15 seconds. That’s how long 55% of users stay on an unfamiliar Web site before bouncing. Think about that—you spend time, money, and effort to bring people to your site, only for them to vanish in less than a minute. What makes new users leave? What makes other users stay longer? And, most importantly, how can you increase the duration of visits?
The answer to all these questions lies in understanding what users actually do when they land on your Web site. The discipline that lets you gain this understanding is user-behavior tracking, which enables you to figure out what users click, how far they scroll down pages, and the exact point at which they lose interest.
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Why Tracking User Behaviors Matters
Tracking user activity on your Web site helps you accomplish several goals, as follows:
improving the user experience—When you track user behaviors, you can spot exactly what went wrong for visitors who became dissatisfied with your Web site. Was the navigation confusing? Were the pages loading too slowly? By tracking user activity, you can identify such problem areas and smooth out the user journey.
boosting conversions—The sole aim of any Web site is to guide users toward taking action. A conversion could be making a purchase, signing up, or booking a demo. By tracking user journeys, you can understand at what point a user converts and which elements have influenced this decision—for example, button placement or content relevancy.
informing marketing strategies—Behavior tracking reveals what interests your users. By leveraging this data, you can tailor ads, email messages, and content to resonate with individual users—not just your audience as a whole. For instance, if you’re selling YouTube merchandise, tracking which designs or products get the most engagement could help you refine your marketing strategy.
reducing bounce rates—Do visitors often abandon their cart on your Web site? Do they suddenly drop off after navigating to a certain Web page? Tracking user behaviors helps you identify patterns for exits and bounce rates so you can refine your Web site accordingly.
How to Track User Behaviors on a Web Site
There are different ways to track user behaviors on your Web site. It’s best to use a combination of these methods to support an in-depth analysis of user activity.
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Using Web-Analytics Tools
Web-analytics tools collect, measure, and analyze how visitors interact with your Web site. These tools help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and where you must improve your site. There are five powerful Web-analytics tools that you can use.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics, which is shown in Figure 1, tracks Web-site traffic, providing detailed reports on user flows, bounce rates, session durations, and conversion paths.
Hotjar, shown in Figure 2, is a behavioral-analytics tool that goes beyond mere numbers. You can use its heatmaps to understand where users click, move, and scroll, and identify friction points.
Crazy Egg, shown in Figure 3, is similar to Hotjar, but focuses more on A/B testing and heatmaps. It lets you test different page layouts and optimize elements such as buttons and calls to action (CTAs).
Mouseflow, shown in Figure 4, offers session replays, form analytics, and funnel tracking. It’s useful for spotting where users hesitate or get stuck and improving ecommerce conversions.
Coupler.io, shown in Figure 5, integrates data from Google Analytics and other platforms into business-intelligence (BI) tools and spreadsheets. It helps you track traffic, user behaviors, and conversions, while enabling you to use Power BI dashboard templates or create custom reports for Web insights.
“Tracking every single metric leads to analysis paralysis. It’s best to focus on the most impactful metrics—the ones that actually show how users engage with your site.”—Vineet Gupta, Founder of 2xSaS
Key metrics to track include the following:
page views—This data shows how many times a page has loaded. Lots of views could mean popular content, but if there’s no engagement, chances are users are opening the page, but aren’t finding what they need.
bounce rates—This is the percentage of visitors who leave a site after viewing just a single page. For example, Canva statistics show that the site has a 29% bounce rate, which indicates a well-designed, engaging site. On the other hand, Wikipedia has a bounce rate of around 60%, which could be a sign of irrelevant content, complex navigation, or slow-loading pages.
time on site—This metric measures how long users stay on a Web site. If the average time on site is too low, users might not be engaged or they might be finding what they need too quickly.
conversion rates—This metric helps you track the percentage of users who complete a desired action such as buying a product or downloading a file. A low conversion rate often points to a confusing user journey or unclear calls to action.
Monitoring Click Behaviors
Web-site clicks can mean different things. While a single click indicates a user who is showing interest, quickly and repeatedly tapping certain elements can indicate user frustration.
Heatmaps can help you understand click behaviors in a simple, visual manner. For instance, in Figure 6, the red spots indicate the most-clicked areas on the Web page, while blue areas are the least-clicked areas.
