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10 Customer Segments Examples and Their Benefits
9 mai 2024, par ErinNow that companies can segment buyers, the days of mass marketing are behind us. Customer segmentation offers various benefits for marketing, content creation, sales, analytics teams and more. Without customer segmentation, your personalised marketing efforts may fall flat.
According to the Twilio 2023 state of personalisation report, 69% of business leaders have increased their investment in personalisation. There’s a key reason for this — customer retention and loyalty directly benefit from personalisation. In fact, 62% of businesses have cited improved customer retention due to personalisation efforts. The numbers don’t lie.
Keep reading to learn how customer segments can help you fine-tune your personalised marketing campaigns. This article will give you a better understanding of customer segmentation and real-world customer segment examples. You’ll leave with the knowledge to empower your marketing strategies with effective customer segmentation.
What are customer segments?
Customer segments are distinct groups of people or organisations with similar characteristics, needs and behaviours. Like different species of plants in a garden, each customer segment has specific needs and care requirements. Customer segments are useful for tailoring personalised marketing campaigns for specific groups.
Personalised marketing has been shown to have significant benefits — with 56% of consumers saying that a personalised experience would make them become repeat buyers.
Successful marketing teams typically focus on these types of customer segmentation:
- Geographic segmentation: groups buyers based on their physical location — country, city, region or climate — and language.
- Purchase history segmentation: categorises buyers based on their purchasing habits — how often they make purchases — and allows brands to distinguish between frequent, occasional and one-time buyers.
- Product-based segmentation: groups buyers according to the products they prefer or end up purchasing.
- Customer lifecycle segmentation: segments buyers based on where they are in the customer journey. Examples include new, repeat and lapsed buyers. This segmentation category is also useful for understanding the behaviour of loyal buyers and those at risk of churning.
- Technographic segmentation: focuses on buyers’ technology preferences, including device type, browser type, and operating system.
- Channel preference segmentation: helps us understand why buyers prefer to purchase via specific channels — whether online channels, physical stores or a combination of both.
- Value-based segmentation: categorises buyers based on their average purchase value and sensitivity to pricing, for example. This type of segmentation can provide insights into the behaviours of price-conscious buyers and those willing to pay premium prices.
Customer segmentation vs. market segmentation
Customer segmentation and market segmentation are related concepts, but they refer to different aspects of the segmentation process in marketing.
Market segmentation is the broader process of dividing the overall market into homogeneous groups. Market segmentation helps marketers identify different groups based on their characteristics or needs. These market segments make it easier for businesses to connect with new buyers by offering relevant products or new features.
On the other hand, customer segmentation is used to help you dig deep into the behaviour and preferences of your current customer base. Marketers use customer segmentation insights to create buyer personas. Buyer personas are essential for ensuring your personalised marketing efforts are relevant to the target audience.
10 customer segments examples
Now that you better understand different customer segmentation categories, we’ll provide real-world examples of how customer segmentation can be applied. You’ll be able to draw a direct connection between the segmentation category or categories each example falls under.
One thing to note is that you’ll want to consider privacy and compliance when you are considering collecting and analysing types of data such as gender, age, income level, profession or personal interests. Instead, you can focus on these privacy-friendly, ethical customer segmentation types:
1. Geographic location (category: geographic segmentation)
The North Face is an outdoor apparel and equipment company that relies on geographic segmentation to tailor its products toward buyers in specific regions and climates.
For instance, they’ll send targeted advertisements for insulated jackets and snow gear to buyers in colder climates. For folks in seasonal climates, The North Face may send personalised ads for snow gear in winter and ads for hiking or swimming gear in summer.
The North Face could also use geographic segmentation to determine buyers’ needs based on location. They can use this information to send targeted ads to specific customer segments during peak ski months to maximise profits.
2. Preferred language (category: geographic segmentation)
Your marketing approach will likely differ based on where your customers are and the language they speak. So, with that in mind, language may be another crucial variable you can introduce when identifying your target customers.
Language-based segmentation becomes even more important when one of your main business objectives is to expand into new markets and target international customers — especially now that global reach is made possible through digital channels.
Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” is a multi-national campaign with personalised cans and bottles featuring popular names from countries around the globe. It’s just one example of targeting customers based on language.
3. Repeat users and loyal customers (category: customer lifecycle segmentation)
Sephora, a large beauty supply company, is well-known for its Beauty Insider loyalty program.
It segments customers based on their purchase history and preferences and rewards their loyalty with gifts, discounts, exclusive offers and free samples. And since customers receive personalised product recommendations and other perks, it incentivises them to remain members of the Beauty Insider program — adding a boost to customer loyalty.
By creating a memorable customer experience for this segment of their customer base, staying on top of beauty trends and listening to feedback, Sephora is able to keep buyers coming back.
4. New customers (category: customer lifecycle segmentation)
Subscription services use customer lifecycle segmentation to offer special promotions and trials for new customers.
HBO Max is a great example of a real company that excels at this strategy:
They offer 40% savings on an annual ad-free plan, which targets new customers who may be apprehensive about the added monthly cost of a recurring subscription.
This marketing strategy prioritises fostering long-term customer relationships with new buyers to avoid high churn rates.
5. Cart abandonment (category: purchase history segmentation)
With a rate of 85% among US-based mobile users, cart abandonment is a huge issue for ecommerce businesses. One way to deal with this is to segment inactive customers and cart abandoners — those who showed interest by adding products to their cart but haven’t converted yet — and send targeted emails to remind them about their abandoned carts.
E-commerce companies like Ipsy, for example, track users who have added items to their cart but haven’t followed through on the purchase. The company’s messaging often contains incentives — like free shipping or a limited-time discount — to encourage passive users to return to their carts.
Research has found that cart abandonment emails with a coupon code have a high 44.37% average open rate.
