Qualitative Tools: Understand ‘how’ your users are behaving

After identifying where the opportunity is, use these tools to learn more about specific steps in the funnel.

FullStory: Watch real people use your website

Conversion funnel in mind, watch how people navigate your product. Understand what they do and don’t read, what they do and don’t click on, what may be confusing and cause them to scroll back.

Although large-scale data collection is invaluable, there’s no replacement for seeing how individual users navigate through your site or app.

I’ve easily watched 50+ hours of user sessions on FullStory, and been all the better for it.

FullStory Example: We wanted to improve Temi’s landing page. Our goal was to increase the number of people who placed a trial order.

After watching hundreds of FullStory sessions, I learned that many people were confused by the navigation of the page and thought that the information they were looking for lived in other parts of the site. The biggest question they had was about the quality of the automated service for their audio file, and we were not doing a great job of informing them of our high-quality offering. Because of this, visitors were searching for FAQs and examples.

To remedy, we simplified the navigation and put the key information where customers needed it most, above the fold on the landing page. We did this through copy ‘Higher quality audio improves results’ and through a pop-up interaction once they clicked the main button to upload files.

Old Temi Page: Overwhelming Navigation and no mention of Transcript Quality

New Temi Page: Simplified Header and mentioning Transcript Quality

It worked. We increased the number of visitors submitting trials by 33%.

AppSee: FullStory for mobile apps

FullStory is an incredible product, but they do not work for mobile apps. We use AppSee for apps because it offers high caliber qualitative app analytics..

AppSee also has touch heatmaps and crash reporting, which are vital for improving app usability and retention.

Intercom: Talk with people in real-time

Chat tools on websites and products are changing the internet for the better. Intercom is our tool of choice (besides Drift, Zendesk, LiveChat) due to their incredible focus on the customer and being able to tie in with support.

Intercom greatly reduces the barrier to speaking directly with your customers and gain insights from them. Additionally, you get to speak with them while they are engaged and on your website.

Put Intercom everywhere you can, especially on your main pages to interact with the greatest number of customers.

Handle the requests yourself, do not immediately offload to support

Look for ways to address common questions and requests in the product

Intercom Example: We wanted to improve Rev’s landing page. Our goal was to increase the number of people who bought from us.

We added Intercom to the page and I proceeded to chat with thousands of potential customers over the next couple of months, eventually needing to bring in our support team to handle the workload. Through these interactions, I learned the key information that they were looking and where the page was lacking.

After turning the key information into landing page content and testing with Validately (see below) to ensure the content served our purpose, we used Google Optimize to A/B test the new changes.

It worked. We increased the number of customers from landing pages by 60%.

Validately: Remote user testing

Before making live changes to your product, which is expensive in terms of engineering, time, and effort, you want to make sure your tests will accurately prove or disprove your hypothesis.

It is cheaper, easier, and faster to figure this out before pushing live code.

You can accomplish this with user testing, both in-person and remote. We do both. Our remote tool of choice, for both moderated and unmoderated testing, is Validately.

Validately lets you remotely test with your own customers or they will find some for you at $15 per tester.

Test with your core audience (by filtering tester demographics), not random people who would never use your product.

Get seven testers, which amounts to $105 per test. It is a small cost that is best paid up-front vs the extreme cost of a non-conclusive test.

Push on any doubts or questions you have about the test.

Do not get tricked into trusting the quantitative feedback with this small sample size.

Validately Example: We wanted to improve Temi’s landing page. Our goal was to increase the number of people who placed a trial order.

Based on learnings from FullStory, we knew people were searching for information elsewhere on the site and wanted to bring it all to the homepage.

We wanted to know that calling out audio quality on the homepage and changing the headline to more specifically describe the service would help visitors understand our service offering and address their concerns. We put up an unmoderated test for people who fit our target demographic and asked key questions:

What are your first impressions?

What stands out to you?

Who is page this for?

What can you do from this page?

After watching the sessions, we were satisfied that the new header and headline would do a better job of explaining audio quality

It worked. We decided to move forward with the test that increased the number of visitors submitting trials by 33%.

Summary

These tools will help you identify areas of opportunity and track the progress your team is making to improve the customer experience.

Disclaimers: