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21 customer journey KPIs to track to improve PX

You want to improve your customers’ journey through your site or product page—and you know that what’s measured can also be managed and improved. But with so many customer data points available, what should you measure? It’s hard to know where to start—or what to track.

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We’ve put together a guide on the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you measure the success of your customer journey and connect the dots between your users and your business objectives to understand how to improve your customer's experience at every stage.

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21 customer journey KPIs to track user success 

KPIs measure how well your business or team is achieving your most important user and company goals. KPI metrics act as progress milestones that show whether you’re meeting your targets, helping you make data-informed decisions.  

Tracking quantifiable, user-centric KPIs across the customer journey helps you understand whether you’re converting and retaining users, and how you can improve the customer experience . 

We’ve created a ‘KPI starter pack’ for your business: learn which metrics to track—and how —at every point in the buyer’s journey, from the awareness, consideration, decision, and retention stages right through to post-purchase advocacy. 

Let’s get started!

7 KPIs for measuring the awareness stage 

At this stage, your potential customers are aware that they have a specific need or problem they need solving and have usually started researching answers to their questions when they come across your company or website.

Use the following KPIs to track how well you’re engaging awareness-stage users to find your site and consider your brand as a possible solution to their pain points. 

1. Impressions

Impressions are metrics that quantify the number of times your content is displayed to users, regardless of whether they click on it or not. Every time a piece of content is shown to a user, it counts as an impression—so one user can have multiple impressions of one ad, page, post, or media element. 

Measuring impressions gives you insight into your findability, search ranking, web traffic, and content shareability . 

Use tools like Google Analytics to track impressions on your website, content, product pages, and ads.

How to optimize impressions:

Emphasize quality: great, shareable content is shown to more users—use targeted copy, keywords, and segmenting to make sure your content helps users achieve their goals.

Focus on keyword match types: you don’t just want impressions: you want to get your content in front of hyper-relevant, qualified users. Use a mix of keyword match types (like broad, phrase, and exact types) to discover new search queries and get a good impression share. 

Geo-targeting: market your content to target a certain region that’s relevant to your ideal customer profile to reach more users within that area.

Create engaging headlines: use emotional words, numbers, questions, or how-to and listicle headlines to attract customers.   

2. Cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) 

CPM refers to the price of 1,000 impressions on a web page: it helps you understand how many users are seeing your content, relative to its cost, to help you decide what to invest in for maximum visibility and impact. 

You can use free CPM calculators like WebFX or ClickZ —or this formula to calculate CPM:

CPM = Total cost of campaign / (Total number of impressions/1000)

How to optimize CPM: 

Use A/B testing tools : test out different content, banner, and website visuals and copy on your users to see what’s working and what you could improve to save money on pages or campaigns that don’t grab your users' attention.

Add a CTA: make sure you’re adding attractive calls to action (CTAs) on your product pages so users know what action to take when they see them, helping your business drive conversions. Use Hotjar's Observe tools—like Heatmaps —to understand where to place your CTAs so they get more user attention and traction.   

Reach describes the number of potential users who could possibly see your content, helping you figure out if the cost of the content or campaign is worth the number of new users it might attract . Reach can be measured over various channels or campaigns: for example, you can measure reach for your social media, your blog, your landing pages, and specific marketing or ad campaigns.

Understanding your reach helps you increase brand awareness, minimize campaign risk, fine-tune your messaging, and maximize your resources. 

Use tools like Google Adwords to quantify your reach for specific campaigns or calculate it yourself: 

Reach = impressions/frequency 

How to optimize your reach:

Make your website relatable: create strong content and web pages relevant to your users so they'll want to share it on their channels.

Master referral marketing: delighted users help you spread the word about your brand or website, and grow your reach. According to HubSpot , 90% of people trust suggestions from family and friends, which means that referrals help you sustainably grow your product awareness and increase conversion rates .

Partner with other brands: increase your network by working with other businesses that target a similar audience. 

4. SEO ranking

Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ranking shows how visible your content is to users who are ‘organically’ searching for relevant terms. A strong SEO ranking also gets you prime positioning on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). 

If your content or website doesn’t appear on the first few pages of search engines like Google when users look for potential answers to their problems, they’ll be less likely to turn to your solution.  

Many factors influence your SEO ranking: having a secure and accessible website, page speed, mobile-friendliness, optimized content and keywords, domain authority, user experience (UX), and backlinks. 

Use tools like Google Analytics , SEMrush , and Moz to measure your SEO ranking, taking all these factors into account to help identify areas of improvement. 

How to optimize your SEO ranking: 

Optimize your URLs and content: make sure your ‘slug’ (the part of the URL that identifies a particular page) includes important keywords and shows users what your page is about. Optimize your content with tools like Google Search Console .  

Focus on content quality: high-quality content ranks better on search engines. Make sure your content is well-researched, educational, and useful to users.  

Use relevant keywords: keep your keywords focused and relevant to your content. 

Improve your page loading times: test and optimize your page speed to 2 seconds or less to prevent users from bouncing. 

Make your website mobile-friendly: a responsive website will help you reach mobile users. Use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test to make sure you’re optimized for cell phone devices.  

5. Bounce rate

A website’s bounce rate tells you the number of users who leave a web page without performing an action. Seeing a high bounce rate indicates you’re not attracting the right customers to your website, or that you’re failing to keep them engaged. An increasing bounce rate could mean there are problem areas on your website: users may be leaving due to poor website usability, slow page speed, unnecessary pop-ups, or low-quality content. 

Calculate bounce rate by dividing the number of single-page sessions by the number of total sessions on your site. For example, if 1,000 users land on your site (total sessions) and 60 of them leave without performing an action (single-page sessions), your bounce rate is 6%. 

How to optimize your bounce rate: 

Improve UX: make website elements findable, create a responsive design, build intuitive navigation, and remove unnecessary pop-ups or plugins to make the user experience more enjoyable. 

Include strong CTAs: if you’ve enticed users to click on your website, don’t lose them with a weak call to action that doesn’t encourage them to keep browsing. Make your CTAs relevant to your content so they hit home with your audience and help them make the crucial next step to converting.  

Make your content consistent and high value: update your content regularly and make sure it’s high-quality to provide users with real value before they’ve even made a purchase.

Improve your brand storytelling: ensure your brand story is relatable and your product experience (PX) is interesting and emotionally compelling to establish a real connection between users and your brand and mission.

Pro tip : use Hotjar's Observe tools—like Session Recordings —to dig deeper into understanding why users bounce.

Bounce rates are good indicators that something might be wrong: but considered alone, they tell you very little about what’s really happening on your site. Recordings help you put bounce rate metrics into context by showing you playbacks of how users are navigating individual web pages and what’s blocking them.

Once you’ve learned what’s making users click or ‘bounce’ away, use your targeted insights to optimize key pages and site elements and remove blockers .

6. Time on page 

Time on page KPIs measure how much time users spend on each web page, helping you determine your business's best-performing or most engaging pages, and which ones you need to improve. It also tells you if you’re attracting the right users to your site, or whether they're just false leads.

Use tools like Google Analytics to determine your time on page metric. 

7. Pages per visit 

The pages per visit on a website indicate the average number of web pages a user visits during their session. When the average user is interested in exploring your site beyond the homepage or landing page they arrive at, it’s a good sign you’re engaging visitors.

Calculate pages per visit by taking the total number of page views and dividing it by the total number of sessions. 

How to optimize time on page and pages per visit:

Make your web pages more engaging: ensure you’re giving users a consistent, engaging product experience. Do this by focusing on intuitive and pleasing design, easy navigation, and interactive elements on your site. 

Session recordings: watch as users navigate your site with Hotjar Recordings to know which pages to optimize to improve user delight. 

4 KPIs for measuring the customer journey's consideration stage

At the consideration stage, potential buyers start comparing and analyzing existing options: they’re probably aware of some of the options they can choose from but haven’t yet made up their mind. 

Because the consideration stage involves several different customer journey touchpoints , your business needs to offer a strong product offering and great content marketing and messaging.

So, what are some of the KPIs you need to use to measure your website’s success when users are considering buying your product? 

Clicks show visitors engaging with website elements, media content, links, and CTAs: a click means a user is looking to trigger an action. 

Analyze clicks with tools like Hotjar Heatmaps and Recordings , which give you deep insights into exactly how users click, move, and scroll through your site. 

How to optimize clicks: 

Session Recordings: Hotjar Recordings let you watch full user sessions to determine what’s driving clicks. For example, if you see users ’rage-clicking’, on a non-responsive site element, but failing to click on your CTA, it’s a good indicator there’s navigation confusion or a broken link.

Heatmaps: Hotjar Heatmaps give you context into which key elements, features, and CTAs users are clicking on and which they’re ignoring to help you make effective changes that drive conversions.

2. Click-through rate (CTR) 

Click-through rate measures the number of clicks on a specific link to the number of times users were exposed to the link (the number of impressions). Here’s a simple formula for calculating CTR:

CTR = (click-throughs / impressions) x 100

Use CTR to measure the success of CTAs on your landing pages , pay-per-click search results, or hyperlinks in email campaigns or blog posts.   

Measuring click-through rate helps you better understand whether users are taking key actions or not, so you know what works (and what doesn’t) on your website or product pages. 

How to optimize CTR: 

Optimize headlines and copy: use a maximum of two focus keywords in your headline and copy. Make sure your content is designed to appeal to users , not just to search engines, by addressing and solving their problems. 

Use images: break up text with attractive images or visuals to engage users. 

Include clear, attractive CTAs so users know exactly where to click: write targeted CTAs that compel visitors to click, and position them clearly above the fold. 

3. Cost-per-click (CPC)

CPC measures the amount of money you pay for each click in pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns to help you target the right users and get a return on your investment. 

You can calculate CPC by dividing the total cost of an ad, post, or campaign element by the number of clicks it gets.

How to optimize CPC: 

Improve your Quality Score: your Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Improving the quality of each directly impacts your cost-per-click. 

Bid on long-tail keywords: use ‘long-tail’ keywords—like questions or longer search queries—to reduce your cost-per-click. Since ad placement is ‘auctioned’, this means bidding on long-tail search queries relevant to your business.

Schedule your ads: make sure your ads are displayed at times when your users are active and converting.

4. Engagement rate 

Tracking engagement rates shows you how involved users are with your content—you know users are engaged when they comment, ‘like’, or share your content. 

This shows you how effective your website and brand campaigns are since users who show high interest by spending time interacting with blogs, videos, and product pages are more likely to convert. 

Measuring engagement on social media is calculated by dividing the total engagement by total followers, multiplied by 100.

Measuring interaction on your website can be tricky, as there are many metrics that fall under the category. Use tools like Google Analytics to help you measure engagement by aggregating other metrics such as time spent on page, clicks, open rate, and click-through rate.

How to optimize engagement rate: 

Use web analytics: Google Analytics will give you insights into which page and website elements you need to optimize.  

Use Session Recordings: Hotjar Recordings give you an in-depth window into how users interact with your website across an entire session. This helps you spot problem areas on your site, such as pages that load incorrectly on certain browsers or devices, broken or missing page elements, and unclear or confusing functionality—like a login timeout that’s causing user frustration. Then, you can make improvements that keep your users engaged.

3 KPIs for measuring the customer journey's decision stage

At this stage, your prospect is ready to make the final decision about their purchase. 

Customer testimonials, case studies, reviews, and a great checkout experience all play a critical role in winning your user over so they convert into paying customers.  

Let’s explore the KPIs you can use to measure your success at the conversion decision stage:

1. Conversion rate

Your conversion rate is the percentage of users that complete a desired conversion action out of your total number of website visitors.

A good conversion rate indicates that you’re successfully targeting the right people with the right solution and giving them a compelling, friction-free customer experience . 

How to optimize your conversion rate: 

1. Find out why users aren’t converting: use Hotjar's Survey tools to place an exit-intent survey on your website that asks visitors why they’re leaving a page or abandoning their cart. Understanding why users aren’t converting gives you valuable insight into what to fix to remove blockers, improve their product experience, and promote future conversions.

2. A/B tests: test your site’s CTAs, landing pages, buttons, and key elements to see which variations drive the most conversions. 

3. Use high-quality product images: users won’t be tempted to convert if they’re looking at poor-quality images. Invest in professional product images to improve conversions. 

4. Optimize your headline: make sure your headline clearly communicates your product's value proposition . 

Making a high number of sales transactions in a specific time period is a good sign you’re succeeding at converting users into customers at the decision stage.

Here’s a simple formula to calculate your sales total: 

Sales = Number of units sold x average selling price per unit

How to optimize sales: 

Track and analyze sales data: use sales analytics software to track and analyze your sales data and make data-driven user decisions that drive more revenue.

Add testimonials, reviews, and logos: use social proof to build confidence in your users—if your product has helped others, it could also help them. 

Listen to your users: get to know your audience and what they experience with Hotjar's Ask tools to tailor your solution and marketing to user needs.

3. Cost per conversion (CPC)

Cost per conversion refers to the total cost of a website element or advertisement in relation to the conversions it drives. 

You can calculate the CPC with this easy formula: 

Cost per conversion = Total cost of ads, content, or media/number of conversions

Calculating CPC helps you understand how well your ads, posts, and other media are performing. A high CPC means you’re spending more than you’re converting, while a low CPC means your ads and content are optimized for your target buyers.

How to optimize your CPC: 

Focus on your best-performing pages: use web analytics to determine which pages convert the most. Refocus your budget to spend more promoting those pages. 

Figure out the best time to display ads and conversion content: use analytics to tell you when users are most active, and show key promotional content during those specific times. 

5 KPIs for measuring customer retention 

This is arguably the most important stage in the buyer’s journey—by simply retaining your existing customers, you can support sustainable business growth. 

According to research done by Frederick Reichheld at Bain & Company (the inventor of the Net Promoter Score®), increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.

Use the following KPIs to track and measure your customer retention rates to understand what keeps customers satisfied and improve the customer experience: 

Pro tip: use Hotjar churn Surveys to get feedback from product users who decide to cancel their subscriptions or memberships to pinpoint what’s not working for them and make changes to prevent cancellations. 

1. Customer loyalty 

Customer loyalty measures a customer’s likelihood to do repeat business with your company . It’s a significant metric that speaks to your ability to provide value and positive experiences to your users. 

You can measure customer loyalty by calculating the number of customers who have purchased more than four times in a year and dividing it by the number of unique customers in the same time period. 

How to optimize customer loyalty: 

Provide value: always look for ways to add value to your users’ experience and better solve their pain points.

Increase responsiveness: support your customers with excellent customer service. 

Reward your customers: let your customers know you value their loyalty and create a loyalty rewards program that provides users with exclusive gifts, discounts, and offers. 

2. Customer satisfaction 

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a short-term measure of whether your product, service, and user experience meets user needs. 

You can measure CSAT scores by asking users to rate their experience on scales of one to 10, poor to excellent, or whatever metric you choose. 

