How do you measure Customer Engagement on an eCommerce Site?

The way your customers behave while using your site can tell you a lot about how you are performing. An understanding of customer engagement and, therefore, what is going right is always good to know. But you’ll learn a whole lot more by identifying where you’re going wrong.

Effective customer engagement is so important and will put you ahead of your competitors. But only if you’re doing it right. Understanding your customers, putting them into segments, and providing a high level of personalisation is the way to success.

It all comes down to figuring out where changes need to be made and then implementing them to create a positive customer experience. Your future success depends on your ability to answer the question “why” when it comes to measuring customer engagement.

The Importance of Measuring Customer Engagement 

Every action you take in your business should be consistently measured and assessed. It is no different when it comes to customer engagement. By tracking your engagement levels, you can discover ways to improve the customer experience while also keeping churn low.

Setting Customer Centric Goals

Your engagement metrics will help you understand the value that your customers receive from interacting with you. The success of your engagement campaigns depends on how you set your goals while keeping your customers in mind.

Your customer has a choice to make when it comes to shopping. They could easily go to one of your competitors. However, you make their decision much easier by being customer-centric and succeeding in your customer engagement initiatives. 75% of consumers claim they would be willing to spend more with a brand that provides really good quality experiences. 

Customer engagement should be based on the needs, wants, and preferences of the customer. Measuring your engagement levels will help you identify any potential problems.

Improving the Customer Experience

You can learn what your customers value or find most interesting by measuring their level of engagement. It might come down to specific items or deals you’re offering.

When you understand this, you can start to segment your customers and provide a more personalised experience. Businesses have benefited from using a customer data platform for this purpose, and they continue to do so.

When it comes to giving customers the best experience possible, customization reigns supreme. At this point, one would assume that businesses have this nailed. However, 36% of customers believe that businesses could do more when it comes to customer engagement.

Use the data you have to understand your level of engagement and make adjustments where necessary if you want to outperform your rivals.

What to measure

Conversion Rate

When it comes to any website, the conversion rate is one of the most crucial metrics to measure. It doesn’t matter what you consider your conversions to be (purchases, deposits, newsletter sign ups etc). If your rate of conversion is low, then odds are the rate of engagement is too.

How engaged your customers are with your business is directly related to your conversion rate. Someone must recognise the benefits of making a purchase from your website before they will follow any steps.

You have to engage them all the way through until the conversion is complete. Your conversion rate and, ultimately, your revenue, will remain low if you don’t know how to engage customers.

Website Activity 

Analysing how your customers are interacting with your website is simple enough to understand and doesn’t require the use of a customer data platform.

You can monitor what your customers are doing and where they spend their time using a straightforward tool like Google Analytics. A couple of metrics can be examined to gauge customer engagement.

The number of pages they visit during a session is a reliable indicator of how they use your website. Understanding the average customer journey can aid you in creating a better user experience along that journey. You can improve the process along the way to boost conversion rates.

The average amount of time spent on each page can have similar advantages. You want your visitors to spend time on a page if you’re trying to motivate them to complete a particular goal. If that number is low then you would want to consider changing that page in order to make it more engaging.

A good way to tell if your website is engaging or not is by looking at how long people spend on it overall. Low time spent or a high bounce rate are indicators that your website may not be well optimised.

Net Promoter Score

Your Net Promoter Score (NPS), which you should monitor, will help you gauge customer interaction and trust in your service. Additionally, it can help you determine how loyal they are to you.

An online customer survey is the most common method of collecting data for your NPS. There are typically two questions in this survey:

• The first is often asking your customer to rate your product or service from 1-10.
• The second question follows on from the first, asking them why they gave you such a rating.

Of course, these questions can be tailored for your business. But they will more than likely be similar to the ones above.

Customers can be very truthful when providing this feedback. Your loyalty and customer engagement rates will significantly increase if you understand and implement their feedback.

A feedback loop so customers know what action you’ve taken can help to strengthen the relationship.

Social Media Interactions

Social media is an excellent tool for spreading brand awareness, advertising special deals, and cultivating a community of loyal followers.

It’s not too difficult to monitor your social media engagement. Things you should be looking at include:

• Likes, shares, and comments on your posts
• Other people’s posts that have mentioned your brand
• Clicks on your posts/videos
• Your amount of followers/subscribers (and your following/follower ratio)
• Traffic to your website from those sources

Event Actions

Customer engagement doesn’t only happen before visitors get to your website. Most of it is completed while they are browsing your site. If your website isn’t interesting, visitors will probably get bored and go somewhere else.

It’s not difficult to gauge the level of engagement on your website. You can guide your customers towards completing a variety of onsite goals to gauge your performance. You can gain a better understanding of where and how your customers use your website by using a customer data platform.

Using videos on your website is a good way to keep visitors interested. 87% of marketers have discovered that using videos has resulted in positive ROI. Particularly, 81% of respondents claimed it had a direct, positive effect on their level of sales. Additionally, it has helped a high number of customers better understand their product.

Gathering customer data by including some sort of form throughout your website is a good way to both:

• Understand the level of engagement and value your customers currently have for your business.
• Set yourself up for successful customer communication campaigns for the future. 

The likelihood that customer engagement is high with your business is if they are willing to give you access to their data. Additionally, this information aids future engagement in the form of more individualised campaigns.

Monthly Active Users vs Daily Active Users

Metrics for user activity can be divided in two ways. They are both pretty self explanatory:

• Daily Active Users (DAU). These are unique users of your product/service on a daily basis.
• Monthly Active Users (MAU). Those who visit or use your site over a month.

You can gain valuable insight into your customers’ interactions with you over time by analysing both DAU and MAU. They can also further inform your marketing retention efforts.

Don’t Let Up

The most crucial thing is to not leave these measurements alone for an extended period of time. Just because you’ve made some changes doesn’t mean you’re done. You need to make sure you are keeping track consistently.

You can provide the best possible customer experience by continuously understanding how your engagement efforts are performing. Additionally, it will help you outpace your competitors and triumph in a competitive market.

If you want to learn more about making the most of your customer engagement efforts, get in touch with us today to book a demo.