Optimizing user experiences with Digital Experience Analytics (DXA) platforms

As consumers become increasingly digitally savvy, and more and more brand touchpoints take place online, consumer expectations for high-performing user experiences continue to increase. In today’s marketing ecosystem, identifying and capitalizing on optimization opportunities goes beyond analyzing high-level traffic volume, engagement metrics, and conversion trends.  Digital Experience Analytics (DXA) tools are becoming increasingly popular because they augment more traditional analytics platforms, helping us generate insights not just about what users are doing, but why they are doing it.

What are DXA Tools?

DXA tools capture highly detailed interactions, such as mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, flow abandonment, and dwell time. Unlike more traditional web analytics tools, however, this data isn’t just translated into “rows and columns” in a spreadsheet-like report. Instead, data is represented via heatmaps, session replay videos, and other intuitive, visual displays. The ability to engage with data in these ways allows businesses to understand the subtle yet crucial interactions happening on the site. Specifically, these tools are especially helpful in evaluating content, assessing usability, and informing optimization activities like A/B testing and personalization. 

DXA tools often complement other tools in the data stack, including traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, testing tools like Optimizely, AB Tasty, and Adobe Target, VoC tools like Qualtrics, and site performance tools like Dynatrace. In other words, DXA platforms typically don’t become an organization’s “system of record” for reporting on site or app metrics, but they can become the go-to tool for understanding why there’s a user experience issue, and what can be done to resolve it.

Getting to Know the DXA Marketplace

Before digging into the value of these tools, let’s identify some of the key players in the marketplace. Most tools will offer some level of heat mapping and session replay functionality, so key differentiations come from the level of segmentation offered, ease of use, price point, and retroactive tracking capabilities.

• Contentsquare: This tool is a leader in experience analytics, offering advanced visualizations like Zone-Based Heatmaps and Session Replays. Contentsquare excels in deep data analysis with capabilities for journey mapping, impact quantification, and proactive error analysis. It integrates seamlessly with other analytics tools such as Adobe, Heap, and Piano Analytics, enhancing its ability to provide comprehensive insights. Contentsquare also allows for robust retroactive data collection.

• Hotjar: Known for its user-friendly interface, Hotjar allows marketers to capture feedback directly through surveys, and provides essential tools such as Heatmaps and Session Replays. It’s particularly valued for enhancing Voice of Customer (VoC) data collection, helping marketers to understand user sentiments at various touchpoints.

• CrazyEgg: CrazyEgg is straightforward and budget-friendly, offering essential features like Heatmapping and Session Replay. It is particularly suited for small- to medium-sized businesses looking for entry-level insights into user behavior without the need for historical data analysis.

• FullStory: FullStory offers a robust set of tools for session replay and user interaction analysis, tailored for businesses needing detailed and technical insights. It’s known for its ability to pinpoint issues affecting user experience and is highly valued in scenarios requiring detailed debugging of user sessions.

Key Value Propositions for DXA Tools

In-Depth UX Insights: DXA tools provide deeper understanding of user behaviors by allowing us to visually observe our users “in the wild.” To maintain privacy, many DXA tools offer custom or automatic “masking” techniques to automatically redact or anonymize sections of the site containing PII. The visual nature of the analysis can provide more granular insights compared to what traditional analytics tools will offer, while staying privacy-safe.

Frustration Resolution: DXA tools allow us to better understand common friction points, allowing clients to address issues more proactively and more effectively. For example, imagine a large site release negatively affecting users, but stakeholders aren’t aware of it because traditional site analytics data doesn’t reflect a meaningful change in KPI trends for a few days. Tools like Contentsquare allow marketers to observe users as they navigate through new content, while automatically surfacing frustration points like “rage clicks,” “quick backs,” and slow load times.

Conversion Rate Optimization: Heatmaps, Session Replay, and Journey Analysis naturally lend themselves to testing, personalization, and optimization teams. By visually analyzing your website or app data, marketers can easily generate new test ideas, and understand complex test results.Often in testing workstreams, we’re presenting interesting data points on what moved up or down, but we’re stuck wondering why something happened because we’re looking at data in table-based format instead of through the lens of how users actually see our sites.

Which teams benefit from DXA platforms?

Many data stakeholders can benefit from the specialized insights DXA tools provide. Here are a few examples.

• Marketers can sharpen campaigns and landing pages by quickly evaluating how content influences user behavior.
• Product Managers can dig into product features and functionality to inform future decisions and investment.
• CRO Specialists depend on these tools for generating optimization ideas and reaching conclusions on complex experiments.
• UX Experts can evaluate site layout, navigation, and usability.
• Technical Teams are able to pinpoint and fix issues to boost site performance stability.

Summary

DXA tools are essential for organizations that want to deeply understand and improve digital experiences from the perspective of the user. It’s important to note DXA tools are not a replacement for your traditional analytics tools — instead, they are a complement. Tools like Contentsquare sit at the intersection of “What happened?” and “What should we do now?”

By integrating DXA tools into traditional analytics programs, we’re seeing clients increasing ROI by creating efficiencies in understanding why something happened, and therefore taking action more quickly. In upcoming posts, we’ll be examining specific tools and capabilities we see Fortune 500 organizations using to deliver a user-centric approach to analysis and optimization.