or first-time customer discount. For ecommerce sites, POP would be how products are displayed on your website for customers who are actively shopping.

POS or point of sale is the location and time of purchase of a product. This would be the cash register or checkout system for traditional stores, where goods would be exchanged for cash or credit. 

For an ecommerce site, this would be the checkout page where payment information is entered, and the order is submitted. While the checkout experience may be different from site to site, the process itself should be straightforward for the customer. 

The POS system your site uses must be secure and easy for customers. Accepting numerous forms of payment and having a simple checkout process will lead to higher sales conversion and better customer satisfaction. 

What Are POP Materials?

POP marketing can be enhanced beyond product placement with the use of POP materials. 

Some examples of POP materials are flyers, emails, website pop-ups, or cardboard display stands. These POP materials should help promote your brand and, in some cases, offer more details about your products. Cardboard displays of products are a popular choice for in-person shopping. These can provide more information on your products while also providing a large visual display of your company. 

For online businesses, pop-ups during checkout are one way to show users additional products they may be interested in. Suggesting additional services or warranties on top of a product would be considered POP marketing. Targeted social media posts are another good way to get additional purchases from a customer. Item displays are another common way pop marketing is used in ecommerce sites.

Pop materials should be targeted in a way that is logical for the customer. If a customer is purchasing an inexpensive item targeted at someone on a budget, the POP marketing items should be similar in type and value. For example, you shouldn’t suggest a high-end, top-of-the-line product to someone looking to buy a budget-saving product. Your product displays should be in the same league as the product the customer plans to purchase to maximize the chances of a successful conversion. 

Product displays showcase one or multiple products to customers. There are multiple ways to present products to customers, so it’s good to understand the basic types.

If you need to know what POP marketing ideas or products would be the best fit for your website, let Kissmetrics help. With our tools, you can analyze your user search topics and paths to conversion. 

What Are the 4 Basic Types of Displays?

The key to successful POP marketing is properly displaying the additional products. These are often done on a product page or during the checkout process. Pop marketing should be something all ecommerce sites incorporate to help boost sales and customer lifetime value. The four basic POP marketing display types are:

• One time displays
• Similar products
• Related products
• A cross mix of items

One Item Displays. A one-item display is the showcase of a single product to a customer. This is a good technique for showing off a new product or boosting a struggling product’s sales. 

A one-item display can be a pop-up or a highlight in the product catalog, depending on your site layout. If you’re looking to dive into more detail about a product, a one-item display is probably the best choice.

Similar Products. Another type of product display is a similar products section. When customers are viewing a product, a list of similar products can be displayed on the same page to give the customer alternatives to what they are viewing. 

This is an effective form of pop marketing, especially for customers that take a direct link to your product page. In a direct link case, the customer may not be aware of other products you offer. By listing similar products, customers may find a better fit for their needs, increasing customer satisfaction and increasing the likelihood of a purchase.

Related Products. An alternative to a similar product display is a related product display. Like similar product displays, related product displays could be shown on a product page or during the checkout process. These related products could be accessories or add-ons to the current product the user is interested in. 

If your business sells products that are part of a product package showing related products is a must. If the product your customer is viewing is an accessory to another product, showing the parent product as a related product display is vital. 

If, after product research with Kissmetrics, you find that customers tend to buy two or three products together, it’s a good idea to make that package suggestion to other customers. 

A Cross Mix of Items. A product display to show the range of products your company offers would be a cross mix of items displayed. A cross mix of items is a great display for companies looking to expand beyond just a popular product. 

Showing customers your company’s range of product offers can increase customer loyalty and lifetime customer value. Showing a mix of high-margin items that are a good fit for your customer is a smart way to increase overall revenue.  

A cross mix of items is also a nice way to increase product awareness among your customers.  

Conclusion: How Can I Use POP Marketing in My Business?

POP marketing is something all ecommerce sites should use. It strengthens sales figures and delivers value to your customers by providing them with options. By making customers aware of a product they may not have known about, you increase can your profits and deliver increased value to the shopper.

Capitalizing on customers already planning to make a purchase is “best practice” for all ecommerce sites. While the process is different for brick and mortar stores vs. online businesses, the thought process behind POP marketing is the same.  Properly targeting customers who are already making a purchase can benefit your company and the customer. 

You’ll need the right analytics data to understand how best to market your products. Request your Kissmetrics demo today to see how we can help you with your customer insights. By properly utilizing POP marketing, you can make your customers happier while increasing your bottom line.

