“During one such “follow me home,” a team of researchers noticed that retail customers were exporting their transactions from their point-of-sale cash registers into QuickBooks to manage their books. This extra step took time and could cause problems if done incorrectly. The developers came up with the idea of integrating QuickBooks with a cash register that eliminated a step for customers.”
Conduct product usability tests. Chances are, your company field-tests products before mass-producing and selling them. If you don’t, perhaps you should consider it, suggests Sauro. Customer analytics can help you collect the right metrics when working with volunteer test subjects and mine your findings for valuable information about product usability. In other words, how effective and efficient your product or service is, as well as how satisfied customers are.
“Even the way a question is phrased can impact the quality of the participant’s feedback. For instance, instead of directly asking, ‘Why did you click that link?’ it’s better to ask, ‘What about the link led you to click on it?’ This will get the participant thinking about her motivations, whereas the first question might leave her feeling defensive. Small details like these really can make a huge difference in your company’s product development, marketing, and overall strategy,” Sauro explains.
Figure out which “touch points” are most effective. Touch points are the places where customers find out about your company and products: commercials on TV and radio, ads on social media sites, newspaper coupons, brochures, word-of-mouth recommendations, etc. Customer analytics can help pinpoint the number of potential customers each touch point reaches, how well the message resonates, and if the touch point motivates people to buy your product or service.
“For example, I once worked with a national advertising agency that placed ads in weekly newspapers,” Sauro says. “We wanted to find out if a coupon for Pier 1 Imports increased (or decreased) revenue. Controlling for differences in markets, we found that sales in cities that received the coupon did increase in a statistically significant way that weekend. We were also able to determine that the discount from the coupon was offset by the increase in sales.
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