6. Website activity (category: technographic segmentation)
It’s also possible to segment customers based on website activity. Now, keep in mind that this is a relatively broad approach; it covers every interaction that may occur while the customer is browsing your website. As such, it leaves room for many different types of segmentation.
For instance, you can segment your audience based on the pages they visited, the elements they interacted with — like CTAs and forms — how long they stayed on each page and whether they added products to their cart.
Matomo’s Event Tracking can provide additional context to each website visit and tell you more about the specific interactions that occur, making it particularly useful for segmenting customers based on how they spend their time on your website.
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Amazon segments its customers based on browsing behaviour — recently viewed products and categories, among other things — which, in turn, allows them to improve the customer’s experience and drive sales.
7. Traffic source (category: channel segmentation)
You can also segment your audience based on traffic sources. For example, you can determine if your website visitors arrived through Google and other search engines, email newsletters, social media platforms or referrals.
In other words, you’ll create specific audience segments based on the original source. Matomo’s Acquisition feature can provide insights into five different types of traffic sources — search engines, social media, external websites, direct traffic and campaigns — to help you understand how users enter your website.
You may find that most visitors arrive at your website through social media ads or predominantly discover your brand through search engines. Either way, by learning where they’re coming from, you’ll be able to determine which conversion paths you should prioritise and optimise further.
8. Device type (category: technographic segmentation)
Device type is customer segmentation based on the devices that potential customers may use to access your website and view your content.
It’s worth noting that, on a global level, most people (96%) use mobile devices — primarily smartphones — for internet access. So, there’s a high chance that most of your website visitors are coming from mobile devices, too.
However, it’s best not to assume anything. Matomo can detect the operating system and the type of device — desktop, mobile device, tablet, console or TV, for example.
By introducing the device type variable into your customer segmentation efforts, you’ll be able to determine if there’s a preference for mobile or desktop devices. In return, you’ll have a better idea of how to optimise your website — and whether you should consider developing an app to meet the needs of mobile users.
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9. Browser type (category: technographic segmentation)
Besides devices, another type of segmentation that belongs to the technographic category and can provide valuable insights is browser-related. In this case, you’re tracking the internet browser your customers use.
Many browser types are available — including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Firefox and Brave — and each may display your website and other content differently.
So, keeping track of your customers’ preferred choices is important. Otherwise, you won’t be able to fully understand their online experience — or ensure that these browsers are displaying your content properly.
10. Ecommerce activity (category: purchase history, value based, channel or product based segmentation)
Similar to website activity, looking at ecommerce activity can tell your sales teams more about which pages the customer has seen and how they have interacted with them.
With Matomo’s Ecommerce Tracking, you’ll be able to keep an eye on customers’ on-site behaviours, conversion rates, cart abandonment, purchased products and transaction data — including total revenue and average order value.
Considering that the focus is on sales channels — such as your online store — this approach to customer segmentation can help you improve the sales experience and increase profitability.
Start implementing these customer segments examples
With ever-evolving demographics and rapid technological advancements, customer segmentation is increasingly complex. The tips and real-world examples in this article break down and simplify customer segmentation so that you can adapt to your customer base.
Customer segmentation lays the groundwork for your personalised marketing campaigns to take off. By understanding your users better, you can effectively tailor each campaign to different segments.
If you’re ready to see how Matomo can elevate your personalised marketing campaigns, try it for free for 21 days. No credit card required.
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Data Privacy Issues to Be Aware of and How to Overcome Them
9 mai 2024, par ErinThese findings send a clear message: if companies want to build consumer trust, they must honour users’ data privacy concerns. The best way to do this is by adopting transparent, ethical data collection practices — which also supports the simultaneous goal of maintaining compliance with regional data privacy acts.
So what exactly is data privacy?
Data privacy refers to the protections that govern how personal data is collected and used, especially with respect to an individual’s control over when, where and what information they share with others.
Data privacy also refers to the extent to which organisations and governments go to protect the personal data that they collect. Different parts of the world have different data privacy acts. These regulations outline the measures organisations must take to safeguard the data they collect from their consumers and residents. They also outline the rights of data subjects, such as the right to opt out of a data collection strategy and correct false data.
As more organisations rely on personal data to provide services, people have become increasingly concerned about data privacy, particularly the level of control they have over their data and what organisations and governments do with their data.
Why should organisations take data privacy issues seriously?
Organisations should take data privacy seriously because consumer trust depends on it and because they have a legal obligation to do so. Doing so also helps organisations prevent threat actors from illegally accessing consumer data. Strong data privacy helps you:
Comply with data protection acts
Organisations that fail to comply with regional data protection acts could face severe penalties. For example, consider the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is the primary data protection action for the European Union. The penalty system for GDPR fines consists of two tiers:
- Less severe infringements — Which can lead to fines of up to €10 million (or 2% of an organisation’s worldwide annual revenue from the last financial year) per infringement.
- More severe infringements — This can lead to fines of up to €20 million (or 4% of an organisation’s worldwide annual revenue from the last financial year) per infringement.
The monetary value of these penalties is significant, so it is in the best interest of all organisations to be GDPR compliant. Other data protection acts have similar penalty systems to the GDPR. In Brazil, organisations non-compliant with the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais (LGPD) could be fined up to 50 million reals (USD 10 million) or 2% of their worldwide annual revenue from the last financial year.
Improve brand reputation
Research shows that 81% of consumers feel that how an organisation treats their data reflects how they treat them as a consumer. This means a strong correlation exists between how people perceive an organisation’s data collection practices and their other business activities.
Data breaches can have a significant impact on an organisation, especially their reputation and level of consumer trust. In 2022, hackers stole customer data from the Australian private health insurance company, Medibank, and released the data onto the dark web. Optus was also affected by a cyberattack, which compromised the information of current and former customers. Following these events, a study by Nature revealed that 83 percent of Australians were concerned about the security of their data, particularly in the hands of their service providers.