Use Hotjar CSAT surveys to easily gauge satisfaction levels and customize surveys to fit your unique business and user needs. 

How to optimize customer satisfaction: 

Experience the journey yourself: go through all the touchpoints your users experience on their customer journey to get a closer look at what you could enhance. Use Hotjar Recordings to follow your users through their journey and get firsthand insights into journey-specific improvements. 

Offer multi-channel help: make sure you’re equipping your users with educational videos, documents, information hubs, and other supporting elements to guide them through product adoption. 

3. Net Promoter Score® (NPS) 

Net Promoter Score ® is a metric used to gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, and excitement with a company that’s calculated by asking customers one question: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company/product to a friend or colleague?”

Use tools like Hotjar's on-page NPS Surveys to track and measure NPS scores and visualize how your NPS is trending over time.

How to optimize NPS scores: 

Use NPS feedback: implement the feedback you receive from your NPS surveys to drive improvements and meet user needs. With Hotjar Survey tools, you can ask users why they’ve given you a specific score to understand what you’re doing well and what you could do better.

Conduct root cause analysis: identify the main causes of problems your users face to prevent them from happening in the future. 

4. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value measures the revenue generated over the lifecycle of a customer’s relationship with your company: tracking your CLV tells you how profitable your business is. 

Measure CLV by calculating the average purchase value and multiplying it by the average number of purchases. 

How to optimize customer lifetime value: 

Improve onboarding experience: a poor onboarding experience leads to customer churn—continually test onboarding experiences to streamline product adoption. 

Improve UX: constantly look for ways to improve the user's experience for them to seamlessly navigate your site and product pages. 

Live chat support: respond to your customers swiftly, every time, to ease user frustration fast. 

Keep communication relevant: don’t send customers emails just to fill their inboxes. Keep your marketing emails value-based and to the point. 

5. Feedback 

Tracking customer feedback is important to understand the quality of your users' product experience. 

Use surveys, interviews, and feedback forms to gauge how well you’re meeting user needs and what you could do to improve the user experience. 

Hotjar Surveys and Feedback tools let you access user feedback ‘in the wild’, as users navigate your website and product pages, giving you actionable insights while their experience is still fresh to help you make customer-centric changes with major impact.

How to optimize user feedback: 

Ask a mix of open- and closed-ended questions: ask your users a range of survey questions to get a granular understanding of their experience and possible enhancements. 

Make surveys short: don’t bombard users with long surveys that deter them from participating. 

Use feedback tools: use integrated, non-intrusive feedback tools—like Hotjar's Feedback widgets—where users can quickly and easily provide their inputs.

2 KPIs for measuring customer advocacy 

Advocacy is an important customer journey stage: it means your customer is so delighted with their experience that they become an active cheerleader for your product and brand with their contacts. 

Below, we look at KPIs you can use to measure customer advocacy to turn users into promoters for your product . 

1. Referrals 

Customer referrals build user trust in your brand and compel visitors to convert. The number of referrals your brand gets tells you you’re delighting users—while generating high-quality leads for your business. 

To calculate the referral rate, find out the number of referred purchases divided by the total number of purchases . Ask users if they were referred to your product or brand, or how they heard about you with Hotjar Survey and Feedback forms. 

How to optimize referrals: 

Gamify your referral program: make it easy for users to refer your brand with rewards, or points that count toward a discount per referral. 

NPS surveys: use Hotjar NPS Surveys to get insight into how likely users are to refer or recommend your product or brand. 

As mentioned above, measure your net promoter score with NPS surveys that ask customers if they’d recommend your product or brand for direct insight into how well you’re retaining customers and meeting their needs. 

Tips on identifying KPIs for your business 

KPIs should be tailored to your specific business objectives and user needs. So how can you identify the best KPIs for you? 

Use web analytics tools to look into the behavior patterns of users who converted

Use product experience insights tools like Hotjar to ask your customers about their decision-making process: which factors were they paying attention to at each stage?

Use this combined data to see which metrics are most likely to predict a successful customer journey, and use these as your KPI

Determine business and user objectives by setting Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals and aligning them to your KPIs

Use qualitative (feedback & surveys) and quantitative (analytics) data to inform your KPIs 

Pitfalls to avoid when identifying and tracking KPIs

Avoid these common mistakes for successful KPI tracking: 

Don’t try to track everything ; be specific about choosing the KPIs that matter to your customer and business and stick to them

Don’t map your customer’s journey on assumptions—talk to your customers first

Don’t just measure KPIs then forget about them—use them to prioritize updates and remove blockers along the customer journey

Don’t rely on generic industry KPIs or targets alone—use them to inform your KPIs, but make sure they’re realistic and relevant to your customers and company

Use KPIs to delight customers on their journeys 

KPIs are important signals of whether you’re on the right track to achieve your business and user goals—or whether you need to make adjustments to better meet customer needs . 

Use our guide to help you find the right KPIs to measure and optimize the user journey for delighted customers and brilliant business results.

Use Hotjar to understand how real users are experiencing your website—then optimize their product experience!

FAQs about customer journey KPIs

What are customer journey kpis.

Customer journey key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that show businesses whether they’re meeting their goals during all stages of the customer journey: awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy. 

What are the most important KPIs to track for the customer journey?

The most important KPIs to track at each stage of the customer journey include: 

Awareness stage: impressions, reach, time on page, etc. 

Consideration stage: clicks, click-through rate, engagement rate. 

Decision stage: conversion rate, sales. 

Retention stage: customer loyalty, NPS scores. 

Advocacy stage: referrals, NPS scores.

How do KPIs help?

KPIs measure how well your business or team is achieving its goals. By understanding which goals you’re meeting, and which goals you’re not, you can make better decisions and improve the customer experience to achieve your most important objectives. KPI metrics act as milestones to measure progress and provide insights that help businesses prioritize brilliantly. 

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A complete guide to customer journey analytics.

13 min read Customer journey analytics can help you to nail down exactly why your customers behave the way they do and tie your customer experience efforts to financial outcomes. Learn how to use customer journey analytics for improved CX with our ultimate guide.

What is customer journey analytics?

Customer Journey Analytics is the process of understanding the impact of every interaction a customer has with your business.

Often, customer journey analytics starts with a customer journey map , which is presented as a graph, flow chart, or other visual that documents each stage of the relationship between a customer and a brand.

However, instead of just charting their customer journey on a map, customer journey analytics takes a further step to analyze what effect each interaction has on your customers’ decisions.

Further information is overlaid to help analyze how each interaction drives customers toward the end goal.

Customer journey analytics can include analysis of:

• Customer needs
• Emotional highs and lows
• Key metrics per step in the journey
• Customer satisfaction scores , customer effort scores , and other survey results

Customer journey analytics can help you to direct your customers’ attention and resolve any pain points that stop them from taking desired actions. It helps you to augment your customer experience and develop a customer journey that not only gets customers to where you want them to go, but helps them connect to the journey itself.

Learn the analytics and ROI on customer journey management in our free course. 

Customer journey analytics vs. customer journey mapping

Many brands have a broad sense of their customer journey but haven’t optimized it by creating a comprehensive customer journey map or analyzing what affects their customers’ experience.

Customer journey analytics and customer journey mapping are complementary but different processes. Here are the main ways in which they are distinct, and how they work together.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is the process of laying out the end-to-end journey in a clear way. Creating a map of every touchpoint your customer will experience means you can see what steps your customers take to reach the end goal of a purchase, signup, or other action.

Often, journey maps are documented at the process level. For example, an insurance provider would map the claims process, and a bank would document the new account process.

Some common components of customer journey maps include:

• The process being evaluated
• The stages of the journey
• Critical customer interactions and touchpoints
• Representative customer quotes
• Key customer expectations
• Metrics like satisfaction score, mention volume, NPS
• Trends in topics related to this part of the journey

Our ultimate guide to customer journey mapping can help you to draft your first customer journey map or optimize one you have already.

How do you use customer journey analytics with customer journey mapping?

As we’ve already explained, customer journey analytics is the process of gathering as much information as you can from every part of the journey and analyzing the journey for pain points and successes.

Understanding which parts of the journey function as planned and which obstacles are in the way of your customers’ progress means you can take action to ensure they complete their journey as you intend.

Benefits of customer journey analytics

There are several benefits to completing customer journey analytics. From better understanding your customers’ behavior to a better ROI for your customer experience , customer journey analytics gives you better insights and a more informed strategy for improvement.

Your brand becomes more customer-centric

Understanding the customer journey allows your company to be more customer-centric . It allows you to closely evaluate the activities, expectations, thoughts, and feelings of your customers . You learn what they like and dislike, how to move them through your buying cycle, and how to satisfy and retain them . When journey mapping is complemented with customer journey analytics it helps you understand the priority for your customer experience initiatives.

Your business becomes more unified

In addition, with the right focus, customer journey mapping and customer journey analytics break down internal silos. They empower you to streamline services across departments. Not only that, but they help to align everyone by providing a common understanding of the customer experience. Employees get greater visibility into what happens upstream and downstream of their interactions with customers, letting everybody provide a more consistent, high-quality experience.

You can find track issues as they happen

With a sophisticated customer journey analytics platform, you can pinpoint issues in real-time. You can test new approaches and see their influence on your customer experience and bottom line with analytics that update as quickly as you need them.

You see direct and indirect feedback in one place

Explicit feedback – for example, the information you gather through surveys – is easier to pinpoint to specific interactions customers have with your brand. The customer has an experience and directly after, you request input.

Implicit feedback is more complex to understand. This type of data might include operational data such as sales numbers, or it might cover social mentions, what your customers say on the phone to your care center, third-party reviews, and more.

Understanding how your audience thinks, feels, and acts in response to customer interactions without directly asking them might seem impossible, but with tools such as conversation analytics , you’re able to link your customer journey to this type of customer data.

See how Qualtrics CustomerXM enables customer journey analytics

An example of using customer journey analytics

Customer journey analytics can be used to understand the impact of sub-journeys limited to single processes – such as opening a new account – or the entire digital customer journey .

Below is an example of how you can use customer journey analytics to chart the success of each journey.

Resolving a customer satisfaction issue for a specific sub-journey

Let’s take a printer business that provides hardware to its customers. The brand has realized that the repair sub-journey is currently leading to low Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and a higher cost to serve per customer.

The journey

First, the brand needs to chart the customer journey. It looks like the below:

• A customer has an issue with their printing device
• They call the customer care center to schedule a repair
• The service agents arrive at their place of residence
• The repair is made

However, there are other ways this journey might unfold. For example:

• The service agents arrive at their place of residence but the customer is not present
• The repair cannot occur, so the customer has to call again to reschedule the repair
• The repair is made at a later date when the customer is present

The analysis

Overlaying the NPS scores on this latter journey, the company realizes that the NPS score drops when the customer has to reschedule the repair. Asking the customer to go through the same process once again to rebook their appointment is causing customers to feel less satisfied with their experience.

Using natural language processing (NLU), the team can also see that there is a more negative sentiment expressed in the open text question they have added to the NPS survey. With the additional calls to the care center, the cost to serve each customer also increases.

The resulting action  

The brand decides it’s best to provide other means to customers to book their appointments at a time to suit them. Offering customers a self-service booking system that they can access via their mobile on an app or through the website gives the customers more control over when their appointment occurs. Adding a facility to reschedule any booked appointments for a more convenient time and accentuating this with push or text notifications when the repair team is on their way can help to see if this reduces the instances of missed repairs and reduces the impact on the customer care center .

With customer journey analytics in place, the brand team can see if this improves NPS scores at the same points in the customer journey, and measure in financial terms the impact of actions taken for improved customer experience .

How to use customer journey analytics

Customer journey analytics provides the insight you need to successfully manage your customer’s journey. From lowering customer churn to helping you predict customer behavior, putting a customer journey analytics solution in place will help you to leverage your customer behavioral data for financial success.

But how do you start using customer journey analytics? Below is the outline of the actions you’ll need to take.

1. Map your customer journeys and aggregate data

First, you need to create a customer journey and aggregate the customer data that you already have. Good customer journey analytics tools will be able to do this for you, cutting down the time your team needs to spend sourcing data from third-party locations, customer service chat logs, and survey results.

Competent customer journey analytics software will also be able to track data in real-time, allowing you to build a comprehensive map that reacts to current customer behavior . It should also be able to draw data from numerous sources, helping you to break down traditional business silos and understanding customer interactions from all business angles: sales, marketing, and more.

Learn the five competencies for customer journey mapping

2. Analyze your customer behavior and data

Once you have your customer journeys mapped out and your data collected, you can link specific interactions to particular customer behavior, survey results, social media comments , and more. You’ll need a customer journey analytics solution to be able to link all of this data together in an efficient way.

3. Take action informed by data-led insights

Customer journey analytics provides you with the ability to see cause and effect, as well as providing you with concrete steps to change specific interactions or the entire customer journey. When customers react badly to specific processes or interactions, you can test how changes in your customer journeys affect their future decisions.

Not only that, but you can coordinate your teams across your business to work on customer satisfaction with their experience, based on the data you’ve analyzed. For example, if customers are led to purchase through your marketing but aren’t happy with their purchase, they will deal with your marketing , sales, and customer care teams. Understanding what specifically caused a problem for them means you can inform each team of actions they can take to improve.

How customer journey analytics can improve your customer experience

Brands often hit a wall when trying to measure customer experience . Charting your customers’ often nebulous sentiment and which actions have an impact on customer experience can be difficult without the right tools to hand.

Understanding the return on investment for specific actions taken for customer experience is difficult for a number of reasons:

• Data is siloed or overwhelming
• Business departments work separately with a lack of oversight
• Actions aren’t based on data
• There isn’t a way to track the impact of actions on customer experience

Qualtrics CustomerXM allows you to see the value of customer journeys with rich data analysis, provided through conversational analytics . With natural language understanding, Qualtrics is able to provide you unrivaled insights into customer emotions, sentiment, and more to paint a complete picture of friction points and their rationale. Powered by feedback from multiple areas of your business, you are able to create a plan of action with a tangible effect on your customer experience and business outcomes.

With a deeper understanding of customer behavior, your brand is able to not only understand the return on investment of your actions but develop a customer experience that delivers results. Extending your customer lifetime value , increasing customer satisfaction, and reducing customer churn becomes easier when you understand the triggers for the behavior.

Learn how to take action on customer journey management with our free online course

Related resources

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What is Customer Journey Analytics

Published: June 28, 2023

A customer doesn’t just mindlessly purchase a product or service. They go through an entire journey, from discovering your brand, to purchasing your product or service, to sometimes recommending it to someone else. 

To make sense of your customer’s journey, you’ll need to leverage customer journey analytics.

Every business, startup or enterprise — in any industry — needs to understand how customers interact with their brand. Insights gathered from customer journey analytics can help, while leading to increased customer lifetime value, customer loyalty, and revenue growth. 

In this blog post, we cover the following:

What is customer journey analytics?

