How Analytics Impact Our Online Experience

Across business sectors, the need for digital transformation accelerated throughout the pandemic, permanently changing consumer behavior. Businesses now need to offer their services online or risk losing revenue and customers. A seamless digital customer experience has become the key to driving conversions and boosting brand loyalty.

Businesses need to understand how customers are interacting on their digital platforms (websites and apps) in real-time, and immediately address points of friction. I recently spoke with Yaron Morgenstern, CEO of Glassbox, about how companies use digital experience analytics platforms to optimize digital journeys and make customers happy.

Gary Drenik: Tell us about Glassbox and how you work with companies to create frictionless digital experiences that boost customer experience.

Yaron Morgenstern: Glassbox is a leading digital experience analytics platform for web and mobile applications. We enable companies to create incredible, frictionless digital journeys for their customers, with an emphasis on identifying opportunities to enhance the customer experience. We provide analytics and insights for over one trillion digital customer journeys annually for some of the world’s best-known brands, including Air Canada, SoFi, Asics, and Samsonite.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, our holistic platform captures and analyzes millions of customer data points, offering real-time actionable insights and end-to-end visibility of the customer journey. If there is a technical glitch or a customer behavior anomaly, the platform will instantly alert the affected company’s teams. This radically reduces response times, allowing teams to resolve issues before they significantly impact revenue or customer experience. Leveraging digital experience analytics insights, brands can better understand their customers, tailoring the digital experience to suit consumer needs, which in turn drives success and business growth.

Drenik: Glassbox has investigated the ways in which web and mobile app analytics impact customer experience, brand loyalty and revenue. Can you tell us more about this?

Morgenstern: We have seen firsthand the ways in which digital experience analytics (DEA) directly impacts and shapes customer journeys. Without DEA, businesses may not be aware when technical errors are impacting their website or app. Glitches, broken links and slow load times have a notable negative impact on customer experience, leading to cart/site abandonment and damaging brand reputation. 30% of users will abandon in-app purchases if performance is sluggish. DEA insights allow brands to maintain digital platform performance and empowers businesses to have total confidence in the strength of their user experience. There is a direct correlation between customer experience, revenue and brand loyalty.

The end-to-end visibility that digital experience analytics offers is also crucial for a business’s understanding of the full customer journey. According to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics Survey, many consumers are using their smartphones for all parts of their online retail experience. 56% of survey respondents 18+ browse/look for a product/service using their smartphone, 40.4% comparison shop/check prices on their smartphone, 46.7% use their smartphone for making a purchase, and 17.7% use their phone to write a customer review post-purchase. Often, businesses focus too heavily on the end of the journey– the purchase or conversion– but this leaves out crucial information about what led the customer to click ‘buy.’

Drenik: The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of many businesses, as they had to rapidly move products and services online. What recommendations do you have for businesses looking to improve their digital customer experience?

Morgenstern: Before anything else, businesses must understand their audience. Customers expect a digital experience that is personalized and meets their evolving demands. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach. Every decision business leaders make about the digital experience should be informed by their deep knowledge of customer needs and preferences. Capturing and analyzing 100% of customer interactions on digital platforms is a must.

In addition, business leaders should work to remove organizational silos that might be preventing them from seeing the full picture. Most customers use multiple devices to interact with a business, with mobile device reliance on the rise. The Prosper Insights & Analytics Survey I mentioned earlier revealed that 54.8% of consumers ages 18-34 and 44.4% of respondents between 35 and 54 use their smartphone for “all functions”, self-reporting “It’s my life.” If a business’s approach to digital customer experience does not involve a mobile-first and/or omni-channel approach, they lose a significant competitive edge.

Drenik: What consequences do businesses face if they do not leverage analytics insights to optimize digital customer journeys?

Morgenstern: There are serious and immediate consequences to not addressing technical glitches and errors in a timely manner. Without specific insights into the source of the problem, they could stand to lose millions of dollars, not to mention the long-term impact a poor experience has on customer retention.

Alternatively, businesses could miss out on exciting growth opportunities if they are not leveraging digital experience insights. DEA tools identify what features, products or services are in high demand and/or have revenue-driving potential.

On an operational level, DEA insights improve efficiency and enhance cross-departmental collaboration by providing AI-determined priorities. Digital experience platforms can calculate how issues or features impact KPIs (i.e., revenue, conversion rates, cart abandonment), making it clear where brands should prioritize resources, and what might happen if they do not.

Drenik: What are the top customer pain points that business leaders and marketers must look out for when developing, maintaining, and enhancing their digital platforms?

Morgenstern: The top pain points customers experience when navigating digital platforms, as revealed in our 2021 Digital Experience Intelligence Report, include excessive pop-ups, slow page load times, difficult to navigate website/app, high additional costs (taxes, shipping, etc.), technical errors/website performance, and forced account creation. Marketers and business leaders must remove or minimize all these to maximize the success of digital platforms.

Security and privacy are also key considerations in customer experience maintenance, as regulations tighten and customers publicly voice concerns about how their personal information is being used. The aforementioned survey, from Prosper Insights & Analytics, found that consumers are actively taking steps to protect their digital/online privacy. 47.6% of respondents 18+ have denied permissions of mobile apps tracking, 34.8% have turned on private browsing, and 31% have changed social media privacy settings. In response to these shifting preferences, digital platforms will soon need to center customer journeys on privacy, consent, and security.

Drenik: What industries or sectors could most benefit from incorporating digital experience analytics into their business strategy?

Morgenstern: Given the pandemic-fueled growth of e-commerce, the retail industry is the top user of digital experience analytics platforms. The travel industry is close behind, due to the frequent traffic they receive. However, the insurance and health industries, which have historically been slow to adapt to new technologies, are the fastest growing verticals within digital experience analytics. Those sectors are undergoing digital transformation to meet customer/patient demand.

Any business with an online/digital presence can benefit from integrating digital experience analytics and adopting a customer-centric mindset, regardless of industry. The global digital experience platform market size is expected to reach $22.9 billion by 2028.

Drenik: Thanks, Yaron, for your insights on Glassbox, the impact of digital experience analytics of customer journeys, digital transformation recommendations, top customer pain points, and the universal benefit of experience analytics integration.