Why You Need Clickstream Data. And How You Should Use It
Almost everyone in online retail knows about clickstream tracking. Many companies utilize click tracking on their sites. However much of it is either not utilized or under-utilized as a tool to improve the customer shopping experience. When clickstream data is analyzed, it is typically to understand usage patterns or the types of customers visiting the site. Recently, e-retailers have begun using clickstream data to serve up improved content choices to its visitors–think of the “You May Also Like” or “Customers Who Viewed _____ also Viewed_____” widgets found on many websites today.
All these current uses are beneficial to the company and its customers. The usage patterns can help inform a better path design to improve the customer experience. The new content widgets provide improved relevancy to the customer, also improving their shopping experience.
However, clickstream tracking can deliver even more value when combined with other customer data, including their transactions, email interactions, mobile and social information, CRM data and so on. When you combine click data with other data you have about your customer, you go from delivering potentially relevant content to delivering hyper-personalized communications. When you use hyper-personalized messages–what they want, when they want it, where they want it–to communicate with your customers, they are more engaged, more loyal and give you more of their business.
So why don’t brands use their click tracking data in this manner? Below are a few reasons:
- Many brands use companies whose clickstream tracking is just too complicated to make real-time decisions.
- Even when they have easy access to their clickstream data, companies are not sure how to combine that data with other customer data.
- Using clickstream data as outlined above is just another “to-do” in a long list of “to-dos” marketers and IT departments have.
Do you use clickstream data? Have you found what works and what doesn’t? Please let us know in the comments below.