• Customer Journey Stages
• Customer Journey Analytics Benefits

Customer Journey Analytics Software

• Customer Journey Analytics vs. Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey analytics is a collection of data that helps you to understand how your prospects or customers behave, engage, and convert along the customer journey. 

Customer journey analytics often begins with a customer journey map , which is a visual representation of every step the customer goes through with your business. Then, it applies data on how your customer behaves throughout different phases of that map,  to help you assess the effect your customers’ journey has on your business, or what’s holding customer’s back from completing that journey and purchasing a product

Customer Journey Analytics Steps

1. outline a customer journey map..

Create your customer journey map using HubSpot’s template

The first step to customer journey analytics is creating a customer journey map. A typical customer journey map includes the following: the buying process, user actions, emotions, pain points, and solutions. The customer journey map is the foundation for further analysis.

2. Identify the right analytics tools.

To accurately conduct customer journey analysis, you'll need the right tools. 

A good customer journey analytics tool will monitor, track, and analyze data like website data, conversion data, and detail data across multiple channels.

Customer data platforms (CDPs) also play a role in supporting customer journey analytics. The platforms assign unique IDs to your website and app to build single customer views, which can include information such as location, browser, device type, operating system, historical transactions, and visitor logs.

3. Collect your data.

A robust analytics platform should enable you to collect data on customer behavior. Data can be broken down into two main buckets: user data and interaction data. 

• User data: Provides context on a user and their traits. Data can include email, age, industry, and occupation.
• Interaction data: Gives information about how a user interacts with your product or service.

4. Analyze data.

Data in itself is not meaningful without analysis. The purpose of customer journey analytics is to make sense of the data and extract insights that can inform your business strategy. 

For example, an e-commerce company might identify, through analysis, that requiring customers to create an account to complete a purchase leads to the customer not completing the purchase — a solution could be implementing a guest checkout option.

5. Update customer journey map.

Using the insights you’ve gained, you can now update the customer journey map accordingly. For example, you might add additional pain points uncovered through data analysis, like requiring customers to create accounts to complete a purchase.

6. Use customer journey analytics to test new strategies.

The next step is to figure out how to enhance the customer journey experience. Testing new strategies like adding a guest checkout option, making the account creation process faster with fewer steps, and sending abandoned cart emails are all examples.

Benefits of Customer Journey Analytics

By leveraging customer journey analytics, you'll be able to improve your customer’s experience with actionable insights, while unlocking benefits like:

Better Understanding Customers

By gathering and synthesizing data, you will better understand what aspects of the buyer’s journey lead them to purchase a product or service, or not. For example, an e-commerce company might learn that customers that come from a specific social media platform are more likely to buy, or discover that certain audience demographics or affinities are more likely to become leads.

Pinpointing Where You’re Losing Customers

Not all customers follow through, and unless they fill out a survey, it can be difficult to figure out why they churn. By leveraging customer journey analytics, you can pinpoint where you’re losing potential customers. 

For example, a business can lose potential customers during channel or device transitions. A prospect  might start filling out a form on a mobile device but choose to complete it on a laptop. If information entered is lost, the potential customer might not take the time to complete the signup process.

Optimizing and Solving for Prospects

With a better understanding of customers’ pain points and the reasons behind them, you'll be able to figure out how to improve and strategize around an accurate customer journey.

Improve ROI

Are your investments in customer experience worth it? By using customer journey analytics, you’ll be able to measure ROI for customer experience initiatives. From there, you can streamline, remove, or cost cut initiatives that don’t benefit your bottom line, or double down on the aspects of the buyer’s journey that do.

For instance, if you run an incredibly expensive advertising campaign that doesn’t yield the same level of new customers or purchase page visits as unpaid or more in-house content, you can aim to save money on ads and focus on the more affordable strategies that actually earn you money.

1. HubSpot Marketing Hub: Advanced Marketing Reporting

Get started with customer journey analytics

HubSpot Marketing Hub is equipped with robust customer journey analytics capabilities and tools, which can map data around conversions, leads, deals, and website engagements around different stages of the customer journey. 

The Advanced Marketing Reporting tool also enables you to  attribute every customer interaction to revenue, analyze conversion rates and time between nurturing path steps, and provides further data to help you build informed strategies that can improve ROI and purchase rates.

2. Content Square

Content Square captures UX, performance and product, and content data throughout the customer journey. The platform also enables you to visualize metrics so that they are easily digestible. You will be able to get insights like bounce rate and number of lost conversions, and dig deeper to pinpoint why.

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a widely used website analytics software that enables you to track user behavior on different platforms, including mobile applications. Features like daily traffic reporting give you insight into what visitors are engaging with. Plus, its Analytics Amplifier can combine Google Analytics and HubSpot data .

Customer Journey Mapping vs. Customer Journey Analytics

Customer journey analytics and customer journey mapping are often confused with each other. Although they’re complementary,  customer journey mapping visually presents customer journey stages from start to finish, while customer journey analytics offers data about a  customers’ interactions in each stage.

Customer journey maps often include the following:

• The buying process: By pulling data from places like CMS and prospecting tools, you will be able to figure out what goes into a customer’s purchasing process. 
• User actions: This part of the customer journey map details the actions the customer takes throughout their journey.
• Emotions: Emotions help color your understanding of how your customer is feeling and reacting as they go through their journey with your business.
• Pain points: Adding pain points to your customer journey map gives you a comprehensive picture of the challenges your customer may experience.
• Solutions: Figuring out solutions can help your customers experience fewer pain points. The data and insights you’ve gathered can help inform your solutions.

Customer journey analytics delves deeper. The customer journey map is the “what” and customer journey analytics is the “why” because it organizes customer or prospect data around each stage.  

Here’s an example of how customer journey analytics works in HubSpot Marketing Hub:

HubSpot’s Advanced Marketing Reporting Tool  

Customer Journey Map vs. Analytics Example: Let’s say your business offers CMS tools and your ideal customer, a graphic design firm, finds you through a targeted Instagram ad.

In the customer journey map you’ve built , your target customer considers using your CMS tools to build a new website that showcases their strengths. They schedule a demo before trying the free version and are initially excited, but become frustrated with the limited design elements offered by the free version. Their biggest pain point quickly becomes lack of versatility. They then look into purchasing the paid version or go to a cheaper competitor.

With customer journey analytics, you’ll apply real-time data to that map: From journey mapping, you’ve identified the steps your customer often takes  and their common pain points. A strong customer journey analytics tool can then collect, aggregate, synthesize, and visualize data to help you make sense of your customer’s actions and see if your mapping and journey-based strategies work. 

For example, data might show how your customer is interacting with your product. 

A good Customer Journey Analytics platform combines data like user data, survey results, and website analytics, you can gain a comprehensive view of why your customer is experiencing those pain points and consequently address their concerns.

Cultivate an Impactful Customer Journey

In order to remain competitive, it is important to understand and create strategies to enhance the customer’s journey. Customer Journey Analytics is just one component. Other key steps include creating buyer personas , mapping out the customer journey , and continuously updating strategies based on data.

To get started with improving the customer journey, learn more about HubSpot’s marketing solution Marketing Hub .

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The 14 Customer Journey Metrics to Track

“How are my customers doing on their journey with our brand?”

This is one of the most asked questions by marketers as they gauge customer experience and track marketing performance.

The customer journey is the path of customer interactions and engagements, made up of various touchpoints that each existing or potential customer has with a brand.

A successful customer journey can lead to conversion and sales, whereas an unsuccessful one can lead to the loss of a customer.

To measure how successful a customer journey is, brands can rely on customer journey analytics . Here are the 14 metrics they should track, analyze and optimize.

1. Website Visits

As a metric, website visits or sessions refer to the total number of times a user navigates to a website and any of its pages.

This is one of the most basic metrics to track as it shows a visitor’s intention to learn more about your company and product.

To make sure the visit was intentional, analytics tools generally only add towards the website visit count instances in which at least one web page has loaded.

Closely related to this metric are clicks, which represent the number of clicks a visitor makes on any given web page of your website and sessions, which measure the length of time the visitor spends on your website.

These are all customer behaviors that are telling of customer satisfaction with the web content and overall customer experience.

2. Page Scroll Length

The page scroll length is the distance that a user scrolls down a web page.

Sometimes referred to as “ scroll depth ,” this metric is a good indicator of interest and engagement, with a longer length typically indicating that website visitors are spending more time reading the content of the page.

While anything above the fold is automatically visible to the visitor once he or she enters the page, anything below requires the conscious effort of scrolling down to see.

By keeping track of the page scroll length of key website pages, such as the homepage and product pages, marketers can measure interest in their brand and products and make the appropriate adjustments to further optimize brand awareness and knowledge.

3. Conversion Rate

When mapping out the customer journey, marketers assign different goals to each stage of the customer journey.

Each goal is tied to a touchpoint on the customer journey map, and a conversion takes place when a goal is achieved.

The conversion rate, therefore, measures the number of users who completed the desired action or the designated goal as a percentage of the total number of users who reached the touch point.

Also Read: Customer Retention Metrics

For instance, if the goal for this blog post is to get readers to click on the call-to-action button, the conversion rate is the number of readers who clicked divided by the total number of readers.

Since the best customer journeys have a number of touchpoints, a conversion can refer to several different completed goals. These can be a like, click, sign-up, response to an email, or a purchase.

Check out Woopra’s list of 7 interesting real-life customer journey map examples to learn more about customer journey mapping, customer journey mapping tools, touchpoints, and conversions.

4. Cost per Conversion

A related metric to the conversion rate is the cost per conversion.

As its name suggests, the cost per conversion is the amount of money spent to generate a desired action or conversion.

In marketing, common forms of cost per conversion (CPC) include cost per impression, cost per click, and cost per lead.

CPC is a measure of campaign performance, with a lower cost signaling that the marketers behind the campaign are doing something right and getting people interested without spending too much money.

When the CPC is unusually high compared to previous campaigns or industry benchmarks, that is also telling of the campaign performance — namely, that the campaign, be it the content or the channel it’s running on, is not resonating with its intended audience.

High or low, the CPC, like many of these metrics, is a source of actionable insights that can help marketers optimize their campaigns.

The one metric everyone in business knows is sales.

Sales is the number of products or services sold to customers during a given period of time.

Whether you are a B2B company or a B2C company, whether you sell products or services, sales are important in any industry.

Sales, as a metric, not only directly assesses business performance, but it also indirectly reflects how your company is doing in terms of understanding customer needs and meeting customer expectations.

6. New Customer Revenue

New customer revenue is the total amount of money generated from a business’s new customers.

The counterpart to this metric is existing customer revenue.

Both are important to a company, but we are highlighting new customer revenue because it allows marketers to understand the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

A key goal of marketing is to raise brand awareness and elicit customer interest in the brand’s product or service.

New customer revenue is a metric that can highlight the number of new customers that your company is bringing in through its various marketing efforts and the dollar value these new customers contribute to your overall business.

7. Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a measure of a customer’s total monetary worth to a business over the entire course of the customer relationship.

In layman’s terms, CLV is how much a customer is expected to spend on products or services by a company.

CLV is an important metric for brands to fully understand and keep track of because it will influence a number of their decisions regarding where to put marketing dollars and which customer segments to target aggressively.

The typical formula to calculate CLV is:

_Average Purchase Value x Average Number of Purchases per Year x Average Customer Lifespan _

However, to precisely gauge CLV, businesses are better off relying on predictive and customer analytics that use existing customer data to generate more accurate predictions about customer behavior and value.

8. Retention Rate

The user journey does not end when said user converts to a customer. If anything, that is only the beginning of what brands hope to be a long-lasting customer relationship.

Customer retention refers to the ability of a business to keep its customers over a specific period of time.

As a metric, the retention rate is the percentage of customers who continue paying for a product or using a service over a given period of time.

Customer retention is just as important as customer acquisition, as it determines the sustainability and longevity of a business.

A high retention rate is a good indicator of high customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, whereas a low retention rate is a sign of trouble that should alarm businesses and get them to review and change their strategies.

9. Churn Rate

The opposite of the retention rate is the churn rate, which is the percentage of customers who stop paying for a product or using a service over a given period of time.

Customer churn, also known as customer attrition, is important to track because, like customer retention, it is very telling of the overall customer experience with a brand and its products and services.

There are many factors that can contribute to a high churn rate which may or may not have anything to do with the product or service your business offers.

These factors include poorly designed products that result in a high customer effort score, low-quality customer service, and a lack of customer support to ensure customer success.

This is why businesses should look at churn rate in conjunction with a number of the metrics we highlight in this blog post when engaging in marketing analytics — to get the full picture and understand what needs to change.

10. Net Promoter Score

Net promoter score (NPS) is a customer experience metric that measures the results of a single customer survey question: how likely is a customer to recommend a company’s product or service to a friend or colleague?

Customers answer on a scale of 1 to 10. Those who respond with a score of 9 or 10 are considered “promoters,” those who respond with a score of 0 to 6 are considered “detractors,” and those who respond with a score of 7 or 8 are considered “passives.”

Once customers have answered this question, the NPS is calculated by tallying up the responses and subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

NPS is a key measure of customer experience, satisfaction, and loyalty.

In an age when word-of-mouth advertising has a large influence over customer decisions, NPS is one important way to understand how your customers view your products or services and your overall reputation in the market.

11. Customer Satisfaction

Brands often employ customer success managers (CSMs) to support their customers in using their product or service and foster a positive customer relationship.

In order for these CSMs to fully understand if customers are satisfied with the company and its offerings, they may send out a customer feedback form.

An easy way to measure customer satisfaction in these feedback forms is by asking the question directly: how satisfied are you with the company’s products or services?

With these responses, CSMs can calculate a customer satisfaction (CSAT) score and work on improving it.

The CSAT score is one of many scores and responses that inform the overall customer health score, which CSMs use to determine whether a customer is healthy or at risk of churning.

12. User Engagement

User or customer engagement is a measure of how your customers interact with your product or service as well as you as a brand.

It is an overarching term that encompasses time spent, frequency, and level of engagement with a brand, its product, website, app, social media, and other marketing channels.

Even a call to a contact center is a form of user engagement, and when it comes to engagement, quality and timely responses are important.

As a metric, user engagement can provide insights to brands on how effective their products or services are in meeting customer needs and assist in highlighting areas for improvement.

Boiled down to its core, user engagement is a measure of how valuable customers find a product or service, which is something all brands want to know.

13. Return Rate

Return rate, also referred to as the “repeat visit rate,” is the percentage of users who return to a mobile app, software product, or website over a specific period of time.

The benchmark for a good return rate depends on the industry, but it is safe to say that the higher the return rate, the better.

The return rate is an indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty, and when customers continue to return to you, it means that you are providing them with value.

14. In-App Purchases

While this metric may only be applicable to some, in-app purchases refer to the buying of additional content or features within an app.

A common example is gamers spending real money to buy an extra life or a new power in a gaming app.

Not only are in-app purchases a good source of revenue for app companies, but they are also a good indicator of engagement.

In the gaming app example, only users who are truly invested in the game would spend actual money on something they can only use inside the game.