Protect consumer data
Protecting consumer data is essential to preventing data breaches. Unfortunately, cybersecurity attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. In 2023 alone, organisations like T-Mobile and Sony have been compromised and their data stolen.
One way to protect consumer data is to retain 100% data ownership. This means that no external parties can see your data. You can achieve this with the web analytics platform, Matomo. With Matomo, you can store your own data on-premises (your own servers) or in the Cloud. Under both arrangements, you retain full ownership of your data.
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What are the most pressing data privacy issues that organisations are facing today?
Today’s most pressing data privacy challenges organisations face are complying with new data protection acts, maintaining consumer trust, and choosing the right web analytics platform. Here is a detailed breakdown of what these challenges mean for businesses.
Complying with new and emerging data protection laws
Ever since the European Union introduced the GDPR in 2018, other regions have enacted similar data protection acts. In the United States, California (CCPA), Virginia (VCDPA) and Colorado have their own state-level data protection acts. Meanwhile, Brazil and China have the General Data Protection Law (LGPD) and the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), respectively.
For global organisations, complying with multiple data protection acts can be tough, as each act interprets the GDPR model differently. They each have their own provisions, terminology (or different interpretations of the same terminology), and penalties.
A web analytics platform like Matomo can help your organisation comply with the GDPR and similar data protection acts. It has a range of privacy-friendly features including data anonymisation, IP anonymisation, and first-party cookies by default. You can also create and publish custom opt-out forms and let visitors view your collected data.
Today’s most pressing data privacy challenges organisations face are complying with new data protection acts, maintaining consumer trust, and choosing the right web analytics platform. Here is a detailed breakdown of what these challenges mean for businesses.
Complying with new and emerging data protection laws
Ever since the European Union introduced the GDPR in 2018, other regions have enacted similar data protection acts. In the United States, California (CCPA), Virginia (VCDPA) and Colorado have their own state-level data protection acts. Meanwhile, Brazil and China have the General Data Protection Law (LGPD) and the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), respectively.
For global organisations, complying with multiple data protection acts can be tough, as each act interprets the GDPR model differently. They each have their own provisions, terminology (or different interpretations of the same terminology), and penalties.
A web analytics platform like Matomo can help your organisation comply with the GDPR and similar data protection acts. It has a range of privacy-friendly features including data anonymisation, IP anonymisation, and first-party cookies by default. You can also create and publish custom opt-out forms and let visitors view your collected data.
Try Matomo for Free
Get the web insights you need, while respecting user privacy.
Maintaining consumer trust
Building (and maintaining) consumer trust is a major hurdle for organisations. Stories about data breaches and data scandals — notably the Cambridge Analytical scandal — instil fear into the public’s hearts. After a while, people wonder, “Which company is next?”
One way to build and maintain trust is to be transparent about your data collection practices. Be open and honest about what data you collect (and why), where you store the data (and for how long), how you protect the data and whether you share data with third parties.
You should also prepare and publish your cyber incident response plan. Outline the steps you will take to contain, assess and manage a data breach.
Choosing the right web analytics platform
Organisations use web analytics to track and monitor web traffic, manage advertising campaigns and identify potential revenue streams. The most widely used web analytics platform is Google Analytics; however, many users have raised concerns about privacy issues.
When searching for a Google Analytics alternative, consider a web analytics platform that takes data privacy seriously. Features like cookieless tracking, data anonymisation and IP anonymisation will let you track user activity without collecting personal data. Custom opt-out forms will let your web visitors enforce their data subject rights.
What data protection acts exist right now?
As time goes on and more countries introduce their own data privacy laws, it becomes harder for organisations to adapt. Understanding the basics of each act can help streamline compliance. Here is what you need to know about the latest data protection acts.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The GDPR is a data protection act created by the European Parliament and Council of the European Union. It comprises 11 chapters covering the general provisions, principles, data subject rights, penalties and other relevant information.
The GDPR established a framework for organisations and governments to follow regarding the collection, processing, storing, transferring and deletion of personal data. Since coming into effect on 25 May 2018, other countries have used the GDPR as a model to enact similar data protection acts.
General Data Protection Law (LGPD)
The LGPD is Brazil’s main data protection act. The Federal Republic of Brazil signed the act on August 14, 2018, and it officially commenced on August 16, 2020. The act aimed to unify the 40 Brazilian laws that previously governed the country’s approach to processing personal data.
Like the GDPR, the LGPD serves as a legal framework to regulate the collection and usage of personal data. It also outlines the duties of the national data protection authority, the Autoridade Nacional de Proteção de Dados (ANPD), which is responsible for enforcing the LGPD.
Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) for the Privacy Act 1988
Established by the Australian House of Representatives, the Privacy Act 1988 outlines how organisations and governments must manage personal data. The federal government has amended the Privacy Act 1988 twice — once in 2000, and again in 2014 — and is committing to a significant overhaul.
The new proposals will make it easier for individuals to opt out of data collection, organisations will have to destroy collected data after a reasonable period, and small businesses will no longer be exempt from the Privacy Act.
United States
The United States does not have a federally mandated data protection act. Instead, each state has been gradually introducing its data protection acts, with the first being California, followed by Virginia and Colorado. Over a dozen other states are following suit, too.
- California — The then-Governor of California Jerry Brown signed the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) into law on June 28, 2018. The act applies to organisations with gross annual revenue of more than USD 25 million, and that buy or sell products and services to 100,000 or more households or consumers.
- Virginia — The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) took effect on January 1, 2023. It applies to organisations that process (or control) the personal data of 100,000 or more consumers in a financial year. It also applies to organisations that process (or control) the personal data of 25,000 or more consumers and gain more than 50% of gross revenue by selling that data.
- Colorado — Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed the Colorado Privacy Act (ColoPA) into law in July 2021. The act applies to organisations that process (or control) the personal data of 100,000 or more Colorado residents annually. It also applies to organisations that earn revenue from the sale of personal data of at least 25,000 Colorado residents.