Scroll depth tells you how far your visitors scroll on a page before dropping off. By tracking scroll depth, you can understand what elements cause users to leave a page. For instance, Figures 7 and 8 show two images from VWO, a scroll-depth tracking tool. In Figure 7, the red color shows the sections most viewed by visitors. The yellow or green colors shows a decline in the number of people who’ve read those sections.
To successfully convert visitors, you must understand how they move between different pages of your Web site—the user journey. Tracking user activity helps you monitor common entry points, top exit pages, and drop-off points. Thus, if a user frequently visits the cart, but drops off on the checkout page, there may be an issue with the payment gateway. In such a scenario, the user journey would look like that shown in Figure 9.
Web forms support crucial steps in signups, checkouts, and lead generation. However, more than 67% of people would drop off midway in a form if completing it seems too complex. Therefore, you must monitor and analyze form interactions to understand what fields users find tricky to fill out, where they hesitate, and where the most errors occur. This analysis enables you to enhance the form experience with correct label placement, clear instructions, and relevant fields. Figure 10 provides an example.
While numbers or metrics are indeed helpful, session recordings like that shown in Figure 11 can show exactly how real users have interacted with your Web site. These recordings reveal minute details such as mouse movements and hesitation points—factors that might otherwise go unnoticed. Tools such as FullStory and Lucky Orange let you watch replays of user sessions. By analyzing these recordings, you can spot issues such as accidental taps and unresponsive buttons.
In A/B or multivariate testing, you create two or more versions of a Web page to assess which version performs better. You split the site traffic equally between the different variants to see which version drives more engagement or sales. In addition to testing CTA buttons, headlines, and images, you can also test your pricing models, checkout flows, and navigation system. Tools such as Google Optimize and VWO, which is shown in Figure 12, can help you conduct A/B tests to understand user behaviors.
Common Challenges of Behavior Tracking and How to Overcome Them
If you’re tracking user behaviors for the first time, you might face some difficulties such as the following:
data overload—An excess of anything is bad—even an excess of data—because, when you’re monitoring too many metrics, the results can be overwhelming. Instead, focus on only those metrics that align with your business goals. For example, if you want to increase signups, monitor form drop-offs and CTA click-through rates.
privacy concerns—Tracking user behaviors requires collecting and storing user data. This can become an issue if you handle personal information incorrectly. Therefore, you must first obtain explicit user consent before tracking the user’s behavior. Cookie banners or opt-in popups are a great way of asking for permission. Second, focus more on analyzing trends rather than tracking individual users and their behaviors. Good practices include running regular audits and following regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
accurately interpreting data—Extracting meaningful insights from raw data can be tough. For example, if you’re tracking bounce rates, it can be tricky to understand exactly which element on a page is not working well. Session recordings can go a long way in providing the context behind the numbers. Plus, A/B tests can validate your assumptions, leading you in the right direction.
Why Tracking User Behaviors Leads to Better Results
The reason behavior tracking facilitates better results is that it indirectly lets you audit both your Web site’s performance and your marketing strategy, enabling you to do the following:
Create more user-friendly Web sites that are easy to use, leading to a more enjoyable online experience.
Optimize the content, features, and CTAs on your website to improve engagement, lead generation, and sales.
Make informed decisions that are backed by concrete data rather than relying on gut instinct or hit-and-miss methods.
Conclusion
One in three customers are willing to spend more for superior service, including a better user experience and engagement online. Therefore, it is crucial that you get into the minds of your users to understand how they perceive your Web site.
To track user activity on your Web site, you must do the following:
Use Web-analytics tools to get real-time insights into user behaviors.
Track page views, bounce rates, time on site, and conversion rates.
Monitor every click users make on your Web site.
Analyze the scroll-depth of important pages.
Understand how users move through your Web site—the user journey.
Assess how users interact with the forms on your Web site.
Record user sessions and watch them to gain a detailed understanding of the user experience of real, individual visitors.
A/B test different versions of your Web pages to see which performs better.
You should invest in the user experience by tracking user behaviors, then adapt your strategy to increase user engagement.
Alex is a content marketing specialist with more than two years of experience. She helps software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses drive organic growth through search-engine optimization (SEO) and data-driven content marketing strategies. Leading publications such as Wordtracker, Breadcrumbs, and Encharge have featured her articles. Read More