As such, in-app purchases can inform brands of customer engagement and customer health.

Bottom Line

If you are looking for one platform that can track all of these important customer journey metrics and help you with customer journey optimization , look no further than Woopra.

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15 Customer Journey KPIs to Track Across Different Stages

13 min read

Wondering what customer journey KPIs align with your business goals?

Customer journey KPIs, alongside product analytics , help product teams understand if they’re meeting their goals. This insight can help you make informed decisions to optimize your user experience.

This article will explore 15 essential customer journey KPIs that help you better understand your customers and make data-driven strategies.

• The 5 stages of the customer journey maps are Awareness, Activation , Adoption , Retention , and Referral.
• The awareness stage is the initial phase of the customer journey, where you should focus on making potential customers aware of your and its benefits. So here are the crucial KPIs to track during this stage:
• Impressions to assess your initial customer interactions .
• Click-through rate to gauge the effectiveness of various communication channels.
• SEO ranking to monitor and improve product visibility on search engine results.
• When customers enter the activation stage, they are taking the first steps to use your product actively. Therefore, you should track the following KPIs:
• Onboarding completion rate to see if users are experiencing the initial value.
• Trial-to-paid conversion rate to assess if enough users are finding your product worth it.
• New user growth to evaluate if the product is expanding or not.
• During the adoption stage, customers start to use your product more regularly and incorporate it into their daily workflows. It signifies a deeper level of engagement and commitment compared to the activation stage. So here are the important KPIs to keep a tab on:
• Product usage to understand how customers interact with your product.
• Feature adoption rate to see if users are engaging with specific features.
• Customer Effort Score (CES) to see the perceived effort users give for interacting with your product.
• The retention stage is all about keeping your existing customers satisfied and engaged with your product to ensure they continue using it over the long term. And that’s why you should track the following:
• Customer satisfaction to assess how content your users are.
• Lifetime value to understand how much revenue you generate from the customers.
• Retention rate to assess if you can keep your customers with your product.
• Churn rate to understand how many users leave and the reasonings behind it.
• The referral stage refers to a phase in the customer journey where satisfied customers become advocates for your product and actively refer new customers or clients for you. Therefore, the KPIs for this stage should include:
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction.
• Reviews and ratings to gather testimonials and build advocacy for your product.
• You can use Userpilot to track and improve your customer journey KPIs with features like user segmentation , in-app surveys , advanced product analytics , etc. Book a demo today to see it in action!

How to choose the right customer journey KPIs?

Selecting the right KPIs is critical if you want to gain actionable insights about your customer journey. When choosing customer journey KPIs (key performance indicators) , it is important to:

• Look at specific metrics that might be relevant for you at different customer journey stages . It will help you understand where users drop off and where you should focus your attention.
• Make sure the KPIs fit the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals criteria. It’ll help you track the KPIs effectively and ensure that there are no vanity or unnecessary metrics wasting your time.
• Consider both leading (future-oriented) and lagging (past outcome-based) indicators for the KPIs. A balance between them will give you a holistic view of your customer journey .
• Regularly evaluate the KPI’s relevance and ability to offer actionable insights. You should adjust them from time to time as needed.

What are the 5 main stages of a customer journey?

Building the customer journey map is a critical process for businesses aiming to understand and optimize the experiences of their customers. It helps you define what success looks like at each stage, which in turn informs the selection of appropriate KPIs.

There are 5 main stages when you map out a customer journey. These 5 main stages include:

• Awareness: When potential customers start seeing your product as a potential solution to get their job done.
• Activation : This is when customers take your product for a spin, often through a trial or demo. They get to experience its core features firsthand and gauge its value for themselves.
• Adoption : When customers become active users and embrace your product for their routine work.
• Retention : At this stage, the focus is on continuously providing value to your customers and keeping customers continuing their subscriptions.
• Referral: At this point, they’ve gone from satisfied customers to loyal advocates. They’ve seen your product’s value and eagerly recommend it to others.

3 key performance indicators for the awareness stage

Let’s look at the KPIs for the awareness stage that can help you create a lasting impression on customers.

Impressions are the number of times when your content is displayed to a user. It can be of different channels, like emails, digital ads, social media, etc. This KPI offers insights into the initial phase of customer interactions and the visibility of your presence to customers.

You can easily determine your total impressions by using tools like Google Search Console. For that, you can go to the search results under the performance tab of the Google Search Console and select web as the search type to see the number of total impressions.

There are a number of things you can do to improve your website impression, for example:

• Create high-quality content for your target audience: This involves knowing what kind of content your audience needs and making sure to follow Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines .
• Promote your website on social media. Share your content on social media and interact with your followers. This will help to increase awareness of your website and drive traffic to it.
• Run paid advertising campaigns. Paid advertising can be a great way to reach a wider audience and improve your website impression. However, it is important to target your ads carefully and set a budget that you are comfortable with.

Click through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures the number of times a user clicks on a specific link or advertisement divided by the number of times the link or ad is shown. You can track it to assess the effectiveness of your communication channels (like blog posts, emails, demo clicks, etc.) in persuading users to click on the content.

To calculate CTR, you can divide the number of clicks by that of impressions and multiply it by 100.

Depending on the specific content you’re aiming to enhance CTR for, there are various strategies to boost click-through rates. But here are some tips for you:

• Your headlines and titles are the first things people see, so it’s important to make them count. Use clear, concise, and attention-grabbing language that accurately reflects the content of your page or ad. You can also try using numbers, power words, and questions in your headlines to make them more appealing.
• Use strong calls to action. Tell people what you want them to do. Whether you want them to visit your website, sign up for your newsletter, or make a purchase, make it clear in your call to action. Use strong, persuasive language and make sure your call to action is easy to find, i.e. by using a banner.
• Use urgency and scarcity. Create a sense of urgency or scarcity in your headlines and copy to encourage people to click. For example, you could use phrases like “Limited time offer” or “Only a few left.”

SEO ranking

The SEO (search engine optimization) ranking is the position a website or a particular web page appears on the search engine result pages (SERPs) for a particular query or keyword. This KPI is important to track and optimize, as the search results directly impact your website’s visibility to potential customers.

You can assess your SEO ranking by checking your website’s average position with Google Search Console.

When we talk about improving SEO ranking, there are a lot of things to do, but the most essential thing is to follow Google Search Central Guidelines before anything else.

As Google wants to provide users with the most relevant and useful results possible, investing in your content quality is also a must. This might involve delivering well-researched, informative, and actionable content.

3 key performance indicators for the activation stage

Now, let’s go through the customer journey KPIs you should track for the activation stage.

Onboarding completion rate

The onboarding completion rate is the percentage of users who complete their onboarding process. It indicates the level of user onboarding engagement, like finishing the onboarding checklist , flow , interactions with tooltip , etc.

You can measure the onboarding completion rate by tracking the completion percentage using custom event tracking – meaning grouping a list of user activities that lead to activation.

Ways to improve onboarding completion rate:

• Use welcome surveys to capture customer data and personalize customer experience during onboarding and later.
• Add step-by-step guides using onboarding elements like tooltips to remove friction and help users experience your product’s value.
• Collect feedback to understand where users struggle and what they find valuable. You can use the collected data to offer help where it is needed.

Trial to paid conversion rate

The trial-to-paid conversion rate measures the percentage of users who convert from free trial users to active paying customers. It lets you assess if your product successfully persuades potential customers to subscribe after they’ve tried it once.

To calculate the trial conversion rate, divide the number of converted users during a period by that of total free trial users in that period.

Ways to improve trial-to-paid conversion rate:

• Set start events, like sign-ups, and end events, like purchasing your subscription, in the conversion funnel. You then need to identify the friction points on this conversion funnel by seeing where most users drop off.
• Use A/B testing to see what drives more conversion, be it a checklist, a tooltip, or any specific flow, and utilize it for an improved conversion rate.

New user growth

The new user growth rate measures the percentage of new users using your product, including the trial users. Therefore, tracking this KPI helps you monitor new user growth during the activation stage and assess the initial impact of your onboarding processes.

You can calculate the new user growth rate by subtracting lost users from new customers, dividing it by total existing customers, and then multiplying the ratio by 100.

Ways to improve new user growth:

• Optimize your sign-up flow by using single sign-on (SSO) to let users log in with a single set of credentials, removing any entry barriers.
• Include welcome surveys to collect customer data at the beginning and use this data to personalize their in-app experiences .

3 key performance indicators for the adoption stage

Let’s look at the 3 crucial customer journey KPIs for the adoption stage.

Product usage

Product usage is the data that represents how your users use the product, which features they engage with most, and how often. So keeping track of this KPI is essential to understanding how customers are using your product.

You can track product usage data (like user activity, session analysis, average events per session, etc.) using feature tagging or event tracking features from tools like Userpilot.

Ways to improve product usage:

• Using product data segmentation , you can identify customers with low engagement levels and take proactive actions to bring them back. For example, you can trigger tooltips for disengaged users to drive high-value feature discovery or re-engage them with important features.
• You can analyze power users’ product usage data and identify engagement drivers. Maybe what turned them from regular users to loyal customers was an onboarding checklist of advanced features for their use case. Then you can implement the same one for the rest of your users who share similar characteristics to increase your product’s overall usage.

Feature adoption rate

The feature adoption rate helps you gauge how effectively your customers are incorporating the new feature into their workflows and whether it aligns with their needs and expectations.

You can calculate the feature adoption rate by dividing the number of a feature’s monthly active users by that of active users during the same session and then multiplying the ratio by 100.

Ways to improve feature adoption:

• You can use in-app guidance like tooltips and interactive walkthroughs to drive user engagement with existing features.
• Trigger in-app feature announcements to introduce customers to new features and show them how they can incorporate the feature into their usual workflow. You can also target relevant user segments and then send them webinar invitations, tooltips, etc.
• Design a second onboarding flow to drive adoption for advanced features. You can build one without coding by using a tool that offers different UI elements like native tooltips, modal, slideout, etc., like Userpilot.

Customer effort score

CES, or customer effort score , measures the customers’ perceived effort in engaging with your product. It offers insights into how easily your customers accomplish their goals with your product.

You can collect customer feedback by sending in-app surveys and then measure it by dividing the total CES by the number of respondents.

Ways to improve CES:

• Identify friction points by including a follow-up question in the CES survey to uncover reasons and act on them accordingly.
• Offering self-serve content within an in-app resource center shortens the learning curve for users and enables them to do any task easily. Customers can also get help at any time they want from self-serve content.

4 key performance indicators for the retention stage

Next, we’ll go through the customer journey KPIs that tell you if you’re retaining your customers.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction refers to how happy or content customers feel using your product. By tracking this KPI, you’ll have access to valuable insights into whether your SaaS product aligns with user expectations and satisfies them.

You can measure customer satisfaction by sending customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys after specific customer interactions or for the overall experience.

Ways to improve customer satisfaction:

• Automate customer service with proactive help by triggering support messages based on any customer’s provided score.
• Act on feedback data to make improvements and showcase your commitment to enhancing satisfaction.

Customer lifetime value

Lifetime value (LTV) is the total expected revenue you will get from paying customers during their relationship with your product. Tracking this KPI is essential to understand if your product is profitable and bringing in enough revenue against the acquisition and retention costs.

To calculate customer lifetime value, you have to multiply customer value by the average customer lifespan.

Ways to improve customer lifetime value:

• You can leverage data from customer behavior analytics to identify upsell opportunities and drive account expansion . For example, you can pinpoint users reaching their subscription plan limits and target them with upgrade messages.
• Using an annual billing system can ensure long-term commitment and more time to prove your product’s worth to customers to increase customer lifetime value.

Customer retention rate

Retention rate refers to the percentage of customers you retain over a period. This retention stage KPI tells you if your customers feel satisfied to continue with your products.

The first step in measuring customer retention rate is to divide the difference between the number of paying users and the total acquired users in a period by the total number of users. You then need to multiply it by 100.

Ways to improve retention rate:

• Use customer data to create and offer personalized experiences and continuously deliver value through in-app communication (like providing updates, feature announcements, and more).
• Build loyalty programs to incentivize customers to stick with your product and do repeat business.

Customer churn rate

The churn rate is the percentage of customers who discontinued your product over time. It offers insight into why customers leave your product and what you need to do to enhance your retention strategies .

You can calculate the customer churn rate by multiplying the ratio of the total number of lost users and that of the total users by 100.

Ways to avoid customer churn:

• Identify the at-risk customers with NPS surveys and engagement level analysis and then proactively reach out to them to address their issues.
• Use your cancellation page to remind customers what they’ll lose and trigger a churn survey to understand why they’re churning.

2 key performance indicators for the referral stage

Let’s look at the KPIs for the referral stage.

Net Promoter Score

NPS, or Net Promoter Score , is an important referral KPI that measures customer loyalty and satisfaction. It asks respondents a simple question, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to others?”

You can use tools like Userpilot to build and trigger Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, determine NPS scores, and visualize your NPS scores with a dashboard .

Ways to improve NPS:

• After identifying passives and detractors through NPS scores, you can learn more about their issues by effectively tagging the responses to close the feedback loop.
• Enhance customer experience by analyzing promotors’ survey data and then offering the same experience promoters have to the passives and detractors.

Reviews and rating

The reviews and ratings your product gets on platforms like G2 are your customer testimonials, and they show how satisfied users are with your product. They can be crucial KPIs, as tracking them helps you understand if you’re getting qualified leads through customer advocacy .

You can assess the reviews and ratings by checking your product’s page on G2.

Ways to improve reviews and ratings:

• Actively persuade customers to leave reviews about how they feel about your product.
• Respond to positive and negative reviews to show customers that you care. It’ll help you have customers’ trust instilled in you.

Understanding and tracking customer journey KPIs are vital for product managers seeking to optimize user experiences. These KPIs can provide valuable insights and help you take on informed strategies to enhance the product’s performance.

Want to get started with customer journey KPIs? Get a Userpilot Demo and see how you can track and improve them to drive growth.

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Customer Journey Analytics: The Complete Guide

How well do you know your customers? Chances are you’ve developed personas to illuminate who they are and the information they care about. But do you know the paths they take to find that information?

A comprehensive guide to customer journey analytics

Today’s digital-savvy consumers interact with multiple channels throughout their day — often combining more than one at the same time to get the answers they seek. To drive more business in an omnichannel environment, customer journey analytics help you understand the key touchpoints on your customer journeys so they find you more often and provide insights to improve their experiences once they get there.

Key takeaways

Ideally, your vision for your customer journeys and how they experience your brand online aligns with their actual journeys and experiences This guide will define customer journey analytics and provide a better understanding of how the data can help you:

Get the 30,000 ft view

Whether it’s your website or mobile app, social media, email or another channel, you need to know how your customers are engaging with your digital brand to deliver the right experiences that help them move forward but also support your business goals.

Keep your customers engaged

Consumers are more fickle than ever with user-friendly devices and vast resources to explore at the touch of a button. Avoid analysis/paralysis and get the insights you need to identify where your customers are struggling and why they may be leaving to guide user experience (UX) changes that keep them engaged.