Because the US regulations are a patchwork of differing legal acts, compliance can be a complicated endeavour for organisations operating across multiple jurisdictions.
How can organisations comply with data protection acts?
One way to ensure compliance is to keep up with the latest data protection acts. But that is a very time-consuming task.
Over 16 US states are in the process of signing new acts. And countries like China, Turkey and Australia are about to overhaul — in a big way — their own data privacy protection acts.
Knowledge is power. But you also have a business to run, right?
That’s where Matomo comes in.
Streamline data privacy compliance with Matomo
Although data privacy is a major concern for individuals and companies operating in multiple parts of the world — as they must comply with new, conflicting data protection laws — it is possible to overcome the biggest data privacy issues.
Matomo enables your visitors to take back control of their data. You can choose where you store your data on-premises and in the Cloud (EU-based). You can use various features, retain 100% data ownership, protect visitor privacy and ensure compliance.
Try the 21-day free trial of Matomo today, start your free analytics trial. No credit card required.
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What Is Data Ethics & Why Is It Important in Business ?
9 mai 2024, par ErinData is powerful — every business on earth uses data. But some are leveraging it more than others.
The problem?
Not all businesses are using data ethically.
You need to collect, store, and analyse data to grow your business. But, if you aren’t careful, you could be crossing the line with your data usage into unethical territories.
In a society where data is more valuable than ever, it’s crucial you perform ethical practices.
In this article, we break down what data ethics is, why it’s important in business and how you can implement proper data ethics to ensure you stay compliant while growing your business.
What is data ethics?
Data ethics are how a business collects, protects and uses data.
It’s one field of ethics focused on organisations’ moral obligation to collect, track, analyse and interpret data correctly.
Data ethics analyses multiple ways we use data:
- Collecting data
- Generating data
- Tracking data
- Analysing data
- Interpreting data
- Implementing activities based on data
Data ethics is a field that asks, “Is this right or wrong?”
And it also asks, “Can we use data for good?”
If businesses use data unethically, they could get into serious hot water with their customers and even with the law.
You need to use data to ensure you grow your business to the best of your ability. But, to maintain a clean slate in the eyes of your customers and authorities, you need to ensure you have strong data ethics.
Why you need to follow data ethics principles
In 2018, hackers broke into British Airways’ website by inserting harmful code, leading website visitors to a fraudulent site.
The result?
British Airways customers gave their information to the hackers without realising it: credit cards, personal information, login information, addresses and more.
While this was a malicious attack, the reality is that data is an integral part of everyday life. Businesses need to do everything they can to protect their customers’ data and use it ethically.
Data ethics is crucial to understand as it sets the standard for what’s right and wrong for businesses. Without a clear grasp of data ethics, companies will willingly or neglectfully misuse data.
With a firm foundation of data ethics, businesses worldwide can make a collective effort to function smoothly, protect their customers, and, of course, protect their own reputation.
3 benefits of leaning into data ethics
We’re currently transitioning to a new world led by artificial intelligence.
While AI presents endless opportunities for innovation in the business world, there are also countless risks at play, and it’s never been more important to develop trust with your customers and stakeholders.
With an influx of data being created and tracked daily, you need to ensure your business is prioritising data ethics to ensure you maintain trust with your customers moving forward.
Here are three benefits of data ethics that will help you develop trust, maintain a solid reputation and stay compliant to continue growing your business:
1. Compliance with data privacy
Privacy is everything.
In a world where our data is being collected nonstop, and we live more public lives than ever with social media, AI and an influx of recording and tracking in everyday life, you need to protect the privacy of your customers.
One crucial way to protect that privacy is by complying with major data privacy regulations.
Some of the most common regulations you need to remain compliant with include:
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
- General Personal Data Protection Law (LGPD)
- Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations (PECR)
While these regulations don’t directly address ethics, there’s a core overlap between privacy requirements like accountability, lawfulness and AI ethics.
Matomo ensures you protect the privacy of your web and app users so you can track and improve your website performance with peace of mind.
2. Maintain a good reputation
While data ethics can help you maintain data privacy compliance, it can also help you maintain a good reputation online and offline.
All it takes is one bad event like the British Airways breach for your company’s reputation to be ruined.
If you want to keep a solid reputation and maintain trust with your stakeholders, customers and lawmakers, then you need to focus on developing strong data ethics.
Businesses that invest time in establishing proper data ethics set the right foundation to protect their reputation, develop trust with stakeholders and create goodwill and loyalty.
3. Increased trust means greater revenue
What happens when you establish proper data ethics?
You’ll gain the trust of your customers, maintain a solid reputation and increase your brand image.
Customers who trust you to protect their privacy and data want to keep doing business with you.
So, what’s the end result for a business that values data ethics?
You’ll generate more revenue in the long run. Trust is one thing you should never put on the back burner if you have plans to keep growing your business. By leaning more into data ethics, you’ll be able to build that brand reputation that helps people feel comfortable buying your products and services on repeat.
While spending time and money on data ethics may seem like an annoyance, the reality is that it’s a business investment that will pay dividends for years to come.
5 core data ethics principles
So, what exactly is involved in data ethics?
For most people, data ethics is a pretty broad and vague term. If you’re curious about the core pillars of data ethics, then keep reading.
Here are five core data ethical principles you need to follow to ensure you’re protecting your customers’ data and maintaining trust:
1. Data ownership
The individual owns the data, not you. This is the first principle of data ethics. You don’t have control over someone else’s data. It’s theirs, and they have full ownership over it.
Just as stealing a TV from an electronics store is a crime, stealing (or collecting) someone’s personal data without their consent is considered unlawful and unethical.
Consent is the only way to ethically “own” someone’s data.
How can you collect someone’s data ethically?
- Digital privacy policies
- Signed, written agreements
- Popups with checkboxes that allow you to track users’ behaviour
Essentially, anytime you’re collecting data from your website or app users, you need to ensure you’re asking permission for that data.