 

Sources:

1. [Point-of-Purchase] | What Is Point-of-Purchase Marketing? | Chron.com
2. The Difference Between “Point of Purchase” and “Point of Sale” | Displays2Go
3. What Is Point-of-Purchase Marketing? | AZCentral

 

 

 

 

Exploring Affiliate Marketing

Before a consumer can buy a product or service they need to know it exists, making both business profile and customer attraction key considerations for pretty much every company. Affiliate marketing is one of the most common ways to achieve these ends, but how does it work?

 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

The online world has transformed business practices in many ways, from vastly increasing the potential of working from home through to collaborative business project software. One such area that has been altered substantially by the rise of the internet is advertising, and one new form of it is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing functions by allowing third parties to make money from companies that benefit from web traffic and sales being generated in the direction of their products or services. A percentage of commission is given to the third party, which provides them with a strong incentive to encourage their readers or viewers to check out the advertising company.

The approach is endorsed and followed by numerous business sectors, from Amazon’s Audible business to online casin. This makes affiliate marketing an appropriate commercial activity for a broad swathe of firms.

Knowing the Audience

A critical aspect of making affiliate marketing work properly for all concerned is to know the audience and to ensure that a marketing message reaches those who might be interested in it. A spa treatment deal focused on a Formula 1 website may not necessarily hit the mark. However, a fantasy videogame that makes a strategic decision to advertise its wares on a blog or Youtube channel that explores subjects such as mythology, fantasy, history, or videogames is much more likely to find a receptive audience.

On a similar note, some bloggers/Youtubers are much better natural salesman than others. This can mean there’s better value with seemingly identical third parties (in terms of viewer/reader figures). Likewise, some audiences can be a lot more engaged. If an individual has a business model based on direct support via superchats (Youtube donations), bits (Twitch), and/or Patreon subscriptions, and PayPal donations then their audience, even if smaller in overall numbers, may be more willing to click through to help that third party out. At the higher end, major newspapers such as the Guardian have also made use of affiliate marketing.

Additional Features

It can also be the case that consumers stand to benefit directly by using affiliate links, typically through a discount. If a reader of a history blog sees a related product and can get a 10% price cut that clearly increases the chances of them clicking through and buying. Another method that can be used for either free-to-play games, educational streaming services, or even the likes of Audible (Amazon’s audiobook wing) are signup codes that offer some sort of bonus content, or free access for a month or two, or a free audiobook.

Sometimes third parties stand to make a little extra if a certain number of click-led sales happen, or codes are redeemed. This can also add some emotional weight to the draw as ardent supporters of the third party who are on the fence might go the extra mile to help out their favorite creator.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

Dan Dubey, chief of content and affiliate at Top10casinos.com, mentions that the biggest benefit of this approach is that the initial cost is essentially nothing, provided the third party is only paid for clicks or clicks converted to sales (the latter being better for the advertising firm). Nowadays, the latter is much more common, and clicks alone are rarely used as the metric.

Blogging may seem old hat compared to social media giants but blogs are still very popular and are a prime source of affiliate marketing. From the bloggers’ perspective, income from this source can be as high as six figures for the most successful.

Bloggers are far from the only third parties who can benefit from affiliate marketing, however. Youtube channels catering to specific audiences are also well-placed for this sort of commercial activity, and the same can go for e-mail lists/newsletters. By knowing the audience of a given third party, a business knows it has a far more receptive consumer base than the general population, increasing the chance of clicks leading to sales.

The Disclaimer

It’s important for both legal and moral reasons for the third party to be upfront about sponsorship or affiliate marketing because a key advantage online personalities have is a sense of personal connection with the audience. Being upfront and honest about advertising is completely fine, but if you recommend something, and stand to personally profit from clicks leading to sales, then not being honest about this can cause harm to your reputation.

How Successful is Affiliate Marketing?

This advertising model accounted for some 7.5% of digital spending among retailers in late 2016. The figures from the United States, in particular, tell the story, with year-on-year rises from 2015 until 2020, going up from $4.21bn in 2015 all the way to $6.82bn in 2020 (a more than 50% increase). As of 2017, 81% of firms were making use of affiliate marketing, showing that it is both productive and popular with businesses.

That brings us to the end of this concise consideration of affiliate marketing, which is an inexpensive and effective means of attracting customers, and one which is rising in popularity year-on-year.