ROI-focused guidance

Customer interests are fluid and constantly changing. Understand how user behavior ultimately impacts your business metrics to focus your efforts where it matters most to the bottom line and ensure your touchpoints are aligned with each stage of the customer journey: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention and advocacy.

What is customer journey analytics?

Digital experiences must continue to evolve in order to maintain alignment with the needs of current and prospective customers. Customer journey analytics help teams that manage these experiences better understand the impact each digital interaction has on a customer’s decision.

Customer experience (CX) and UX professionals use customer journey analytics tools to gather important customer engagement data at different touchpoints and channels of the customer journey over a period of time. The data tells a story of what customers like and where they struggle. This information enables teams to better optimize the customer journey and improve CX.

💡 Expert tip: Combining customer journey analytics with a digital experience intelligence (DXI) platform provides a deeper understanding of why customers behave the way they do. Digital teams can use this information to not only optimize the customer journey to improve the user experience but also to quantify the revenue impact as a result of poor experiences.

Definition of customer journey analytics

Customer journey analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing key data points of the customer experience across every touchpoint in the customer journey. This data illuminates customer behaviors and is used to guide decisions on where and how to improve the experience.

User journey analytics vs. customer journey analytics

At the heart of understanding the difference between user journey analytics and customer journey analytics are the types of channel(s) involved with the journey itself.

Specifically, a user journey is solely about a person’s interactions online. The goal of the online journey may be about finding a specific product at the best price or browsing or searching for information on a specific topic. User journey analytics are purely focused on the user’s experiences in the digital space.

Customer journeys are often more robust and complex as they include both online interactions but also offline engagements. As such, customer journey analytics look at every channel a customer goes through–whether they're visiting a website on their laptop, interacting with a mobile app or speaking to a customer service representative on the phone or in person at a physical location.

The role of customer journey analytics in customer journey mapping

To completely understand customer experiences, marketing and IT teams need to share and understand customer data to collectively make data-driven decisions. Helping customers move forward with their overall journey requires being able to see that journey in totality at a high level but also having the ability to dive into the weeds when needed to better understand what’s happening at each stage.

Customer journey maps are a great way to visualize all of the touchpoints customers are interacting with along their journey with a brand, service or product. Journey maps start at the very beginning and encompass all of the steps a customer goes through to complete an objective over a period of time.

For a potential customer, this could start with gaining initial awareness from advertising, social media or simply browsing the web on a related topic through their actual purchase, continued engagement with customer service, advocacy via a product review or social media and a repeat purchase.

Omnichannel customer journeys often include multiple opportunities to convert a potential customer by completing a desired task before completing their ultimate objective of making a purchase. These conversions could be signing up to receive free content, creating a new account or asking to speak with a company representative to answer their questions.

👉🏻 Check out the guide Digital Customer Journey Mapping in Today's World .

The importance of analyzing customer data

The ability to create more meaningful customer experiences that convert hinges on leveraging the data behind every interaction. Customer journey analytics measure key metrics and capture valuable behavioral data to provide a better understanding of where customers are spending their time and how they’re feeling at each stage of the journey.

In addition to illuminating why a particular step is converting at a high rate that can be applied to other areas, customer journey analytics help identify potential pain points and frustrations that hinder conversions or, worse, lead to abandonment. This information helps digital teams gauge where they’re winning and losing and determine where improvements need to be made to achieve desired business outcomes.

Benefits of customer journey analytics

Customer conversations are still happening at the same frequency, but the digital space facilitates these interactions in an entirely new and often disparate way. Customers want experiences that enable a continuous conversation even though they now happen through a series of separate engagements through more channels than ever before.

Leveraging customer journey analytics can help businesses gain valuable insights into what is important to their customers so they can evolve those experiences to better meet customer expectations. Companies that embrace a customer-first mentality are succeeding because they are invested in making the most of every interaction to continually move their customers forward in their journeys.

Maximizing CX investments

Today’s customers have little patience and high expectations—especially when they’re engaging digitally with a brand. If they feel like they’re starting over after previously engaging with a company online, they will likely move on to a competitor.

Access to loads of valuable data and additional context collected from customer journey analytics drives the ability to assess individual customer needs in real-time. For those entrusted with optimizing the experiences along the customer journey , data-driven insights can lead to user experience changes that improve customer engagement. More personalized interactions fueled by customer journey analytics can ultimately lead to higher conversion rates with new customers and reduce customer churn.

With the ability to predict customer behavior from previous actions, high-risk customers can be offered a different experience that help address the way they feel about the brand to improve retention. Variations on this approach combined with audience segmentation can result in more loyal customers and even generate additional purchases from existing customers.

Growing the bottom line

The days of guessing what customers want are long gone. While providing a toolset to help improve customer experiences, investment in a customer-first approach with customer journey analytics can drive powerful change throughout a company culture that results in new revenue-generating opportunities.

In addition to helping optimize digital experiences, product development leaders can gain valuable insights that can help guide and prioritize their efforts. Identifying valuable improvements to existing products that aren’t meeting sales targets will improve customer satisfaction. Customer journey analytics also inform the opportunity to develop potential new product offerings and fill gaps in the product portfolio.

How customer journey analytics work

The way modern, digitally-driven customers arrive at a purchase decision is anything but prescriptive. There is no linear path from awareness to research to purchase to advocacy. Customers might require 7-8 interactions before becoming a customer, or they may transition from initial awareness to a purchase within a few seconds. In some cases, advocacy may happen as part of initial research or social media engagement without any purchase intent at all.

Customers are expecting their experiences to be informed and personalized to their specific needs regardless of where they are on their journeys. And they certainly don’t want this type of content to only be delivered on a single channel or entice them down a path to a product they’ve already purchased or isn’t currently available.

Customer journey analytics combine a variety of data sources and contextualized visualizations to help create the right content at the right time to help businesses maintain relevant, easy experiences that build relationships and empower customers. Gathering data on customer demographics, psychographics and how they behave provides a deeper context for a better understanding of the customer journey.

This added context from the various types of data is a critical part of building out a customer journey map and guiding refinements to each stage of that journey. The customer journey map provides the foundation for this ongoing analysis process.

👉🏻 Learn how to create effective customer journey maps in this complete guide .

Customer journey analytics tools and software

There are many digital and AI-powered tools to help maximize the customer journey analytics process and optimize areas of the digital experience to better connect with your customers and move them forward on their journey. Below we take a look at a few of the most common types.

Customer data platforms (CDPs)

CDPs are becoming an increasingly popular part of the marketing communications toolset. With the ability to centralize data collection from multiple sources, CDPs help marketers refine customer profiles along with creating and managing segments to ultimately drive engagement across a variety of channels. While they are easier for non-technical people to use, finding the right solution can be challenging, given the number of options and volatility in the market. Additionally, integrating a CDPs into a company’s marcom toolset can be costly and time-consuming.

Customer engagement platforms (CEPs)

CEPs take the concept of customer relationship management (CRM) to the next level by consolidating customer data and engagement functionality typically provided by multiple systems. Marketers and other teams within the company, like sales, service and support, are using the same customer data and working within the same system to perform their individual tasks, which can help provide more personalized customer experiences.

Behavioral analytics (BA) tools

Behavioral analytics tools collect and analyze data from actions performed by users on a website or app. This data provides a foundation for businesses to understand how users interact with the different sections and touchpoints of their digital experiences. The data can inform decisions on user experience changes while providing a guidepost to show if the changes are working to improve the desired outcomes.

BA tools include:

Traditional analytics like Google Analytics

Session replay tools that capture user interactions, like Glassbox and Crazy Egg

Heatmap tools that show where users are interacting the most, like Lucky Orange

A/B testing tools that allow testing of variations to a website or app page, like AB Tasty and Adobe Target

Voice of customer (VoC) and survey tools , like Medallia and Survey Monkey

👉🏻 Want to learn more about BA tools? Check out The Complete Guide to Behavioral Analytics .

Business intelligence (BI) tools

BI tools help guide more informed decisions by providing accurate data across a variety of business systems to better understand what’s happening throughout the entire organization. In addition to mining the data to illuminate valuable insights, BI tools also provide visualization capabilities to transform the data and insights into graphs and charts that can be incorporated into dashboards that non-technical business leaders can use to monitor and make changes to the business.

🔥 Hot tip: A digital experience intelligence (DXI) solution combines all these tools into one platform so you can access advanced insights across the company in one place. These advanced insights give you the complete picture of the digital customer experience, not just bits and pieces.

Types of data used in customer journey analytics

A variety of data types are needed to help businesses ensure they are providing an exceptional customer experience at every touchpoint of the customer journey.

Basic data analytics can help set the stage by providing quantitative measurements of customer actions taken when interacting with a touchpoint—how long they stay, what pages are generating the most traffic, if they click a desired call to action, etc. Qualitative data helps fill in the details around these actions by providing the human context that helps illuminate what’s driving their pain points and successes. Combining these disparate types of data provides insights to optimize the touchpoints in the website user experience.

Quantitative data

Quantitative data is a set of touchpoint and engagement performance metrics for a digital asset (website, mobile app, etc.) that reflect how users interact with the experience. This numerical data is collected indirectly and pertains to different types of user actions. The most common quantitative data metrics involved with customer journey analytics include:

Session activity

The amount of time a user spends along with specific pages on your website or mobile app. Tracking this metric provides the ability to spot usage trends or anomalies. Significant drops in a short period might be related to a bug or other development issues, while a steady decline could identify an engagement problem related to the content or user experience.

Bounce rate

This is an indicator of when users leave your website or mobile app after viewing just a single page. The fact that users may be finding the information they were seeking when landing on the page—along with the page type and its content—should be considered when evaluating the bounce rate.

This reflects the percentage of all emails in a particular campaign that were opened. This information is especially helpful when evaluating email subject lines and/or preheader text as part of an A/B testing initiative .

Conversion rate

This is the percentage of users who perform a desired action, such as clicking a CTA button.

Qualitative data

Quantitative data is a great way to track key customer engagement touchpoints and identify where to make necessary changes to address basic issues with a digital experience. This data can also provide a solid foundation to start implementing more strategic changes to specific parts of the customer journey, such as improving information in a shopping cart or making additional suggestions on a checkout page.

While it may be harder and take longer to acquire, qualitative data provides the valuable “color” surrounding the quantitative numerical data and illuminates a more complete picture of the customer journey. Qualitative data also helps improve the customer experience by understanding the perceptions, feelings, thoughts and preferences of your users. Qualitative data collection methods include one-on-one interviews, focus groups, surveys, observation notes and more.

👉🏻 Find out how teams can use qualitative data to improve the digital customer experience (CX) .

The importance of having the right data for customer journey analytics

With today’s omnichannel customer journeys, the results of efforts to connect and build better relationships with customers along their journey will only be as good as the data that’s driving CX changes. It’s mission-critical to not only be able to see what actions customers are taking but also to understand the why behind the behavior.

Customers want more personalized experiences, and they are more likely to purchase from businesses that meet that expectation. Efficient, effective optimization of a customer journey can only occur with the right mix of data focused on key touchpoints and interactions while also providing the valuable human-centered context to understand what is driving the choices being made in those moments. The cost of making the wrong decisions couldn’t be higher as customers have plenty of options and likely won’t return after deciding to move on.

The power of custom journey data with digital experience intelligence

Customer journey data plays an important foundational role in identifying where to make changes that improve digital experiences—especially since today’s customer journey most likely starts and ends in the digital space. Yet, customer journey analytics tools provide a limited view of customer behavior. To create and refine digital experiences that ultimately lead to loyal customers, teams need to go beyond the basic information provided by typical quantifiable data.

Digital experience intelligence platforms are designed to take that data and maximize its value to help businesses build comprehensive and personalized experiences. That value is provided in the form of powerful insights that can lead to true one-to-one experiences with the right content that completes an end-to-end customer journey—from websites to apps to emails to SMS mobile messages and other messaging in social media and even digital advertising.

How to implement customer journey analytics in 4 steps

To provide the most value, there are a few key steps that align the paths of an ideal vision for a customer journey with what customers are experiencing. Taken in order, each step supports the next, along with helpful references that help provide focus during team discussions and prioritization to guide decision-making.

1. Identify goals

Successful journeys have an endpoint that is identified early on and set as a “north star” for initial planning efforts and to be referenced during critical moments of the customer journey. In addition to setting goals for particular interactions or performance metrics, every experience and related touchpoint should be aligned with supporting the goals of the business to ensure they are positively impacting the bottom line.

2. Collect and analyze data

With business and experience goals in place, establish a time parameter to collect the data. In some cases, a minimum amount of time is needed to get a sense for what is happening on a macro level. Seasonal timing, holidays and other events can create anomalies that can mislead teams if data is collected too quickly or without important context that could be influencing customer behavior. Additionally, qualitative data may take longer to secure—especially to meet a minimum threshold of customers surveyed or interviewed so the data is meaningful.

Once the data is collected, the next step is to analyze it. We’ve identified a few areas to be mindful of to ensure seamless digital experiences and anticipate customer needs to help along each step of the journey:

Points of friction

Look out for potential friction points in your digital experiences. This could be gaps in content that may not be providing what is needed to move on to the next step or a broken form. Friction points can also be technical issues or bugs, which could slow page load times down or app crashes.

Poor transitions

Successful omnichannel experiences rely on delivering the right content to customers at the right time. As they transition between a website, mobile app, email or text message, there are many potential issues that could lead to friction. If customers are challenged to perform a desired action, or they have to start over because their data gets lost, chances are they’re getting frustrated from the overall experience and are likely to abandon the website or app and never return.

Stage duration excess

Be especially critical of the time it should take a customer to complete specific tasks at each stage of the journey. Identify areas along the journey to minimize the time and effort involved—especially if the path to purchase is longer.

Replicate successes

Each interaction provides an opportunity to build (or lose) customer trust and happiness. While a lot of time and effort is spent identifying pain points and issues with the customer experience, things that are doing well and working as intended should be noted. Once identified, those learnings should be applied to other areas to optimize the customer experience for success.

3. Capture actionable insights

Along with providing the power of context, turning customer journey analytics into actionable insights enhances the ability to quickly assess customer needs and even anticipate them to make every experience more relevant and personal.

4. Implement changes based on insights surfaced

The ability to combine customer journey analytics with digital experience intelligence lets teams gain an understanding of why customers behave the way they do so you can fix any issues or optimize the journey to improve the digital user experience.

Whether it’s refined recommendations based on previous searches, a specific program that helps customers better understand a new product or a personalized email campaign and landing pages, quickly implementing these experiences helps connect with customers and let them know you value them. Combined with digital experience intelligence data, customer journey analytics can also quantify the revenue impact of the cost of poor experiences.

