The Importance of Mobile in Digital Customer Analytics

By Audelia Boker, VP Marketing at Glassbox Digital

Let me ask you a question: On average, how many times a day do you think people engage with their mobile device? Shockingly, statistics suggest this could be over 2,600 times per day! It goes without saying that mobile devices have become a prevalent way in which we all engage with service providers and it is essential that these channels garner the same attention and support as all the others.

A vital channel

In some industries, mobile device access to services is already a primary channel. Think about your general interactions with your bank for example. How many times do you check your bank balances or current account per day? I would suspect its more than once, on average.

In this context, if an organisation wants to have a 360-degree view of its customers, and how they are engaging with the service provider (in fact, when and where, as well as how), then it is absolutely crucial to be able to fully analyse mobile and web interactions and transactions in a seamless way.

The importance of being platform and device agnostic

When you consider how vital mobile channels are to any online business, you also need to realise that any digital analytics solution worth its investment needs to be ‘agnostic’ to whichever technology platform the customer chooses to use.

It shouldn’t matter whether your customer chooses to use an Android, Apple or Windows etc. device to access your services, but at the same time your technology needs to be able to recognise which device is being used. This allows you to ensure your entire audience can access your services and products fully, and that you aren’t alienating potential business because of the device customers choose!

It is vital, for instance, to be able to correlate whether specific customer struggles are linked to the use of a particular device or operating system. And although you might be able to identify such a correlation with traditional Web Analytics tools, you can’t always get down to the bottom of the root causes with such systems. Also, you want to be able to identify issues that you’ve been made aware of through other channels. For example, if your customer support team is getting complaints or analytical feedback that an aspect of your online service is seemingly failing or causing issues, it is very helpful to identify if this is linked to a specific platform.

Identifying there is a problem is only half the battle of course – you also need to know why! Traditional web analytics tools may have been able to identify if there was a sales conversion issue with a particular model of device or operating system, but finding the exact reason means you can address the issue directly.

To give you a real-world example, in the past I have seen details of a mobile device channel that was having issues and it turned out that customers were unable to see or use the ‘Continue’ button on some phones with a smaller screen. It was a simple problem to fix, but one which needed the right insights to identify it first.

The way customers individually interact with or view an app, for example, can have a huge effect on your sales funnel. However, short of directly speaking to each individual to find out what the issue was, it would have been very difficult in the past to have truly understood the problem and to have been able to enact a rapid and satisfying fix for the problem.

Similarly, when it comes to mobile devices the quality of the data signal (be that Wi-Fi, 4G or even in 3G) can also have a profound effect on the level of service and the ways in which customers can interact or buy from you successfully. Again, in the past this would have been very difficult to replicate and investigate properly.

Modern mobile analytics

The latest generation of digital session replay technology has made this task very much easier and efficient. By automatically and fully recording the online customer experience and then being able to reconstruct a session replay that is an exact representation of how the customer experienced it, your technical and web support teams can not only identify those affected, but can also see exactly what the issue was. They don’t need to waste time trying to reproduce errors.

The latest digital analytics solutions automatically capture and record anything typed or swiped by the customer. Additionally, anything else related to the session is captured too – be that the IP address, the geographical location and contact details (if the customer has logged in), as well as server-side related metrics; so, the entire digital customer journey and online customer experience can be examined automatically.

Even if a registered customer discontinues a session and then picks it up at a later time (even on another logged in device) all this data can be captured and any issues or trends identified automatically.

Meeting customer expectations

Your customers expect their experience in purchasing from you to be completely seamless, be that from a more traditional PC/laptop or from a mobile device.

Being able to monitor interactions from any platform in exactly the same way, allows you to identify patterns, behaviours or struggles that people are experiencing. You can then ensure that your customers get the best possible service from you in whatever way they choose to access your online portals, easily complete transactions – therefore increase conversions – and eventually remain loyal to your brand.

By Audelia Boker, VP Marketing at Glassbox Digital

Let me ask you a question: On average, how many times a day do you think people engage with their mobile device? Shockingly, statistics suggest this could be over 2,600 times per day! It goes without saying that mobile devices have become a prevalent way in which we all engage with service providers and it is essential that these channels garner the same attention and support as all the others.

A vital channel

In some industries, mobile device access to services is already a primary channel. Think about your general interactions with your bank for example. How many times do you check your bank balances or current account per day? I would suspect its more than once, on average.

In this context, if an organisation wants to have a 360-degree view of its customers, and how they are engaging with the service provider (in fact, when and where, as well as how), then it is absolutely crucial to be able to fully analyse mobile and web interactions and transactions in a seamless way.

The importance of being platform and device agnostic

When you consider how vital mobile channels are to any online business, you also need to realise that any digital analytics solution worth its investment needs to be ‘agnostic’ to whichever technology platform the customer chooses to use.

It shouldn’t matter whether your customer chooses to use an Android, Apple or Windows etc. device to access your services, but at the same time your technology needs to be able to recognise which device is being used. This allows you to ensure your entire audience can access your services and products fully, and that you aren’t alienating potential business because of the device customers choose!

It is vital, for instance, to be able to correlate whether specific customer struggles are linked to the use of a particular device or operating system. And although you might be able to identify such a correlation with traditional Web Analytics tools, you can’t always get down to the bottom of the root causes with such systems. Also, you want to be able to identify issues that you’ve been made aware of through other channels. For example, if your customer support team is getting complaints or analytical feedback that an aspect of your online service is seemingly failing or causing issues, it is very helpful to identify if this is linked to a specific platform.

Identifying there is a problem is only half the battle of course – you also need to know why! Traditional web analytics tools may have been able to identify if there was a sales conversion issue with a particular model of device or operating system, but finding the exact reason means you can address the issue directly.

To give you a real-world example, in the past I have seen details of a mobile device channel that was having issues and it turned out that customers were unable to see or use the ‘Continue’ button on some phones with a smaller screen. It was a simple problem to fix, but one which needed the right insights to identify it first.

The way customers individually interact with or view an app, for example, can have a huge effect on your sales funnel. However, short of directly speaking to each individual to find out what the issue was, it would have been very difficult in the past to have truly understood the problem and to have been able to enact a rapid and satisfying fix for the problem.

Similarly, when it comes to mobile devices the quality of the data signal (be that Wi-Fi, 4G or even in 3G) can also have a profound effect on the level of service and the ways in which customers can interact or buy from you successfully. Again, in the past this would have been very difficult to replicate and investigate properly.

Modern mobile analytics

The latest generation of digital session replay technology has made this task very much easier and efficient. By automatically and fully recording the online customer experience and then being able to reconstruct a session replay that is an exact representation of how the customer experienced it, your technical and web support teams can not only identify those affected, but can also see exactly what the issue was. They don’t need to waste time trying to reproduce errors.

The latest digital analytics solutions automatically capture and record anything typed or swiped by the customer. Additionally, anything else related to the session is captured too – be that the IP address, the geographical location and contact details (if the customer has logged in), as well as server-side related metrics; so, the entire digital customer journey and online customer experience can be examined automatically.

Even if a registered customer discontinues a session and then picks it up at a later time (even on another logged in device) all this data can be captured and any issues or trends identified automatically.

Meeting customer expectations

Your customers expect their experience in purchasing from you to be completely seamless, be that from a more traditional PC/laptop or from a mobile device.

Being able to monitor interactions from any platform in exactly the same way, allows you to identify patterns, behaviours or struggles that people are experiencing. You can then ensure that your customers get the best possible service from you in whatever way they choose to access your online portals, easily complete transactions – therefore increase conversions – and eventually remain loyal to your brand.