You should never assume a website visitor or customer is okay with you collecting your data automatically. Instead, ask permission to collect, track and use their data to avoid legal and ethical issues.
2. Transparency
The second core principle of data ethics within business is transparency. This means you need to be fully transparent on when, where and how you:
- Collect data
- Store data
- Use data
In other words, you need to allow your customers and website visitors to have a window inside your data activities.
They need to be able to see exactly how you plan on using the data you’re collecting from them.
For example, imagine you implemented a new initiative to personalise the website experience for each user based on individual behaviour. To do this, you’ll need to track cookies. In this case, you’d need to write up a new policy stating how this behavioural data is going to be collected, tracked and used.
It’s within your website visitors’ rights to access this information so they can choose whether or not they want to accept or decline your website’s cookies.
With any new data collection or tracking, you need to be 100% clear about how you’re going to use the data. You can’t be deceptive, misleading, or withholding any information on how you will use the data, as this is unethical and, in many cases, unlawful.
3. Privacy
Another important branch of ethics is privacy. The ethical implications of this should be obvious.
When your users, visitors, or customers enter your sphere of influence and you begin collecting data on them, you are responsible for keeping that data private.
When someone accepts the terms of your data usage, they’re not agreeing to have their data released to the public. They’re agreeing to let you leverage that data as their trusted business provider to better serve them. They expect you to maintain privacy.
You can’t spread private information to third parties. You can’t blast this data to the public.
This is especially important if someone allows you to collect and use their personally identifiable information (PII), such as:
- First and last name
- Email address
- Date of birth
- Home address
- Phone number
To protect your audience’s data, you should only store it in a secure database.
For example, Matomo’s web analytics solution guarantees the privacy of both your users and analytics data.
With Matomo, you have complete ownership of your data. Unlike other web analytics solutions that exploit your data for advertising purposes, Matomo users can use analytics with confidence, knowing that their data won’t be sold to advertisers.
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4. Intention
When you collect and store data, you need to tell your users why you’re collecting their data. But there’s another principle of data ethics that goes beyond the reason you give your customers.
Intention is the reason you give yourself for collecting and using the data.
Before you start collecting and storing data, you should ask yourself the following:
- Why you need it
- What you’ll gain from it
- What changes you’ll be able to make after you analyse the data
If your intention is wrong in any way, it’s unethical to collect the data:
- You’re collecting data to hurt others
- You’re collecting data to profit from your users’ weaknesses
- You’re collecting data for any other malicious reason
When you collect data, you need to have the right intentions to maintain proper data ethics; otherwise, you could harm your brand, break trust and ruin your reputation.
5. Outcomes
You may have the best intentions, but sometimes, there are negative outcomes from data use.
For example, British Airways’ intention was not to allow hackers to gain access and harm their users. But the reality is that their customers’ data was stolen and used for malicious purposes. While this isn’t technically unlawful, the outcome of collecting data ended badly.
To ensure proper data ethics, you must have good standing with your data. This means protecting your users at all costs, maintaining a good reputation and ensuring proper privacy measures are set up.
How to implement data ethics as a business leader
As a business leader, CTO or CEO, it’s your responsibility to implement data ethics within your organisation. Here are some tips to implement data ethics based on the size and stage of your organisation:
Startups
If you’re a startup, you need to be mindful of which technology and tools you use to collect, store and use data to help you grow your business.
It can be a real challenge to juggle all the moving parts of a startup since things can change so quickly. However, it’s crucial to establish a leader and allow easy access to ethical analysis resources to maintain proper data ethics early on.
Small and medium-sized businesses
As you begin scaling, you’ll likely be using even more technology. With each new business technique you implement, there will be new ways you’ll be collecting user data.
One of the key processes involved in managing data as you grow is to hire engineers who build out different technologies. You must have protocols, best practices and management overseeing the new technologies being built to ensure proper data ethics.
Global businesses
Have you scaled internationally?
There will be even more rules, laws, regulations and organisations to answer to if you start managing data unethically.
You should have established teams or departments to ensure you follow proper privacy and data protocols worldwide. When you have a large organisation, you have more money and vast amounts of data. This makes you a bigger target for leaks, ransomware and hackers.
You should ensure you have cross-departmental groups working to establish ongoing protocols and training to keep your data management in good standing.
Leverage data ethically with Matomo
Data is powerful.
It’s a crucial point of leverage that’s required to stay competitive.
However, improper use and management of data can give you a bad reputation, break trust and even cause you legal trouble.
That’s why you must maintain good data ethics within your organisation.
One of the most important places to set up proper data ethics and privacy measures is with your website analytics.
Matomo is the leading, privacy-friendly web analytics solution in the world. It automatically collects, stores, and tracks data across your website ethically.
With over 1 million websites using Matomo, you get to take full control over your website performance with:
- Accurate data (no data sampling)
- Privacy-friendly and GDPR-compliant analytics
- Open-source for transparency and to create a custom solution for you
Try Matomo free for 21-days. No credit card required.
Try Matomo for Free
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How to Conduct a Customer Journey Analysis (Step-by-Step)
9 mai 2024, par ErinYour customers are everything.
Treat them right, and you can generate recurring revenue for years. Treat them wrong; you’ll be spinning your wheels and dealing with churn.
How do you give your customers the best experience possible so they want to stick around?
Improve their customer experience.
How?
By conducting a customer journey analysis.
When you know how your customers experience your business, you can improve it to meet and exceed customer expectations.
In this guide, we’ll break down how the customer journey works and give you a step-by-step guide to conduct a thorough customer journey analysis so you can grow your brand.
What is a customer journey analysis?
Every customer you’ve ever served went on a journey to find you.
From the moment they first heard of you, to the point that they became a customer.
Everything in between is the customer journey.
A customer journey analysis is how you track and analyse how your customers use different channels to interact with your brand.