🤔 Did you know? There are limitations to standalone customer journey analytics tools. Customer journey analytics tools provide a limited view of customer behavior. The ability to combine customer journey analytics with digital experience intelligence lets teams gain an understanding of why customers behave the way they do so you can implement changes to fix any issues or optimize the journey to improve the digital user experience. Combined with digital experience intelligence data, customer journey analytics can also quantify the revenue impact of the cost of poor experiences. Armed with these insights, CX teams can focus on the areas that provide the most impact to optimize that experience and add the most value to the organization.

Check out these customer journey analytics FAQs if you’re short on time or are looking for a quick cheat sheet.

Customer journey analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing key CX data points across every touchpoint in the customer journey. This helps businesses better understand what their customers want and need so they can provide optimized experiences and help them move forward in their purchase journey.

Through a variety of quantitative and qualitative data, customer journey analytics can help illuminate customer behaviors and guide the decisions of marketing, customer experience (CX) and IT teams on where and how to improve customer experiences. This can involve providing the right content at a certain stage of the journey and reducing pain points that are causing friction and abandonment.

Multiple digital tools and techniques help businesses ensure they are providing an exceptional customer experience at every touchpoint of the customer journey:

Business intelligence (BI)

Teams can measure the effectiveness of customer journey analytics by establishing initial CX goals that align with industry best practices, along with tools that show the behavior of users before and after changes are made. In addition to setting goals for particular interactions or performance metrics, every experience and related touchpoint should be aligned with supporting the business's goals to demonstrate if they are ultimately impacting the bottom line.

Customer journeys involve multiple channels that may or may not be in the digital space. As a result, there are multiple functions within an organization—along with separate systems and data silos connected to those systems—that are involved in providing the end-to-end customer experience.

Customer expectations have also never been higher, as they expect businesses to provide connected experiences that anticipate who they are and where they are on their journey. In addition to the CDPs and CEPs mentioned above that can help aggregate data into one centralized location, businesses can utilize digital experience intelligence and a comprehensive set of digital experience tools to provide the data and actionable insights to help their teams optimize the various parts of the customer journey.

What is Customer Experience? A Complete Guide

Customer Journey Maps: The Complete Guide

• Perspectives
• Best Practices
• Inside Amplitude
• Customer Stories
• Contributors

Customer Journey Analytics: Definition, Tools, & Examples

Learn how customer journey analytics helps you measure the ROI on your customer experience initiatives. Use it to boost revenue, reduce churn, and improve CX.

Customer journey analytics (CJA) is the process of analyzing the entire customer journey through customer data points, then strategizing ways to improve the overall customer experience (CX) . Customer journey analytics is a holistic process that makes customer journeys measurable and helps you identify insights and actions to delight and retain your customers.

Key takeaways

• Customer journey analytics is the process of examining critical data pertaining to user journeys to make informed decisions on improving the customer experience.
• Some of the benefits of customer journey analytics include the ability to measure the ROI on CX initiatives and improve the customer experience through the insights it provides, as well as reduce churn and boost revenue.
• Measuring customer journeys is a process that involves creating user journey maps, determining and collecting data pertaining to those journeys, and defining success metrics and milestones along the way.

What is customer journey analytics (CJA)?

Customer journey analytics is the gathering and analyzing of data that pertains to customer behavior to improve the customer experience. Analysis happens over multiple customer touchpoints and channels over a period of time and measures the impact of behavior on business outcomes.

While gathering customer data, you can collect all user actions in one central database with an associated timestamp. Information is collected through a unique identifier on what the user is doing and who the user is.

Using this information, it’s possible to map out customer journeys and then analyze the customer engagement levels for each journey to understand what’s going well and where customers might be getting stuck. The analysis helps to optimize these customer journeys and also measures the performance of your CX initiatives.

Example insights from customer journey analytics

Customer journey analytics provides deep insights to improve the customer experience. Some examples include:

• Customer journey analytics makes it possible to analyze the path customers take to resolve customer queries. Some insights derived from this analysis might include what types of issues can be resolved by self-service channels and which ones need human interference. This information makes it possible to optimize self-service channels, improve the operational efficiency of resolving customer queries, and enable customer support staff to focus on more complex customer issues.
• For ecommerce companies, customer journey analytics makes it possible to view the steps a customer takes while completing a purchase, which can help identify any barriers to completing the transaction. You might find, for example, that a common frustration while completing a purchase is having to create a user account. You can then use this insight to A/B test a guest checkout option and see if it removes the friction.
• Customer journey analytics can help you identify channel-specific insights to improve the customer experience. For example, you might find that users on your mobile app drop off at a higher rate than users on your website. This insight could indicate that you need to rethink parts of your mobile experience.

Benefits of customer journey analytics

There are several benefits of customer journey analytics, including:

Measuring the ROI on CX initiatives

In a CX survey, 20% of respondents said that measuring customer experience initiatives was one of the key challenges being faced by organizations in the U.S. Customer journey analytics solves this problem by making it possible to measure the ROI on CX initiatives.

Product managers and CX designers can use customer journey analytics to connect data and numbers to customer journeys. For instance, CJA can compare the revenue generated from two user journeys to figure out which user journey leads to more revenue for the business, making it possible to shift to the journey that’s most beneficial.

Customer journey analytics makes it possible to understand how the customer interacts with the product, how their behavior changes when modifications are made to the customer journey, and how your product metrics are impacted because of this changed user behavior.

Improving the customer experience

By visualizing user journeys built by customer journey analytics tools, it’s possible to identify bottlenecks people might face in your product, minimize them, and make smart product suggestions based on their past behavior.

For example, with customer journey analytics, it’s possible to diagnose that users of an ecommerce app fail to make a purchase during the last step of the transaction, especially when using the app for the second time. They might be getting stuck since they don’t remember what they bought the last time, so CJA makes it possible to autosuggest items based on what the customer purchased on their last visit. Reminding customers about their past transactions can improve the overall shopping experience by helping users purchase with ease.

Customer journey analytics tracks data in real time. This enables you to analyze customer behavior while the customer interacts with your website or product, build user journeys around that behavior, then find opportunities to make improvements to the customer experience.

Reducing customer churn

Since customer journey analytics helps predict customer behavior based on their past actions, it can also identify customers at risk of leaving the product or website, enabling you to take action to retain at-risk customers.

Upon identifying at-risk customers, it’s possible to use CJA to personalize interactions with them and help them feel more positive about the brand, so they’ll change their minds about leaving. In a CX study, 58% of respondents stated that their organization had seen significant increases in customer retention as a result of using customer analytics.

Boosting revenue

By helping you identify the customer journeys that result in a purchase, it’s possible to boost revenue using customer journey analytics. You can further optimize these journeys by reaching out to customers in real time with relevant communication like upsell and cross-sell offers.

CJA can also help identify your best-performing channels by monitoring customer behavior across different touchpoints. So if your website is performing better than your app, you can focus on optimizing the revenue from your website while making improvements to your mobile app.

Steps for measuring customer journeys

Step 1: create or capture user journey maps.

Before you start measuring a customer journey, it’s important to first create a user journey map. You can create this journey map using prototyping tools or Post-it Notes based on the actions users take. For example, if you want to measure the journey of playing a song on a music app like Spotify, you need to create the entire journey map so you can visualize it.

In this example, the user journey might consist of the following steps: going to the Spotify website, downloading the app, creating a login, searching for a song, and then playing the song. You’d need to write these steps out in the form of a “journey” or use a tool that captures these user actions and creates the journey maps for you.

The goal, in this example, is to play a song on the app. And the journey to that goal consists of several steps along the way. You need to view the journey across different channels since, at the end of the day, your user is trying to accomplish a goal and it doesn’t matter whether they do it via your mobile app or your website.

Step 2: Determine the data you need to collect at each step of the customer journey

To measure a customer journey, you need to define the critical data points you need to measure for that journey. For instance, in our Spotify example, here are some data points that might be relevant to help quantify the journey:

• Number of attempts to download the app
• Time it takes to download the Spotify app
• Time it takes to create a user login
• Number of attempts to play a song

Collecting all of the data in one centralized place makes it easy to access it and pick the relevant bits of data needed along with their timestamps. The data required will depend on the journey you decide to measure.

For every part of the customer journey, there’s an action that your brand wants the user to complete. Every journey has a goal, and there are milestones to achieving that goal. It’s important to define both the goal and the milestones along the way, so you know what to measure and what success looks like.

With the example of playing a song on Spotify, some success metrics or milestones would be:

• Downloading the Spotify app
• Creating a user login
• Playing the first song
• Subscribing to the Spotify service
• Sharing the first playlist
• Renewing the subscription

Think of milestones as critically important steps in the process of achieving a goal. Make a list of these steps, so you can have clearly defined milestones.

Step 3: Analyze the customer data

The next step is to identify your data sources and capture behavioral customer data across the customer journey. Once you’ve collected data, you can start analyzing it and measuring key metrics along critical flows of the journey. You’ll be able to gauge where customers are spending their time, what’s causing them frustration, and which behaviors lead to revenue-generating outcomes. Using this information, you’ll be able to measure the customer journey effectively and figure out how to improve it.

Customer journey analytics tools

Using the Journeys feature on Amplitude , it’s possible to discover what’s making users convert or drop off. With Journeys, you can:

• View step-by-step breakdowns of the paths taken by converted and dropped-off users.
• Uncover the paths most likely to accelerate conversion.
• Identify what your users do if they don’t convert.
• Understand the friction points in your customer experience and develop a strategy to fix them.

By defining the start and endpoints of the journey, the Journeys feature within Amplitude helps you see what percentage of paths converted and what percentage dropped off.

There is a range of other customer journey analytics tools available, including:

• Acoustic Analytics
• Adobe Analytics
• Google Analytics
• Salesforce Journey Builder
• Webex Experiment Management

Learn more about each of these customer journey analytics tools on a review site like G2 .

• What are the biggest challenges currently being faced by your organization in terms of customer experience? Statista
• Performance enhancements resulting from the use of customer analytics in the United States as of March 2018 . Statista

See what customer journey analytics looks like in our self-service demo , or get started with journeys using your own data in a free Amplitude account .

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A guide to customer journey analytics

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Customer journey analytics is a powerful tool that gives your business a comprehensive view of the customer experience—from before the initial point of contact to the final purchase. 

Your business can gain insights into customer behavior , preferences, and pain points by analyzing data from various touchpoints along the customer journey. You can then use these insights to optimize marketing campaigns, improve customer service, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

• What is customer journey analytics?

Customer journey analytics is the process of understanding the interactions between customers and a business across various touchpoints. By outlining each point of contact a consumer has with your company, you can better understand their path to completing an activity like signing up for your service or buying your product. 

Common components of customer journey maps include:

The stages of the journey

Demographic information and behavioral traits

Touchpoints and key moments of interaction

The customer's goals, needs, and expectations at each touchpoint

Pain points across the journey

The points in the journey that can make or break the customer's experience

The channels or platforms the customer uses to interact with the business

Customer actions

Business actions addressing customer needs

Opportunities for the business to improve the customer experience

Customer sentiment (emotion or satisfaction) at points in the journey

Metrics (e.g., satisfaction scores)

Customer journey analytics is essential for businesses that want to understand their customers' needs and preferences and provide them with a personalized and seamless experience.

• Customer journey analytics vs. customer journey mapping

Journey analytics and journey mapping are related but distinct concepts. Customer journey mapping is the process of visually representing the customer's end-to-end experience with a business, from the first interaction to the final purchase and beyond. It typically involves creating a diagram or flowchart that shows the different touchpoints along the customer journey stages.

On the other hand, customer journey analytics involves collecting and analyzing data on customer behavior and interactions across various touchpoints to gain insights into the customer experience . It involves using tools like data visualization and machine learning to identify patterns and trends in customer behavior.

Customer journey mapping provides a high-level overview of the customer journey. Customer journey analytics, on the other hand, provides detailed insights that you can use to optimize specific touchpoints and improve the overall customer experience. 

Both approaches are important for understanding and improving the customer journey. Businesses can combine them to create a holistic view of the customer experience. For example, a customer journey map can serve as a starting point for identifying which touchpoints a business needs to dive deeper into with customer journey analytics.

• Benefits of customer journey analytics

Customer journey analytics provides businesses with various benefits that can help them improve the customer experience, build loyalty, and drive revenue growth. With these benefits, you’ll find that:

Your brand becomes more customer-centric

Customer journey analytics allows you to deeply understand your customer's behavior, preferences, and pain points throughout their experience with the business. These insights enable you to tailor your marketing efforts and provide a personalized experience that meets their needs. 

A McKinsey survey found that 71% of consumers expect organizations to provide personalized interactions . So, by putting the customer at the center of your business and customizing their experience, you build loyalty, increase customer satisfaction , and ultimately drive revenue growth.

Your company becomes more cohesive

Mapping your customer journey involves collecting data from various departments and touchpoints across your business. This process requires collaboration and communication between departments, which can lead to a more unified approach to the customer experience. 

By breaking down silos and sharing information, you can create a seamless customer journey that improves customer satisfaction and increases retention. A unified approach to the customer journey also helps to eliminate duplicate efforts and reduce costs, making your business more efficient and effective. 

Once you have a journey map that is the single source of truth for the customer’s experience, you can then share it across the entire organization.

You can monitor issues in real time

You can quickly identify and address pain points and customer service issues by tracking customer behavior across touchpoints. This proactive approach to problem-solving enables you to improve the customer experience and prevent negative feedback from spreading on social media or review sites. 

Research shows that 86% of loyal customers will leave you after two to three bad experiences. So, you can greatly increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by addressing issues as they happen.

You can view direct and indirect feedback in one place

Direct feedback, such as surveys and customer service interactions, provides valuable insights into customer preferences and pain points. Indirect feedback, such as social media mentions and reviews, can also provide valuable insights into the customer experience. 

By analyzing both types of feedback, you can gain a more comprehensive view of the customer experience. This helps you make data-driven decisions that improve the customer journey.

• How to use customer journey analytics

To use customer journey analytics effectively, businesses must follow a structured process involving three key steps.

1. Map your customer journeys and collect info

The first step in using customer journey analytics is to map your customer journeys and identify the various touchpoints where customers interact with your business. This could include your website, social media channels, email marketing, and customer service channels. Once you have mapped out these touchpoints, you need to collect and aggregate data from each one. 

2. Analyze your customer data and behavior

Once you’ve collected and aggregated your data, the next step is to analyze it to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. This could involve using data visualization tools to identify patterns and trends and machine learning algorithms to identify correlations and anomalies in the data. 

By analyzing your customer behavior and data, you can identify areas where you could improve the customer experience and develop data-led strategies to address these issues.

3. Take action based on data-driven insights

The final step in using customer journey analytics is to take action based on the insights you’ve gained from your data analysis . This could involve: 

Making changes to your website or marketing campaigns

Improving your customer service processes

Implementing new tools and technologies to improve the customer experience 

By taking action informed by data-led insights, you can make targeted improvements to the different stages of the customer journey in order to drive increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• An example of using customer journey analytics

Here's an example of how a clothing store could use customer journey analytics to improve its business:

The journey

The clothing store maps out the customer journey, which looks like this:

The customer becomes aware of the store through online ads, social media, or word-of-mouth

The customer then visits the boutique's website and browses available products

Next, the customer adds items to their cart and proceeds to checkout

The customer either completes the purchase or abandons their cart

Through customer feedback and website analytics, the store identifies that customers frequently abandon their online shopping carts during checkout. Using customer journey analytics tools, the store analyzes the data to determine the cause and impact of the cart abandonment issue. 