 

 

 

 

The best way to achieve marketing success is by differentiating your brand, products, or services to best meet your customers’ needs. By effectively utilizing a differentiation strategy, your brand can stand out in your industry with features that enhance your customers’ lifestyles.

This article discusses various types of marketing differentiation, the advantages, and how your company can distinguish itself from the competition. We break it all down below. 

What Is Differentiation?

Companies develop a differentiation strategy to provide consumers with something new, exclusive, and distinguished from what their rivals sell in the market. The primary goal of executing a differentiation approach is to gain a strategic edge. 

A company can normally do this by evaluating its own capabilities and disadvantages, as well as the desires of its consumers and the potential value it can offer.

What are Different Types of Marketing Differentiation?

While there are plenty of options, not all differentiation strategies are equally successful. What’s successful for your company will depend largely on what you offer, your company’s culture and capabilities and your industry. 

Product Differentiation

As the name implies, product differentiation is achieved by adding or enhancing special features that are unique to your product. Cornering the market on a specific feature or service is a key way to entice customers. When you are the only company offering something, customers will flock to your brand in droves. 

The downside to focusing solely on product differentiation is that businesses are constantly changing and evolving. No sooner than you’ve released software that performs a specific function than other companies are improving upon your efforts. 

If your only focus is on product differentiation, you’ll likely only see a brief boom in sales because your competitors will quickly move in on the idea and make it their own. 

Relationship Differentiation

Your employees are the backbone of your business. When they’re happy, your customers are much more likely to walk away satisfied and happy too. Team members must have the tools and communication channels they need to operate efficiently and spot errors before they escalate into major problems. 

You can accomplish this by monitoring customer satisfaction metrics like user adoption rate, net promoter score, and churn rate. With concrete data, your team can analyze customer opinions regarding new products, advertisement campaigns, and your brand. 

Service Differentiation

Service differentiation encompasses every supportive aspect of your company. 

• Onboarding, 
• Customer service, 
• The ordering process, 
• Website design, 
• And everything that aids in the process of selling your product. 

Showing your customers that they will always get great service, fast responses, and helpful advice regardless of what products they order or where they order from is an excellent way to promote brand loyalty. 

Distribution Differentiation

While this isn’t a customer-facing aspect of your business, ensuring that you can deliver to people in your target audience is essential. This means keeping lines of communication open and delivery smooth for all manufacturers and distributors involved in producing your products. 

It also means increasing quality assessment procedures to ensure that all products meet your high standards. 

Image Differentiation

Your brand’s reputation directly impacts customer loyalty and should be tailored to your target audience. Understanding your audience’s expectations and needs will help your brand position its reputation as one that your customers trust and rely on for the products you provide. Customer loyalty is essential for building a solid base of returning customers.

A positive brand image can lower advertisement costs and increase profit by enticing previous customers to return for other products or services and tell their loved ones to do so also. Unfortunately, cultivating a distinctive image within your industry takes time, shrewd marketers, strong products, a large marketing budget, and a bit of luck.

Your brand must stand for something immediately recognizable through a slogan, logo, and name. In addition, your brand must promote your product’s value and follow through by providing the value advertised. 

Differentiating your company’s image goes a long way toward overall success. 

Price Differentiation

Price differentiation means finding the sweet spot for your product or service’s price. Many consumers look for less expensive alternatives when first selecting a product from the market, so ensuring that your product is appropriately priced is one way to differentiate your company. 

It is also the go-to option for most companies and may not be reliable in the long run.

Reducing the cost for your product necessarily reduces the profit earned, and some other company will undoubtedly find a way to do whatever you do but cheaper, faster, or more efficiently. So you want to avoid a price war with your competitors. 

What are the Advantages of a Product Differentiation Strategy?

Product differentiation offers plenty of advantages like increasing profits, heightening your company’s customer retention rate, and positioning your product strategically in the industry. 

Creates Non-Price Competition

Pricing competition is not the only way to differentiate your product. Product differentiation also allows your company to stand out by showing that it has other valuable and unique qualities. 

If you prove that your product features are better than the competition’s, customers will take price out of the equation when evaluating your company. 

Creates Value

The advantage of a product differentiation approach is that it capitalizes on a product’s distinguishing features. Your company can compile a list of features that your products have that your competitors do not. 

These features help distinguish the product, and you can express them effectively through promotion and advertisement.

Creates Brand Loyalty

Your brand’s distinguishing factors may become the standard for your entire company. Great customer service, for example, applies to more than one product or service; it’s a reflection of your company’s willingness to put the customer’s needs first. 

Customers will become more loyal to your brand if your differentiators are reflected across all of your company’s products. 

Eliminates Perceived Substitutes

A good product  differentiation strategy could instill the idea that there is no other product in the market that can replace it. Even if alternative products are available, a company can gain a competitive edge in the market because consumers aren’t likely to substitute their product with another. 

How can Product Differentiation be Achieved?

There are four specific ways to differentiate your product and position it for success. With these, you can enhance your existing product(s) to better appeal to your existing and prospective customers. 

Distinctive Design

One of the best ways to promote and differentiate a product is to use a distinctive design. Something that is unique and that will stick in your customer’s minds. 

Perfume bottles are a good example of this; they are often designed in fascinating shapes and are beautifully decorated in addition to being memorable. 

Branding

Perception is king. Enhancing your brand and customer perceptions of the products and services you offer can add a lot of value, even if your product is similar to others on the market. Nike is an example of fantastic branding.

Another way of positioning your company is to use social media as an entity that does something different or noteworthy. This also enhances the standing of your products without altering anything in the production process. 

Performance

Monitoring the metrics of your customers’ experiences is vital when aiming to improve product performance. By knowing what the product currently provides and how much effort it takes to achieve a goal, your teams can find ways to streamline the effort required and improve functionality. 

USPs

Finding a USP, or Unique Selling Point, is an important aspect of differentiation. Almost anything could be a USP, and what you choose should relate back to the image your brand projects. 

For example, if you have positioned your brand as one that frequently donates to a particular charity, your product’s USP could be that a portion of all proceeds goes directly to that charity. 

Conclusion

Understanding how various types of differentiation can enhance your brand’s marketing success is a crucial learning point for every company. Measuring your current customers’ perceptions of your products, how they react to implemented changes, and modifying your strategies based on those measurements can assist your marketing team in positioning your brand for success.

 

Visit the Kissmetrics blog for more information on differentiation and market positioning. 

 

Sources:

Differentiation Strategy: Definition, Benefits and Creation | Indeed

What is Premium Pricing Strategy? | Chron.com

6 Ways to Differentiate Your Business from the Competition | Marketresearch.com

 

 

 

 

Improving your website’s user experience (UX) is paramount when it comes to making a good impression on potential and existing users. Even if you have brick-and-mortar stores, most people are moving their shopping online, and you want to keep their business.

Kissmetrics breaks down why website UX is vital, and how to measure and improve it. 

Why Website UX Is Important

More people are shopping for products online or subscribing to online services in the digital age. So, even if you have the best products in the world, no one will ever know unless they can find their way to your checkout page and convert.

In order to get your customers there, you have to give them what they want. And what they want is an appealing, functional website, intuitive navigation, clear information and clear call-to-actions. In short, they want you to guide them through the experience. 

Anything less and  visitors will never make it to your purchase page. 

Types of Metrics Used to Measure UX

There are a variety of ways to measure user behavior and how they experience your website. 

These metrics can be measured and compiled into reports using a digital analytics tool. The following sections list nine of the primary metrics used by businesses across all industries to measure their UX. 

Journey Mapping

Mapping your users’ journey throughout your website can lead to essential insights about where your content is working and where it falls short. Seeing what pages they visit and where their sticking points are can help you refine your sales funnel. It can also show you how far through the funnel potential users get before dropping out. 

When you see where visitors drop out, you can focus on fixing what’s wrong at that specific stage of the journey. Maybe our account registration is too complex to navigate or you’re missing a call-to-action. Maybe the page took too long to load. You can only fix these problems if you know which pages your visitors are seeing.

User Churn Rate

User churn rate measures the number of users who stop using your products or services in a given period. It gives you insight into user satisfaction and indicates whether there is a problem with the product that needs fixing. In the short-term, it provides an idea of how much money you’ll need to spend attracting new users. 

Keep in mind that a high user churn rate is not uncommon in certain industries. 

User Retention Rate

The user retention rate is the opposite of the user churn rate and measures the percentage of users who stick with your service. The higher your user retention rate, the less you’ll have to spend on customer acquisition costs (CAC). 

Statistically speaking, it’s almost always less expensive to keep existing users than it is to attract new ones. 

Conversion Rates

Once you attract visitors to your website, the real work begins. Visiting doesn’t automatically mean that someone  converts. 

Conversion rates measure the visitors to your website who proceed through the sales funnel and eventually complete desired events like: signing up, providing their email, watching a video, or completing a purchase. The majority of visitors may not complete any events or convert, but you can use the data you collect to optimize your site so that more of them do.. 