Analysing your customer journey involves identifying the customer’s different touchpoints with your business so you can understand how it impacts their experience.
This means looking at every moment they interacted with your brand before, during and after a sale to help you gain actionable insights into their experience and improve it to reach your business objectives.
Your customers go through specific customer touchpoints you can track. By analysing this customer journey from a bird’s eye view, you can get a clear picture of the entire customer experience.
4 benefits of customer journey analysis
Before we dive into the different steps involved in a customer journey analysis, let’s talk about why it’s vital to analyse the customer journey.
By regularly analysing your customer journey, you’ll be able to improve the entire customer experience with practical insights, allowing you to:
Understand your customers better
What’s one key trait all successful businesses have?
They understand their customers.
By analysing your customer journey regularly, you’ll gain new insights into their wants, needs, desires and behaviours, allowing you to serve them better. These insights will show you what led them to buy a product (or not).
For example, through conducting a customer journey analysis, a company might find out that customers who come from LinkedIn are more likely to buy than those coming from Facebook.
Find flaws in your customer journey
Nobody wants to hear they have flaws. But the reality is your customer journey likely has a few flaws you could improve.
By conducting customer journey analysis consistently, you’ll be able to pinpoint precisely where you’re losing prospects along the way.
For example, you may discover you’re losing customers through Facebook Ads. Or you may find your email strategy isn’t as good as it used to be.
But it’s not just about the channel. It could be a transition between two channels. For example, you may have great engagement on Instagram but are not converting them into email subscribers. The issue may be that your transition between the two channels has a leak.
Or you may find that prospects using certain devices (i.e., mobile, tablet, desktop) have lower conversions. This might be due to design and formatting issues across different devices.
By looking closely at your customer journey and the different customer touchpoints, you’ll see issues preventing prospects from turning into leads or customers from returning to buy again as loyal customers.
Gain insights into how you can improve your brand
Your customer journey analysis won’t leave you with a list of problems. Instead, you’ll have a list of opportunities.
Since you’ll be able to better understand your customers and where they’re falling off the sales funnel, you’ll have new insights into how you can improve the experience and grow your brand.
For example, maybe you notice that your visitors are getting stuck at one stage of the customer journey and you’re trying to find out why.
So, you leverage Matomo’s heatmaps, sessions recordings and scroll depth to find out more.
In the case below, we can see that Matomo’s scroll map is showing that only 65% of the visitors are reaching the main call to action (to write a review).
To try to push for higher conversions and get more reviews, we could consider moving that button higher up on the page, ideally above the fold.
Rather than guessing what’s preventing conversions, you can use user behaviour analytics to “step in our user’s shoes” so you can optimise faster and with confidence.
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Grow your revenue
By taking charge of your customer journey, you can implement different strategies that will help you increase your reach, gain more prospects, convert more prospects into customers and turn regulars into loyal customers.
Using customer journey analysis will help you optimise those different touchpoints to maximise the ROI of your channels and get the most out of each marketing activity you implement.
7 steps to conduct a customer journey analysis
Now that you know the importance of conducting a customer journey analysis regularly, let’s dive into how to implement an analysis.
Here are the seven steps you can take to analyse the customer journey to improve your customer experience:
1. Map out your customer journey
Your first step to conducting an effective customer journey analysis is to map your entire customer journey.
Customer journey mapping means looking at several factors:
- Buying process
- Customer actions
- Buying emotions
- Buying pain points
- Solutions
Once you have an overview of your customer journey maps, you’ll gain insights into your customers, their interests and how they interact with your brand.
After this, it’s time to dive into the touchpoints.
2. Identify all the customer touchpoints
To improve your customer journey, you need to know every touchpoint a customer can (and does) make with your brand.
This means taking note of every single channel and medium they use to communicate with your brand:
- Website
- Social media
- Search engines (SEO)
- Email marketing
- Paid advertising
- And more
Essentially, anywhere you communicate and interact with your customers is fair game to analyse.
If you want to analyse your entire sales funnel, you can try Matomo, a privacy-friendly web analytics tool.
You should make sure to split up your touchpoints into different customer journey stages:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
- Advocacy
Then, it’s time to move on to how customers interact on these channels.
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3. Measure how customers interact on each channel
To understand the customer journey, you can’t just know where your customers interact with you. You end up learning how they’re interacting.
This is only possible by measuring customer interactions.
How?
By using a web analytics tool like Matomo.
With Matomo, you can track every customer action on your website.
This means anytime they:
- Visit your website
- View a web page
- Click a link
- Fill out a form
- Purchase a product
- View different media
- And more
You should analyse your engagement on your website, apps and other channels, like email and social media.
4. Implement marketing attribution
Now that you know where your customers are and how they interact, it’s time to analyse the effectiveness of each channel based on your conversion rates.
Implementing marketing attribution (or multi-touch attribution) is a great way to do this.
Attribution is how you determine which channels led to a conversion.
While single-touch attribution models credit one channel for a conversion, marketing attribution gives credit to a few channels.
For example, let’s say Bob is looking for a new bank. He sees an Instagram post and finds himself on HSBC’s website. After looking at a few web pages, he attends a webinar hosted by HSBC on financial planning and investment strategies. One week later, he gets an email from HSBC following up on the webinar. Then, he decides to sign up for HSBC’s online banking.
Single touch attribution would attribute 100% of the conversion to email, which doesn’t show the whole picture. Marketing attribution would credit all channels: social media, website content, webinars and email.
Matomo offers multiple attribution models. These models leverage different weighting factors, like time decay or linear, so that you can allocate credit to each touchpoint based on its impact.
Matomo’s multi-touch attribution reports give you in-depth insights into how revenue is distributed across different channels. These detailed reports help you analyse each channel’s contribution to revenue generation so you can optimise the customer journey and improve business outcomes.
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5. Use a funnels report to find where visitors are leaving
Once you set up your marketing attribution, it’s time to analyse where visitors are falling off.