They find the checkout process too complicated, with too many form fields and a lack of transparency around shipping and return policies. They also find that customers aren’t receiving enough reassurance that their personal and payment information is secure.

Resulting action

The store simplifies the checkout process by reducing the number of form fields and offering a guest checkout option. They also provide more detailed information about their shipping and return policies and add trust signals such as secure payment badges and customer testimonials. 

They implement these changes and track the impact on customer behavior, finding that the cart abandonment rate decreases significantly.

• The challenges with customer journey analytics

Customer journey analytics has become an important tool for businesses to understand and optimize customer interactions across various touchpoints. However, organizations must overcome several unique challenges to use this tool effectively. 

Here are four of these challenges:

Many organizations have data silos , which are isolated data repositories that aren’t easily accessible or shareable. This makes it difficult to get a complete picture of the customer journey, as data is scattered across different systems and departments.

Lack of standardization

Customer journey data may come from various sources and be recorded in different formats, making it difficult to standardize the data and draw meaningful insights. This can potentially lead to data inconsistencies, errors, and duplication.

Limited data quality

Customer journey data may be incomplete, inaccurate, or outdated, which can impact the accuracy and reliability of the insights derived from the data. This can lead to incorrect assumptions about customer behavior and preferences. 

To avoid this, use up-to-date customer research to build personas that inform the journeys. Also, acknowledge the moments in the customer journey that occur outside of the existing touchpoints.

Difficulty in attribution

With multiple touchpoints and channels, it can be difficult to attribute specific actions or behaviors to a particular customer. This can make it challenging to identify which touchpoints are most effective in driving conversions or building customer loyalty .

Customer journey analytics is a powerful tool, but organizations must overcome these challenges to unlock their full potential.

With the rise of digital channels and the increasing importance of customer experience, customer journey analytics is more important than ever. With the right tools and strategies, customer journey analytics can help you stay ahead of the competition and create a seamless, personalized customer experience. 

Whether you're a small clothing store or a large multinational corporation, implementing customer journey analytics should be an essential part of your business strategy.

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How to Analyze (and Improve) Customer Journeys

We walk through everything you need to know to measure, analyze, and optimize the customer journey.

What are customer journey analytics?

3 reasons companies are focusing on customer journey analytics, how to analyze customer journeys in 5 steps, 7 metrics for analyzing the customer journey, 5 tools for customer journey analytics.

Customer journey analytics is the process of identifying customer touchpoints and understanding how they affect customer experiences and business outcomes. It includes interactions that take place before, during, and after the point of sale.

Measure engagement across channels

Customer journey analytics help identify the channels that are effective at engaging customers.

Glossier, a beauty and skincare brand, analyzed customer behavior between its eCommerce platform and its publication Into The Gloss . By bringing this data together into a unified customer profile, Glossier discovered that people who browse both sites tend to spend more than those who browse only one. Digging further, Glossier found out which articles led to purchases, and was able to replicate that recipe for success.

Optimize omnichannel customer experiences

In an omnichannel approach , you connect all of your customer engagement channels to provide a continuous experience for customers. 

Nike has been lauded for its omnichannel experiences across its app, online shop, and brick-and-mortar stores. The inventory and events in Nike Live stores are tailored to suit the shared traits and user behaviors of local NikePlus members. Shoppers are encouraged to use the Nike app in stores to scan QR codes and learn more about products, or to have clothes delivered to a fitting room.

Reduce customer churn and improve retention

Amid economic uncertainty and rising digital advertising costs , customer retention has become a crucial growth strategy .

Being able to recognize the telltale signs of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction helps businesses proactively launch personalized campaigns to either keep users engaged and prevent them from churning. 

One way to do this is by identifying the interactions that increase customer value and loyalty. For instance, at Segment we studied the behavior of our loyal customers and identified a set of  high-value actions they all had in common. Using this data, we crafted personalized messages and engagement campaigns to nudge other customers to follow suit.  

1. Identify touchpoints and define interactions

First, organize customer touchpoints by journey stage: awareness, consideration, conversion, service, and advocacy. Here are a few examples:

Awareness: clicking on a link from another website

Consideration: watching a product demo video

Conversion: setting up a paid account

Service: chatting with customer support

Advocacy: sending a referral code to potential users

2. Measure how customers interact on each channel

Identify all the channels where you interact with potential and current customers (e.g. social media, email, your website, or app) and connect these to a business intelligence tool or a customer data platform (CDP). 

From there, you can start comparing engagement rates across channels, and identify the most important metrics to track depending on your business goals. 

3. Set up an attribution program

Attribution helps determine which touchpoints lead a customer to convert (e.g. creating an account, signing up for a free trial, etc). We recommend using multi-touch attribution because it takes into account the entire customer journey.

To set up an attribution program, identify the events and user traits significant to your model, as well as the channels that generate this data. For example, if you have a blog and also advertise on LinkedIn, you’d want to pull data from Google Analytics and LinkedIn, focusing on actions like scrolling down a page and clicking on an ad.

4. Identify where and why customers churn

Sometimes, customers will fill out a survey explaining why they decided to churn. Other times, they drop off without explanation. For the latter, businesses can dig through customer support interactions or session analytics  to find the cause of their dissatisfaction (e.g. frequent bugs, rage clicks).

Customer journey analytics can also unearth the signs of someone who’s about to churn. For example, you may find that in the weeks prior to churning, customers tend to unsubscribe from your email list, and leverage this insight to re-engage at-risk users. 

5. Use your data to create a customer journey map

Using the data from customer journey analytics, you can create customer journey maps, which Forrester Research defines as “ documents that visually illustrate customers’ processes, needs, and perceptions throughout their relationships with a company.”

Some maps capture the entire customer experience, while others focus on specific stages, like illustrating the path to adopting a new product feature.

Here’s an example of a journey map we in the early stages of Twilio Engage .

High-level metrics

Customer satisfaction score (csat).

A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) measures users’ satisfaction with your product or service, typically on a scale from 1-10.

Calculation: average CSAT =sum of satisfaction ratings ÷ total # of responses

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV reflects the total revenue you expect to earn from a customer throughout their relationship with your business. 

Calculation: CLV = (annual revenue per customer x customer lifespan in years) – customer acquisition cost

Customer Effort Score (CES)

CES measures how easy or difficult it is to do business with you via surveys where customers rate ease of use on a numerical scale. 

Calculation: CES = sum of effort ratings ÷ total # of responses

Touchpoint & engagement metrics

Session/activity time.

Tracking the average session time helps you identify trends or outliers in app usage (e.g. drastic drops can point to bugs or outages, while a steadily declining drop can signal waning engagement). 

Calculation:

length of session time = time when the user leaves the app − time when the user enters the app

average session time = total session time ÷ # of sessions

Bounce rate

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of single-page sessions – where a visitor leaves your site after viewing just one page – out of the total number of sessions. The optimal bounce rate is 26% to 40%, according to SEMrush. Keep in mind that a bounce isn’t always bad (a bounce off a FAQ page may indicate the reader got the answers they needed).

Calculation: bounce rate = (single-page sessions ÷ all sessions) x 100

Open rate measures the percentage of emails that were opened among all emails sent in a campaign (a study by MailChimp found the average open rate is 21.33% ). 

Calculation: open rate = (# of opened emails ÷ # of emails sent) x 100

Conversion rate

Conversion measures the percentage of people who perform an action you’ve asked them to take. If 100 people see your CTA to download an ebook and half of them did so, you have a 50% conversion rate.

Calculation: conversion rate = (# of users who completed a specific action ÷ # of users you exposed to that option) x 100

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

CDPs collect data on customer interactions across multiple channels. They unify the data into a single customer view and update customer profiles in real time based on the latest touchpoints. They also help you identify customer segments and implement tailored workflows based on each segment’s shared journeys.

Customer Engagement Platforms (CEPs)

CEPs like Twilio do everything a CDP does while also letting you orchestrate customer engagement workflows. For example, if you answer a support call from a customer and send updates on their issue through WhatsApp, you can do both on a CEP instead of switching from one app to another.

Attribution tools

Attribution tools like Adjust , Criteo , and Singular analyze how much each touchpoint contributes to a conversion event. Choose a tool that supports your preferred attribution model. Better yet, get one that supports several different models, including multi-touch attribution.

You don’t have to stop at analyzing the first conversion event. Integrate your attribution tool with a CDP so you can measure the impact of different marketing campaigns throughout a customer’s journey.

Behavioral analytics tools

Behavioral analytics tools like Indicative and Mixpanel identify patterns and changes in customer behavior. They also spot behavior “cohorts,” which are customer segments formed on the basis of shared actions.

With this data, you can predict customer behavior and lifetime value, and create workflows that are automatically triggered when a customer performs a certain action. 

Business intelligence (BI) tools

BI platforms like Holistics , SAS , and Tableau collect and process unstructured data from various sources to help you make sense of it through reports and visualizations. BI reports are descriptive, as they’re based on past and present events. So while they’re useful for spotting trends, they’re more powerful when integrated with other analytics and customer-facing tools.

When you integrate a BI tool with a CDP, you can use the data to enrich customer profiles, inform customer segmentation, and create effective customer engagement campaigns.

Interested in hearing more about how Segment can help you?

Connect with a Segment expert who can share more about what Segment can do for you.

Frequently asked questions

How is customer journey analytics different from customer journey mapping, what are the benefits of customer journey analytics, what are some tools or software businesses can use for customer journey analytics, how can twilio segment help businesses conduct customer journey analytics.

The Power of Customer Journey Metrics and Analytics: Enhancing Customer Experience Along the Journey

Understanding and optimizing the customer journey has become paramount for driving growth and success. The customer journey encompasses every interaction a customer has with a brand, from initial awareness to the final purchase decision. However, unlocking the true potential of the customer journey requires more than mere observation. It necessitates a data-driven approach and the utilization of customer journey metrics and analytics .

30% of organizations have established their customer journey maps but struggle to use them effectively. Gartner.com

Customer journey metrics and analytics provide invaluable insights into customer behavior , preferences, and pain points along the entire journey. By harnessing the power of these tools, businesses can enhance the overall customer experience and drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, and brand advocacy.

Table of Contents

Enhancing Overall Customer Satisfaction Across the Customer Journey

Key customer experience metrics and their importance.

To enhance overall customer satisfaction across the customer journey, it is crucial to identify and track key customer experience metrics. Metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Effort Score (CES), and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) provide valuable insights into customer sentiment at different touchpoints. By measuring these metrics, businesses can pinpoint areas of improvement, address pain points, and optimize the customer experience.

Measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty

Measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty is essential for understanding the impact of the customer journey on overall satisfaction. Through surveys, feedback mechanisms, and sentiment analysis, businesses can gather data on customer satisfaction and loyalty levels. This data enables organizations to identify areas where satisfaction may be lacking and take proactive measures to improve the customer experience.

The impact of customer journey analytics on customer experience

Customer journey analytics plays a crucial role in enhancing overall customer satisfaction. By analyzing customer behavior, interactions, and preferences throughout the journey, businesses can gain valuable insights into customer needs and pain points . Leveraging customer journey analytics allows organizations to identify patterns, optimize touchpoints, and personalize experiences.

Mapping the Customer Journey Touchpoints for Improvement

Creating a customer journey map.

Creating a comprehensive customer journey map is essential to gaining a clear understanding of the various touchpoints and interactions that customers have with your product or service. A customer journey map visually represents the steps and stages a customer goes through, from initial awareness to post-purchase support. By mapping out the customer journey, businesses can identify key touchpoints and opportunities for improvement.

Identifying touchpoints and optimizing interactions

Once the customer journey map is in place, it becomes easier to identify specific touchpoints where customer interactions occur. These touchpoints could include website visits, customer support interactions, social media engagement, or product/service usage. By analyzing these touchpoints, businesses can gain insights into customer behavior and preferences, allowing them to optimize interactions to provide a seamless and positive customer experience .

Using analytics to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement

Analytics tools and customer journey metrics are invaluable in identifying pain points and areas of improvement along the customer journey. By analyzing data such as customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics, customer engagement levels , and conversion rates, businesses can pinpoint the areas where customers may face challenges or dissatisfaction. This data-driven approach enables organizations to make informed decisions and implement strategies to address pain points and enhance the overall customer experience.

Maximizing Business Success by Using Customer Journey Metrics

Measuring and optimizing customer lifetime value (clv).

Measuring customer lifetime value (CLV) is a crucial component of maximizing business success. CLV represents the total value a customer brings to a business throughout their relationship. By understanding CLV, businesses can allocate resources effectively, personalize experiences, and foster customer loyalty . Customer journey metrics play a significant role in measuring and optimizing CLV.

Reducing churn through insights from customer journey analytics

Churn, or customer attrition, is a significant challenge for businesses. Customer journey analytics can provide invaluable insights into the reasons behind churn. By analyzing customer journey metrics, businesses can identify pain points, bottlenecks, or areas where customers are more likely to drop off. Armed with this information, businesses can proactively address these issues, optimize touchpoints, and enhance the customer experience to reduce churn .

Improving overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty

Customer journey metrics are instrumental in improving overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. By continuously measuring customer satisfaction, sentiment, and loyalty metrics at various touchpoints, businesses can gauge the effectiveness of their strategies and initiatives. Understanding the impact of different touchpoints on customer satisfaction allows businesses to identify areas of improvement and tailor their efforts accordingly. By consistently delivering exceptional experiences across the customer journey, businesses can foster strong brand loyalty, increase customer satisfaction, and drive long-term business success.

Implementing Effective Customer Experience Metrics and Net Promoter Score

Understanding cx metrics and their significance.

To gauge and improve customer experience, it is essential to understand the significance of customer experience (CX) metrics. CX metrics provide a quantitative and qualitative assessment of customer perceptions, satisfaction, and loyalty. Metrics such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), and Net Promoter Score (NPS) help measure different aspects of the customer experience. By understanding these metrics and their significance, businesses can gain insights into the effectiveness of their customer experience strategies, identify areas for improvement, and track progress over time.

Introduction to Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used customer experience metric that measures customer loyalty and advocacy. It is based on a simple question: “How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?” Respondents rate their likelihood on a scale from 0 to 10. NPS classifies customers into three categories: promoters (score 9-10), passives (score 7-8), and detractors (score 0-6). By calculating the difference between the percentage of promoters and detractors, businesses can obtain an NPS score that serves as a clear indicator of customer loyalty and brand perception.