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value, or CLV, measures how much money a single user is expected to spend on your products throughout their entire relationship with your company. This can be calculated by assuming that the user continuously stays loyal to your company and purchases new models or updates to your product at specified intervals. Those intervals will vary based on the products you offer.

For example, you could expect a customer to buy new clothes much more frequently than you would expect them to purchase new cars. 

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The net promoter score, or NPS, measures which users are most likely to recommend your company to their friends and family. Those who are likely to recommend you are classified as promoters and people who will actively speak against your company are classified as detractors. 

Ideally, your percentage of promoters will outweigh your detractors. 

Unlike other metrics, NPS is measured by surveying users directly, meaning their responses may be biased. A user might respond negatively if they’ve had a bad day, regardless of how they normally feel about your product. 

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Customer effort score, or CES, is a similar survey to NPS and measures how satisfied your users are with their experience on your website or within your product. Instead of asking how likely they are to recommend your product(s), it asks how easy they found your service, website or product to use. 

If possible, you want to minimize the required user effort as much as you can since people prefer to use simple and straightforward products.

Average Response Time

If your company or website offers any kind of customer success or support, this is a crucial metric. Whether users are ordering products through an e-commerce website or struggling to install software, they will likely want to speak to a representative. 

This can happen through an email, live chat, text, or phone call. Average response time measures how long customers have to wait before they get a response. 

Average Resolution Time

Similar to the average response time, the average resolution time measures how long it takes for a user or customer’s issue to be resolved. A resolution doesn’t necessarily mean a fix since they might be contacting your company with a question or complaint that is out of a representative’s control. Still, the faster your team can resolve the issue or answer their questions, the happier the user or customer will be. 

How To Improve Website UX

Improving your website’s UX comes down to a few basic ideas: 

• Know your target audience.
• Format the right design.
• Speed up the process of page navigation.
• Add key touchpoints.

Understand Your Audience

The first step to understanding your target audience is to install a  behavioral analytics tool like Kissmetrics on your website. By analyzing the data you collect,, you can segment out your users based on the actions they take.  You’ll be able to create user personas and predict their needs and wants based on factors like average age, location, annual income, household size, previous purchases, features used and other data.

When you know who your users are, it’s easier to improve your products and give them what they want. 

Improve Page Speed

A user’s page speed may not always be in your control, but you should make every effort to get your website running smoothly and speedily whenever possible. In this modern age, users have very little patience for slow, clunky websites, and even a few seconds of waiting for a page to load can cause them to leave the page. 

Google also considers page loading time when assigning rankings to websites, so if your page is slow to load, even the best SEO content won’t feature very high on the list. 

Consider The Layout and Design

The design of your website is the first thing your visitors see, and you want to strike a balance between exciting and sleek. Too much information or graphics can overwhelm the visitor and distract them, whereas too little can bore them. 

You also want to make navigation straightforward so they’ll easily find what they’re looking for. 

Simplifying your formatting using any top eCommerce website builders isn’t just about making your website sleeker and more aesthetically appealing. It can also decrease loading time. The majority of your page’s loading time comes from making HTTP requests for each element on the webpage. These elements come from fancy graphics, fonts, styles, icons, and other scripts.

Add Key Touch Points

Key touchpoints are the instructions or tips your users need to understand your products, how they work, and get to know your company. These key touchpoints are areas of interaction between your users and your company. 

Key touchpoints can include:

• Online advertisements,
• Social media posts, 
• Chatting with user representatives, 
• Product reviews,
• Feedback surveys.

The more interaction visitors can have with your company, the more you can develop their loyalty and investment. By demonstrating that you care about them, your company turns into a friendly presence instead of a faceless corporate entity. 

With the right key touchpoints, you can increase your conversion rate and keep existing users from churning to your competitors. 

Conclusion

UX is constantly in flux so monitoring the metrics listed above over time is the best way to quantifiably measure and improve experiences. With granular data at your fingertips, you can see how users react to changes in your website and tweak issues proactively instead of waiting for them to affect revenue.

Visit Kissmetrics for more information on measuring UX and improving your website.

 

Sources:

Key Product Management Metrics and KPIs | Altexsoft.com

User Effort Score | Questionpro.com

20 Ways to Speed Up Your Website – and Improve Conversion by 7% | Crazy Egg

 

 

 

 

Improving your website’s traffic is essential for building a wider audience for your company. Every successful company nowadays spends time and money measuring various engagement metrics to understand their customers’ behavior better and make their online content more meaningful.

