In an age of unprecedented choice, rapidly changing technologies and customer needs; customer behavior analytics can offer keen insight into product usage behavior to provide strategic input to marketing and product development teams.
As more tech companies seek to increase market share by introducing innovative software products, tracking and analyzing product usage behavior has become critical for an enduring competitive advantage. It helps you understand the underlying customer-product relationships that influence product choice and purchase behavior.
Here we’ve outlined the key steps involved in performing customer behavior analytics with a focus on increasing product usage.
Define buyer personas
A clear understanding of the buyer persona or target audience is the foremost step in analyzing customer behavior. If this hasn’t been defined already, analyzing the customer information obtained during the purchase process can be a good starting point.
In the case of B2B products, pin down the job title, company size, industry, and region of your typical customer. For example, the buyer persona for an email-marketing platform would most likely be the head of a marketing team. In the case of B2C products, it helps to know the demographic details and interests.
This step will help get your survey out to the right people and capture accurate information about your target audience.
Segment audiences based on distinct user typologies
Once you’ve identified your buyer persona, segment your target group based on distinct user typologies or user types. This step will help in developing focused strategies and marketing campaigns depending on their usage behavior.
To understand usage behavior, you can segment your audience by:
- Active users: Existing customers
- Abandoners: Customers who have not used your product in over six months
- Non-users: Individuals who fit into your buyer persona, but have never used your product
The next steps will entail capturing the attributes, preferences, and usage behavior of each of these segments.
Capturing usage behavior insights
Now that you have segmented your target audience, it’s time to understand how customers use your product and the reasons for not using it.
To get a holistic perspective, it’s important to supplement product usage data with qualitative research, such as surveys or interviews. While your independent product usage data will provide information about active users, usage frequency, most-used features, and usage time; qualitative data will capture the underlying reasons for those usage metrics.
Moreover, a qualitative study will help you tap into non-users’ minds to ascertain the barriers to usage, awareness levels, and unmet needs to fortify marketing, sales, and product development.
Product users
Categorize your survey questions to understand the extent of the product’s usefulness and usability.
- Product usefulness: Understand whether the product meets the customer’s intended purpose of purchasing it.
- Product usability: Gather feedback about the product’s efficiency. This will include questions ranging from its accessibility, ease of use, liked and disliked features, what works and what doesn’t.
Non-users
Non-users who fit into your target customer profile should also be interviewed to identify the areas for improvement. For this segment, your questionnaire should capture the reasons for non-usage–whether the lack of awareness or need, availability of better alternatives, technical barriers, among others.
Why is customer behavior analytics important?
Simply put, it offers a well-rounded perspective about your customers.
- Companies can assess and predict changing behavioral patterns and adapt their products accordingly.
- With accurate insights into usage patterns, organizations are better equipped to make data-driven decisions.
The most successful products put customer needs at the forefront. That said, product development is a continuous process. As customer needs and preferences evolve, it is important to constantly monitor product usage behavior to find ways to improve the overall experience and drive value.
With digital taking over, technology products will see rapid growth in the coming years. Employing customer behavior analytics at regular intervals will provide a clearer roadmap for customer-centric marketing and product development strategies.
Is the lack of actionable customer insights keeping you from meeting your growth objectives? Contact us to find out how Netscribes can help.
Read more: [Case Study] Customer behavior analysis for increasing product usage