You can leverage Matomo funnels to find out the conversion rate at each step of the journey on your website. Funnel reports can help you see exactly where visitors are falling through the cracks so you can increase conversions.
6. Analyse why visitors aren’t converting
Once you can see where visitors are leaving, you can start to understand why.
For example, let’s say you analyse your funnels report in Matomo and see your landing page is experiencing the highest level of drop-offs.
You can also use form analytics to find out why users aren’t converting on your landing pages – a crucial part of the customer journey.
7. A/B test to improve the customer journey
The final step to improve your customer journey is to conduct A/B tests. These are tests where you test one version of a landing page to see which one converts better, drives more traffic, or generates more revenue.
For example, you could create two versions of a header on your website and drive 50% of your traffic to each version. Then, once you’ve got your winner, you can keep that as your new landing page.
Using the data from your A/B tests, you can optimise your customer journey to help convert more prospects into customers.
Use Matomo to improve your customer journey analysis
Now that you understand why it’s important to conduct customer journey analysis regularly and how it works, it’s time to put this into practice.
To improve the customer journey, you need to understand what’s happening at each stage of your funnel.
Matomo gives you insights into your customer journey so you can improve website performance and convert more visitors into customers.
Used by over 1 million websites, Matomo is the leading privacy-friendly web analytics solution in the world.
Matomo provides you with accurate, unsampled data so you understand exactly what’s going on with your website performance.
The best part?
It’s easy to use and is compliant with the strictest privacy regulations.
Try Matomo free for 21-days and start Improving your customer journey. No credit card required.
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CRO Program : Best Practices and KPIs to Track [2024]
8 mai 2024, par ErinDriving traffic to your website is only one part of the equation; the second part is getting those visitors to convert by completing a desired action — creating an account, signing up for a newsletter or completing a purchase.
But if you fail to optimise your website for conversions, you’ll have a hard time guiding visitors further down the funnel and turning them into customers.
That’s where a CRO program (or conversion rate optimisation) can help.
This article will cover conversion rate optimisation best practices and outline key metrics and KPIs to start tracking to see an improvement in your conversion rates.
What is a CRO program?
In the simplest terms, a CRO program — also called a CRO plan — is a digital marketing strategy. It focuses on implementing different tactics that can lead to an increase in conversion rate and maximising revenue.
One thing to remember is that the definition of “conversion” varies from business to business. The most obvious type of conversion would be a financial transaction or a completed form — but it comes down to what you consider a valuable action.
Many different actions can count as conversions, depending on your marketing goals.
Besides making a purchase, other common examples of key conversion moments include creating a new account, signing up for a free trial, booking a demo and subscribing to an email newsletter.
Another thing worth noting is that while the average conversion rate on e-commerce websites is 3.76%, it might fluctuate across different industries and device types. Case in point — desktop devices have higher conversion rates than mobile devices, clocking in at 4.79% and 3.32%, respectively.
So, in addition to defining your key conversion moments, you should also go over conversion insights relevant to your specific industry.
The importance of conversion rate optimisation
You’d be right to assume that the ultimate goal of a conversion rate optimisation process is to drive revenue through higher conversion rates — but don’t focus solely on the numbers. The core principle of a CRO program is improving the customer experience. Once you’ve achieved that, the increase in conversion rate will follow.
According to a recent report, global conversion rate optimisation (CRO) software sales are expected to reach $3.7 billion by 2032 — up from $1.1 billion in 2021.
This growth indicates the increasing interest in strategies and tools that can help optimise the conversion funnel. Businesses are looking for ways to keep potential customers engaged and improve the average conversion rate — without necessarily increasing their spending.
Here are a few reasons why a CRO program deserves a spot in your broader digital marketing strategies:
- It can lower your cost per acquisition (CPA): A CRO program is about optimising your conversion funnel by leveraging existing assets and website traffic rather than increasing your spending — which lowers the costs of acquiring new customers and, in turn, drives ROI.
- It can maximise customer lifetime value (CLV): If you can turn one-time buyers into repeat customers, you’ll be one step closer to building a loyal user base and increasing your CLV.
- It can lead to increased sales and boost your revenue: Higher conversion rates typically mean higher revenue; that’s arguably the most obvious benefit of implementing a CRO program.
- It improves the overall user experience: The goal is to make your site more accessible, easier to navigate and more engaging. Delivering the experience people want — and expect — when navigating your website is one of the core principles of a CRO program.
- It helps you to get to know your customers better: You can’t meet your customers’ needs without taking the time to know them, create user personas and understand their preferences, pain points and conversion barriers they may be facing.
Conversion optimisation gives you a competitive edge in revenue and brand reputation.
5 CRO best practices
Here are five conversion rate optimisation strategies and best practices that can make a real difference in the customer experience — and drive potential conversions.
Create a CRO roadmap in advance
First and foremost, you’ll need a well-defined “game plan” that aligns with and reflects your conversion goals.
A CRO roadmap is a detailed manual that outlines how to implement different elements of your CRO-related efforts. Marketing teams can refer to this step-by-step framework for test planning, prioritisation and resource allocation while optimising their marketing strategy.
While conversion rate optimisation can be a complex process — especially when you don’t know what to tackle first — we’ve found that there are three things you need to consider when setting the foundations of a successful CRO program:
- The “why” behind your website traffic: You’re likely using different online marketing strategies — from SEO to pay-per-click (PPC). So, it’s best to start by gathering channel-specific conversion insights through marketing attribution. Then identify which of these efforts have the biggest impact on your target audience.
- The so-called “conversion blockers” that tell you where and why visitors tend to leave without completing a desired action: Funnel analysis might reveal problematic pages — drop-off points where you tend to lose most of your visitors.
- Your “hooks”: User feedback can be of great help here; you can learn a lot by simply asking your customers to fill out a quick online survey and tell you what motivated them to take action.
Before working on that “game plan,” perform a pre-test analysis.