Kissmetrics breaks down how to measure user engagement and which metrics give you the necessary information to improve your search rankings. 

How Do You Measure Engagement?

Product analytics and marketing tools measure user engagement by tracking their activities within your website and product. This software can track IP addresses to see how often users visit your website, which pages they view, how long they spend on each page, and many other aspects of their interaction.

What Is an Engagement Metric?

An engagement metric is any kind of measurement of user interaction with your company’s website or product. 

Which Engagement Metrics Will Help Improve My Search?

While there are many different engagement metrics to choose from, the following sections list the six most popular engagement metrics that add real value. 

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who ‘bounce’ away from your website after reading the contents of a single page. Essentially, this bounce rate measures people who read your blog and then decide not to check out more pages on your website or who arrive at your home page and realize that this wasn’t what they were looking for.  

How Do I Track Bounce Rate?

Your bounce rate can be tracked by analytics software. The equation for figuring out your bounce rate is to divide the total number of visitors who come to a page and then navigate away from your website without visiting another page by the total number of visits to your site.

How Can I Improve My Bounce Rate?

Visitors can bounce for several reasons, some of which you’ll have no control over. For example, if visitors are looking for a definition or explanation of a term, they will read the information you’ve presented and then move on. 

Visitors often bounce because your website didn’t provide exciting content that kept them wanting more. Or because the UI/UX was confusing or cumbersome. You can improve your bounce rate by ensuring that all pages are of high quality. 

Why Bounce Rate Isn’t Actionable

While it’s tempting to leave it at, “I need to decrease my bounce rate,” bounce rate by itself doesn’t give you detailed information. In order to utilize bounce rate, you’ll need information provided by other metrics. For instance, bounce rate doesn’t tell you why visitors are leaving. You would have to dig further into those reasons.

Pages Per Session

Pages per session are the number of different landing pages on your website that a single user visited during their session. 

How Do I Track Pages Per Session?

Your pages per session can be tracked by analytics software like Kissmetrics in a cohort report by entering the event parameters. 

The first event will be visiting a page on your website, and the second event will be visiting another page within your website. Your report will show the number of users who fulfilled both of those parameters, as well as the number of pages they viewed. 

How Can I Improve My Pages Per Session?

The best ways to improve pages per session is to make the content relevant and helpful to your audience and make your navigation clear. Conducting audience surveys and charting the user’s journey gives you clues about what type of content your audience would like to see and how it should be formatted. It’ll also tell you where users and visitors get stuck.

Another idea is to include clickable links on every page to make it easy for customers to find similar content or purchasable items. 

Page Depth

Page depth is a measure of how far into the process of purchasing your visitor is. For example, your website’s home page would be considered ‘shallow.’ 

In contrast, the page where the customer enters their credit card number to check out would be regarded as ‘deep.’ The idea is to follow the customer through their journey and to measure how far along your customer journey they travel. 

How Can I Improve My Page Depth?

A page’s depth should dictate how you format it so that it best appeals to customers based on where they are in their customer journey. 

Customers farther along, or deeper in, would likely want more detailed information, whereas you would want to use high-level information on shallower pages. Tailoring pages enhances the customer experience. 

You might also want to evaluate the checkout process if you see a lot of customers dropping out at that point.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate measures how many website visitors complete a set goal. For example, your desired goal may be for visitors to register as account members or purchase products. The conversion rate shows you how much of your website traffic reaches your intended goal. 

How Do I Measure Conversion Rate?

You’ll measure your conversion rate by dividing the number of completed conversions by the number of visitors to your site in a time period and then multiplying that by 100. This gives you a percentage of visitors who completed your conversion goal. 

For instance, let’s say you had 352 conversions last month and 1,582 total visitors. You’d take:

352 ÷ 1,582 = 0.2225 × 100 = 22.25% conversion rate.

So for the month, you had a 22.25% conversion rate.

How Can I Improve My Conversion Rate?

Depending on what you’re selling, your conversion rate may be affected by various factors. However, there is one factor that all companies have in common, regardless of industry: value. For customers to purchase your products or services, you must demonstrate that they can trust you will provide the best value to their lives or businesses. 

Your company can accomplish this by offering positive testimonials on your website or showing well-known companies who use your services. 

Returning Visitors

As the name implies, returning visitors are your visitors who decide to come back for more within a given period. Visitors may return to learn more about your services on an offer, purchase products, or read more informational articles in your website’s blog. Whatever the reason, returning visitors are invested in your company, and that’s a good start.

How Do I Track Returning Visitors?

The same cohort report mentioned for tracking pages per session can also track returning visitors by entering the timeframe and letting the software monitor the visits from individual IP addresses. 

The report should tell you how many people returned to your website and how many times they came back during that time. 

How Can I Increase My Returning Visitors?

Everyone likes to feel personally catered to, so customizing your pages is one great way to increase returning visitors. 

Little details that are helpful to the customer, such as showing their previously viewed products, your similar products, or linking to content related to their browsing history, can increase the number of visitors who use your website again. 

Time on Page

Time on page measures the amount of time (per session) in minutes or hours that a user spends on a specific page. This metric can help you determine if a page is helpful, or inversely, may be causing an issue in your customer’s journey.

What Counts as a Session?

A session is just the amount of time that they spend actively navigating around your website. During a session, a user may only view a single page, or they may go through multiple pages on your website. 

How Do I Track Time on Page?

Once you have determined which pages have the highest times, you analyze those pages for more details. Keep in mind that not every page should have a high time spent. For example, purchasing pages or pages where customers enter payment information should have low time spent, or customers may become frustrated with the complex process. 

Why Time on Page Isn’t Always Accurate

Although time on page can be a useful metric, it isn’t always the most accurate. When people leave a page open and switch to another tab, they aren’t consuming your content and still technically spending time on the page. 

Similarly, if they leave the page open while they take a break and do something else, it can skew your analysis. 

Conclusion

Comprehensive reports showing user engagement metrics are just the first step. By understanding the needs of your target audience, you can change your website landing pages to reflect better what your audience wants to know and interact with. 

It’s essential to measure your website’s user engagement to understand whether your website and landing pages make the most of the visitors’ attention. Before you can add value to your company and website, you must know what the people want. 

Kissmetrics provides the analyses and reports you need to measure customer engagement with your company’s website. Contact us today.

 

Sources:

5 Engagement Metrics That’ll Help Improve Your Search Rankings | Neilpatel.com

Average page depth | Adobe Analytics | Adobe.com

What is ‘Pages Per Session’ in Google Analytics & How Do I Increase It? | Databox.com

 

 

 

Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are used to measure various aspects of your products and the users who use them. Every company has business objectives and needs accurate data to measure where they are successful and where they’ve fallen short.

Kissmetrics breaks down what KPIs are, how to choose the right ones for your company, the top metrics to track, and how you can leverage the information they provide.

What is a KPI?

A KPI is any quantifiable method of evaluating a product, service, user, employee, or business. In order to evaluate your current KPIs, you need to track multiple metrics. Metrics are objective measurements (i.e. data) of certain aspects of your business like revenue and churn  that you can meaningfully compare against other results. So KPIs are the indicators aligned with your business objectives (i.e. the big broad idea) and metrics are the smaller components (i.e. the details) that add up to the KPIs. 

You can use metrics to monitor your KPIs and see whether your current strategies are successful. Metrics can measure anything, but KPIs measure your success. 

How is KPI Calculated?

Robust product analytics tools like Kissmetrics calculate your KPIs for you. All you need to do is enter your parameters, set up your event tracking and wait for the data to come in. 

When checking to see how your business’s progress is matching up against your targets, the real-time data from KPIs are plugged into a simple formula. Your current KPI value minus the baseline divided by your target minus the baseline. 

Tracking KPIs in real-time lets your teams react on the spot to effective or not-so effective strategies by watching their progress. 

How do I Know Which KPIs to Track?

Choosing the right KPIs for your company can take multiple steps. You want enough information to get a complete picture of your users and what they value in your products, and you don’t want to be bombarded with numbers and graphs that don’t mean anything. 

Depending on your industry, some KPIs may stand out as more essential than others. However, some KPIs are always relevant, and we’ll be addressing those below. 

What are 3 Essential KPIs for Product Analysis?

While there are many different KPIs available, this article will cover three of the essential KPIs for product analysis. Depending on your company’s industry and the types of products or services on offer, these KPIs may be tweaked or swapped out to achieve your business goals. 

Monthly Recurring Revenue

One of the basic measurements is monthly recurring revenue or MRR. It determines how much money your business brings in monthly by totaling the amounts from goods and services sold. It’s an essential KPI for SaaS companies offering subscriptions to see if customers are returning or churning. 

Revenue doesn’t take expenses into account, but it does give you information about whether your product is selling. 

Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures how much money your company spends to attract a new user. Most businesses find that attracting new users is more expensive than retaining existing users, but if you want your business to grow, you’ll need to broaden your user base.

This metric incorporates costs from advertisements, employing a marketing team, employing a sales team, and any additional creative costs. To understand the budget for your customer acquisition costs, you’ll need to calculate the following KPI: customer lifetime value.

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value, or CLV, estimates how much a single customer will contribute financially to your company throughout their purchasing life. In an ideal world, your product or service would be something that a customer would go on buying for the rest of their life. Since that rarely happens, CLV calculates how long the customer is expected, on average, to buy your product.

This KPI demonstrates the average amount of spending from one customer prior to ending their subscription or discontinuing their business. It directly ties in to the customer acquisition costs because if you know what a single customer is projected to contribute, you can calculate the maximum amount of CAC while still retaining a profit. 

What are Common Biases I Should Look Out for When Measuring KPIs?

It’s important to remember that KPIs are only as valuable as your interpretations of the data. Humans are complicated beings, and their behavior is difficult to simplify into nice, concrete numbers. That’s why it’s essential to account for common biases when your company releases a new product or service. 

Early Adopters

One bias to watch out for when you release a new version or product is that of the early adopters. Early adopters are often people who are devoted to your company and have committed to snapping up everything you put out. 

While these users are a valuable part of your user base, their enthusiasm can throw off your measurements.

Since you can’t base your assumptions about most of your users around the loyalty of your top fans, you will need to measure how soon users begin adopting your update or separate old users from new users. 

Novelty

People love new things, right? When you release the latest and greatest gadget or feature, plenty of people will flock to the new technology. As a result, your KPIs for the first few days or weeks will likely skyrocket with a new release but then take a sharp dip immediately after. That doesn’t mean that people suddenly dislike your product.

Humans are naturally curious, and many will try something just to see what it is. But, unfortunately, that doesn’t tell you anything about whether or not they value the enhancements to your product.  

Some find the new product or feature valuable enough to incorporate into their lives, but most enjoy the novelty and then forget about it when the next big thing hits the shelves.

Default Settings

You may have noticed many users tend to stick with default settings. Accordingly, if you implement different default settings, your KPIs might show how users interact with your product in new ways.

Default settings can be a good thing and a bad thing. Giving users automatic options to interact with your products may be the inspiration they need to see how the product adds value to their lives. Alternatively, they may not like the default settings and stop using the product altogether. 

When you give users a default, instead of allowing customization from the get-go, you’ll notice that many users either don’t know enough to change their settings to other options or don’t want to put in the effort. Don’t let your KPIs trick you into thinking that people have suddenly changed how they use your product, though.

How Can I Reach My KPI Targets?

Your company’s KPI targets may need to be adjusted to incorporate realistic expectations depending on your industry. However, by continually measuring your KPIs, you can understand what your users want and modify your products to reach those goals. KPIs are constantly in flux because your company is growing and changing to meet customer demands.

It’s also important to note that not every KPI will be successful. Ideally, you’d meet and exceed all of your goals, but sometimes that isn’t the case. If you are having trouble meeting a KPI, that’s an area for you to hone in on and look for ways to improve. What’s stopping you from reaching the target? Is it something within your control? 

How Can Tracking KPIs Make My Product Better?

KPIs provide relevant insights for companies to improve their products by measuring how well your brand is living up to your goals. When you create realistic KPIs, you can watch to see if your actions are pushing you closer to success by achieving your KPIs, how quickly you’re succeeding, or if you need to rethink your strategies. 

With the real-time information about your success in tracked initiatives, you can make data-driven decisions to benefit your company and make your product better. Plus, you can ensure that your product continues to improve by setting and updating benchmarks so you never become stagnant.

Tracking KPIs also helps you find areas in need of improvement so that you can make those fixes for an overall better product. 

Conclusion

Knowing which KPIs to monitor is a crucial part of achieving your business goals. While all quantifiable metrics provide information, it’s essential to choose measurements that you can leverage to add value to your company. Otherwise, the data pouring in can become overwhelming and worthless. 

Visit Kissmetrics for more information on measuring KPIs to reach your business goals. 

 

Sources:

The Role of Analytics | SVPG.com

Feb 22, 2019, 15 Key Product Management Metrics and KPIs | Altexsoft.com

Customer Acquisition Cost: How to Calculate, Reduce & Improve It | Neilpatel.com