Matomo combines web analytics and user behaviour analytics with features like Heatmaps, Session Recordings, Form Analytics, Funnel Analytics, A/B Testing and User Flow. It can give you those initial benchmarks for measuring progress and a potential increase in conversion rate.
Validate your ideas with A/B and multivariate testing
Conversion rate optimisation is an iterative process. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that A/B testing variants of page layouts, CTAs, headlines, copy and other elements is a big part of it.
Multivariate and A/B testing allows you to test a wide range of elements across your site and identify what works — and, more importantly, what doesn’t — in terms of driving conversions.
On that note, Matomo’s A/B Testing feature can support your conversion rate optimisation process by identifying variants that perform better based on statistical significance.
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Get to know your website visitors
Driving conversions comes down to understanding potential customer’s pain points and needs — and delivering an experience that positions you as the solution and gets them to take action.
Here are a few things that can help you understand your website visitors better:
- Collecting customer feedback through surveys and using it to identify main areas for improvement
- Creating detailed customer personas and optimising your website design and messaging based on your target audience’s pain points, needs and wants
- Using heatmaps — colour-coded data visualisation tools that illustrate user interactions — and scroll maps to get a comprehensive overview of online sessions and identify the most engaging elements and those that stand out as potential conversion barriers
Matomo’s Heatmaps can help you identify the most-clicked elements on the page and show how far users scroll — providing powerful user insights you can use to optimise these pages.
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Remove friction points
As we previously discussed, identifying friction points and barriers to conversion — issues that prevent visitors from converting — is one of the crucial aspects of developing a CRO plan.
Many different “conversion blockers” are worth looking into, including:
- Lengthy or otherwise complex checkout processes
- No guest checkout feature
- Device type, browser and OS compatibility issues
- Slow site speed and other technical issues
- Lack of free shipping and limited payment methods
- Absence of social proof (customer reviews and testimonials) and trust badges
Once you’ve identified what’s slowing down or completely discouraging users from reaching key conversion moments, take the time to address it.
Switch to text-based CTAs
Calls-to-action (CTAs) play a crucial role in guiding customers from interest to action. However, sometimes they fail to do their job — encouraging website visitors to proceed to the next step — effectively.
The most obvious reason is that your CTAs aren’t visually engaging or clear enough. In that case, you can try using action-oriented language and stronger visual elements and aligning the CTA copy with the context of the page.
But more often than not, the issue comes down to a phenomenon called “banner blindness” — the tendency of website visitors to ignore (either intentionally or unintentionally) elements on a page that resemble banner ads.
And if that’s what’s preventing visitors from converting, consider switching to text-based CTAs.
Conversion rate optimisation metrics and KPIs
At this point, you should know the outcomes you hope to achieve. Your next step should be to figure out how you’re going to measure and analyse results — and identify the changes that made the most impact on your conversion funnel.
After all, your CRO action plan should be based on data — assumptions and “gut feelings” will rarely lead to a notable increase in conversion rates.
That brings us to key performance indicators (KPIs):
Tracking CRO metrics and website KPIs can help you understand the customer’s journey and path to purchase, identify opportunities for improving the user experience (UX) and determine how to optimise conversions.
That said, you shouldn’t try to track every metric in the book; think about your ultimate goal and identify the metrics and KPIs most relevant to your business.
We’ll assume that you’re already tracking macro- and micro-conversions. However, we’ve outlined a few additional key conversion rate optimisation metrics you should keep an eye on to make sure that your CRO program is performing as intended:
- Cost-per-conversion: By measuring how much you spend on each successful conversion — again, completed forms, sign-ups and sales all count as key conversion moments — you’ll be in a better position to assess the cost-effectiveness of your online marketing strategies.
- Starter rate: This metric tells you the number of people who start filling out the form, after seeing it. This metric is particularly important for companies that rely on getting leads from forms.
- Average order value (AOV): This metric is important for e-commerce sites to understand the value of their transactions. AOV calculates the average monetary value of each order.
That’s not all; you can also use a web analytics tool like Matomo to gain granular insights into visitors:
- Unique, new and returning visitors: Tracking the number of new and returning visitors your website gets within a given timeframe will help you understand your user base and determine if your content resonates with them. While you want a constant stream of new traffic, don’t overlook the importance of returning visitors; they’re the foundation of a loyal customer base.
- User flows: By analysing the user flows, you’ll have a visual representation of how visitors use your website, which will help you understand their journey and the specific path they take.
- Bounce rate: This metric tells you how many users viewed a single page on your site and ended up leaving before they took any kind of action. As such, it’s a clear indicator of how good your content, CTAs and website layout are at keeping users engaged.
- Exit rate: Another key metric to track is the exit rate — the percentage of users who drop off at a specific page. High-exit pages usually lack important information and CTAs, cause frustration or otherwise fail to meet users’ expectations. Keep in mind that there’s a difference between bounce rate and exit rate — the latter involves users who viewed at least one other page.
There are many other user engagement metrics you should keep an eye on in addition to the ones mentioned above — including time on-page, actions per visit, scroll depth and traffic source. You’ll find all this information — and more — in Matomo’s Page Analytics Report.
Conclusion
Implementing a CRO program can be a time-consuming and iterative process. However, it’s vital for guiding your marketing efforts and making data-driven decisions that’ll ultimately help you drive growth and reach your business goals.
It’s best to start by identifying where your website visitors come from and what contributes to — or prevents them from — taking further action. But that’s easier said than done. You’ll need to leverage web analytics tools like Matomo to gather powerful user insights and monitor your website’s performance.
As an all-in-one, privacy-friendly web analytics solution, Matomo combines traditional web analytics and advanced behavioural analytics — delivering a consistent experience based on 100% accurate, unsampled data.
Join the 1 million websites that have chosen Matomo as their web analytics platform. Start your 21-day free trial today — and see how Matomo can help you improve your website’s conversion rates. No credit card required.
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