Leveraging NPS as a customer experience metric

NPS is a powerful tool that helps businesses assess customer loyalty and understand their position in the market. It not only measures the likelihood of customer recommendations but also provides insights into customer sentiment and satisfaction. By leveraging NPS, businesses can identify promoters who act as brand advocates and focus on nurturing and retaining them. Additionally, by addressing concerns raised by detractors, businesses can improve the overall customer experience and increase customer satisfaction.

When implemented effectively, NPS can drive customer-centric strategies, influence decision-making, and prioritize initiatives aimed at enhancing the customer experience. By regularly tracking and analyzing NPS data, businesses can identify trends, make data-driven improvements, and foster a customer-centric culture throughout the organization.

By understanding CX metrics, introducing NPS, and leveraging it as a customer experience metric, businesses can gain valuable insights into customer loyalty, perception, and satisfaction. This enables them to make informed decisions, improve the customer experience, and build strong customer relationships, leading to long-term business success.

How Can Wizaly Help You Understand and Measure Customer Experience?

Harnessing the power of customer journey metrics, analytics, and effective customer experience measurement is crucial for businesses looking to drive success and achieve sustainable growth in today’s competitive landscape. By incorporating these strategies, businesses can elevate the overall customer experience, foster customer loyalty, and maximize their bottom line.

At Wizaly, we understand the importance of accurate customer journey attribution and comprehensive data analysis. Our platform empowers businesses to unlock the full potential of their marketing efforts by providing accurate customer journey metrics and actionable insights. With Wizaly, you can optimize your marketing budget, measure customer satisfaction, and make data-driven decisions

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• How To Create A Customer Journey Analytics Dashboard (Tools Included!) 

B2B customer journeys are complex. The average sales cycle can last more than 4 months. They involve several stakeholders and touchpoints across campaigns, websites, sales initiatives, and more.  

It’s no wonder that 77% of B2B customers find the act of buying difficult. It’s hardly any easier for B2B sellers.  

With customer journey analytics dashboards, it doesn’t have to be this way. 

This article explores what customer journey analytics is and why it’s important. We also discuss a step-by-step process to create a customer journey analytics dashboard. And in conclusion, we highlight 7 customer journey analytics software for your consideration. 

What Is A Customer Journey Analytics Dashboard? 

A customer journey analytics dashboard is a tool that tracks and visualizes customer touchpoints. It improve sales and marketing performance, customer retention, and business growth.  

Customer journey analytics software track and improve conversions. They unify data across campaigns, websites, and products. This, in turn, refines the customer experience at every stage of the sales cycle . Building a customer journey analytics dashboard has a couple of other benefits. Let’s take a look at them.  

What Are The Benefits Of Customer Journey Analytics? 

There are several benefits of customer journey analytics, such as:  

1. Data-driven decision making

Customer journey analytics provides data-driven insights into customer behavior. Rather than relying on intuition or guesswork, journey analytics quantifies what influences conversions. 

2. Optimize resource allocation  

Measure the value of every customer touchpoint on conversions. This reallocates budgets and efforts towards initiatives that drive results. In turn, it optimizes resource allocation and reduces budget leakage.  

3. Align sales and marketing teams  

Achieve end-to-end visibility into how leads are progressing along the customer journey . This shared view of the buying process helps reduce siloed data and promotes go-to-market alignment. 

4. Boost customer experience  

Once you have visibility across the customer journey, you’ll be in a better place to identify points of friction that need refinement. Customer journey analytics help you track every point of contact, channel used, and buyer stage visually on a single dashboard.  

5. Higher customer retention  

The benefits of customer journey analytics extend beyond converting leads to customers. It also helps you understand product usage, engage with existing customers, and bolster customer loyalty. 

How Is Customer Journey Analytics Different From Customer Journey Mapping? 

Although they’re related, customer journey analytics and mapping are different concepts. 

Customer journey mapping refers to qualitative visualization of customer touchpoints while customer journey analytics relies on quantitative data for behavioral insight. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the differences between the two: 

It helps to use both customer journey mapping and customer journey analytics in tandem. This provides a better sense of customer interactions with your company.  

Step-By-Step Guide To Creating Customer Journey Analytics Dashboards 

So far, we’ve discussed what customer journey analytics is and why it’s important. But how does one go about putting together a customer journey analytics dashboard? Let’s find out: 

1. Understand your data sources 

Customer journey analytics relies on customer data. It’s key to connect the dots between marketing, sales, product, and customer support. 

Accordingly, the first step involves integrating campaigns, social media, website, and CRM data. This can be tedious and time-consuming to do manually. Luckily, several off-the-shelf tools, like LeadSquared , offer no-code solutions to integrate data together.

2. Decide your KPIs and set goals 

Once the relevant data is in place, teams must decide what metrics and KPIs matter the most.  

Customer journey analytics dashboards should be as intuitive as they are comprehensive. Loading up several irrelevant KPIs will result in convoluted dashboards. Here are a couple of common reports to consider including: 

• Marketing funnel

A marketing funnel provides a bird’s eye view of customers in the sales cycle. 

• Sales velocity

B2B sales cycles are lengthy and, on average, involve at least 6 decision makers . It helps to keep track of the speed at which leads are moving along the sales cycle. For one, this helps gauge expected sales pipeline . For another, it sheds light onto which stage of the sales cycle is taking longer than necessary.  

Your website is receiving voluminous traffic, but where are visitors coming from?  

And more importantly, where are ICPs coming from? Social posts, search ads, or events? Connecting the dots between campaigns, web, and CRM helps answer these questions. It allows teams to refocus efforts towards initiatives that work best. 

• Conversion rate  

Conversion rate measures the percentage of prospects moving through each stage of the sales funnel. It helps identify disproportionate points of drop offs that might indicate areas of improvement. 

• Attribution  

We’ve established that customer journeys involve several touchpoints. Attribution analysis helps understand the influence of each customer touchpoint on conversions. There are several types of attribution models such as linear, U-shaped, and time-decay. Each model assigns credit to touchpoints differently, based on their recency and relative impact on conversion.  

• Churn  

Customer churn measures the percentage of existing customers who stop paying for a product over a period of time. A high churn rate may indicate poor customer support, product shortcomings, or superior alternatives available in the market. It’s generally the product and customer success team’s responsibility to keep churn low. 

3. Leverage a dashboarding tool to integrate key data 

So far, we have all our data and we know what we want to measure. Now, it’s finally time to leverage dashboarding tools for customer journey analytics. A few years ago it might have made sense to build dashboarding software inhouse. But these days, a wide range of cost-effective plug and play solutions cater to most use-cases. We’ll review a few popular tools in the next section. 

4. Visualize your data to understand points of friction 

Customer journey dashboards support powerful visualizations to pinpoint where leads are dropping off. By identifying where leads lose interest, teams can prioritize areas of improvement.  

5. Test and iterate using data from your dashboard 

The last step is to experiment with marketing, sales, and product initiatives. It’s important to monitor performance with the dashboard. Data-driven iterations will help make gradual improvements to conversions, retention , and customer experience.  

Now, let’s review a few analytics tools that help businesses track and improve the customer journey.  

The Top 7 Customer Journey Analytics Tools

There are several tools that help track, analyze, and optimize the customer journey. Let’s review 7 of them:

1. LeadSquared 

LeadSquared is a robust customer relationship management and marketing automation platform. It provides lead tracking, customer data platform, and revenue reporting features amongst others. 

CRMs like LeadSquared are essential for customer journey analytics. They act as the single source of truth for most customer data across marketing and sales efforts.  

Key Features  

• Lead Tracking 
• Lead Qualification 
• Lead Scoring 
• User Activity Tracking  
• Tracking Sales KPIs  
• Marketing Automation Reports (which include campaign ROI, channel-wise performance, and more) 

Pricing  

LeadSquared offers three packages that differ based on the features offered. The Lite plan $25 per user/month while Pro costs $50 per user/month and Super is proced at $100 per user/month. Businesses can also request for a custom pricing plan based on the features that they require.  

2. Factors.ai 

Factors is an AI-fueled account analytics and multi-touch attribution platform. It unifies customer data across campaigns, website, and CRM to report KPIs and insights. Factors offers a range of power customer journey analytics features including: 

• Visitor identification   
• Account and user timelines 
• AI-fueled CRO insights 
• Customizable dashboarding 
• Funnels and path analysis  

The package starts at $99/month for visitor identification. Journey analytics and attribution plans start at $399/month. The pricing depends on the number of monthly visitors.  

3. Hotjar 

Hotjar is a behavior analytics and feedback tool. It helps businesses monitor user behavior on websites and mobile applications. Hotjar is useful for product marketers and UX teams. It improves website performance and conversion rates. 

• Heatmaps 
• Session recordings 
• Surveys 
• Feedback polls 
• Interview tools 

Hotjar offers a free plan for up to 35 daily sessions as well as unlimited heatmaps. Its paid plans start at $35/month for 100 daily sessions and scales up based on the number of daily sessions.

4. MoEngage 

MoEngage is a customer engagement platform that helps businesses with personalized, multi-channel communication. It’s used by a wide range of industries including SaaS, e-commerce, and finance to drive user engagement and retention. Here are a few key features:      Key Features   

• Customer analytics   
• Customer journey orchestration 
• Website personalization 

Moengage does not reveal its pricing but offers two plans: Grow and Scale. Grow is better suited for smaller teams with limited budgets and use-cases. Scale is for enterprises with involved, multi-functional requirements. You can learn more by getting in touch with their team . 

5. Totango 

Customer journeys extend beyond the signing of the contract. Tracking post-purchase customer service can help you boost retention as well. Totango as a customer success platform, tracks and manages customer relationships with the following features: 

• Health scores  
• Customer segmentation  
• Activity tracking  
• Customer journey mapping. 

Pricing   

Totango offers a free community plan. Its paid plans start at $249/mo for 200 customer accounts. Pricing scales with number of customer accounts, number of seats, and extra features. 

6. Mixpanel 

Mixpanel is a leading product and event analytics platform. This tool delivers real-time customer journey insights to support data-driven decisions. Product teams, marketers, and data teams use Mixpanel to improve customer engagement. 

• User tracking 
• User segmentation 
• Funnel analysis 
• A/B testing 
• Dashboarding 

Mixpanel offers a generous free plan for up to 20 million monthly events. This includes core user journey analysis features. Its paid plans start at $20/mo and can extend to more than $1000/mo based on the number of monthly events. 

7. FullStory 

FullStory is a digital experience and product analytics platform. It helps users identify what’s working and what’s not across the customer journey. FullStory helps product teams, UX designers, and customer success teams improve customer experience 

Key Features:   

• Intent signals  
• Funnels  
• User journeys  
• Heat maps  

FullStory does not reveal pricing but offers three plans : Business, Advanced, and Enterprise. Now that you have a couple of options to choose from, here comes the tough bit.

How to Choose a Customer Journey Analytics Tool for your Business? 

Every business has different requirements. While all the customer journey analytics tools covered provide comprehensive solutions, some may be better suited to your company than others. Here’s how to go about choosing the right tool for you: 

1. Define needs: Start by identifying your business needs and objectives. What KPIs are you looking to track and optimize? What function needs to improve performance? It wouldn’t make too much sense to invest in a heat mapping  tool like Hotjar when the issue you’re trying to solve for is churn. Instead, a customer success management tool like Totango would be a better option.  

2. Assess integration capabilities: It’s important to avoid siloed data. Ensure that the tools you’re evaluating integrate seamlessly with your existing techstack. The ability to connect data from multiple sources provides a holistic picture of the customer journey and eliminates unnecessary developer dependencies. 

3. Consider pricing and customer support: There’s a wide range of pricing models when it comes to customer journey analytics tools based on volume of data, number of users, and functionality. For instance, enterprise tools are chock-full of advanced features that may be redundant or overly expensive for smaller teams. Also consider customer success management and technical support for each tool to ensure long term compatibility.  

4. UI and accessibility : A tool is only as useful as it is usable. Customer journey analytics is a relatively involved and technical concept. Prioritize tools with intuitive UI to ensure you receive actionable value. It should also be flexible enough to accommodate business-specific requirements like customer KPIs and dashboards. 

5. Security compliance: Given that customer journey analytics involves sensitive customer data, it’s important to take security compliance into account. Industry-standard privacy regulations like GDPR and SOC2 must be met to ensure safety.  

I hope this comprehensive guide helped you understand customer journey analytics and it’s benefits in detail. If you need any help choosing a tool to analyse customer journeys or would like to give LeadSquared a shot, you can schedule a demo today.  

The purpose is to track, analyze, and optimize the customer journey from first touch to last. Customer journey analytics is valuable to marketing, sales, product, and customer success. It refines the customer experience, drive conversions, and improve retention . 

There are several ways to visualize the customer journey. Here are a few common methods:    1. Path analysis: Path analysis tracks a sequence of events that lead to a conversion goal. They’re usually represented as a flow chart.  2. Heat-map: Heat-maps represent customer behavior and highlight points of high and low engagement. This helps UX teams see what parts of the website are intuitive or unintuitive   3. Account timeline: Account timelines are linear representation  of the customer journey. They  show account-level touchpoints that occur over a period of time. 

Ranga is a product marketer at Factors.ai with a keen passion for beautiful product design and intuitive UX. Connect with him on LinkedIn or reach out at [email protected]

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What Is Customer Journey Analytics? Benefits, Tools and Key Metrics

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Are you taking advantage of customer journey analytics? Customers engage in multiple journeys and expect companies to be aware of and sensitive to all of them. Brands must be able to track and guide customer interactions throughout the lifecycle.

Understanding how and through which channels customers interact with your brand plays a huge role in improving customer experience (CX). Accordingly, many companies are investing in journey analytics technology to improve CX.

Journey analytics is a new way of thinking about the customer journey (the unique path of interactions a consumer has with your brand, products or services—from initial awareness through purchasing, paying for and using products/services). By giving you deep insight into how customers interact with your business, journey analytics helps you understand and guide customer behavior in ways that are relevant to them. It also identifies areas of customer experience that need improvement.

In a global survey of 484 CX executives, 40% indicate that lack of understanding or appreciation for customer journeys is one of the biggest challenges to delivering successful CX. Employees don’t have access to the tools and data they need to fully understand customer journeys . CX execs find it very or extremely challenging to:

• Analyze and make sense of customer data to gain insights about customer behaviors (45%)
• Provide employees access to real-time customer behavior data (42%)

Journey analytics is the solution.

What is Journey Analytics?

Journey analytics is a way to understand each customer’s journey by tracking and measuring every interaction with your brand, across every channel (e.g., website, email or SMS) and device (e.g., laptop, tablet or smartphone) the customer uses. Connecting with customers is easier when you have a thorough understanding of their needs, interests and behavior at each point in the brand interaction (from discovery through purchase, post-purchase and retention). With journey analytics, you can personalize the customer experience based on who customers are and what they need at any given moment—by creating personalized interactions and/or delivering customized content via email, website personalization or mobile app push notifications.

Journey analytics does this by combining individual channel analytics (website, email, call center, etc.) and customer intent. Traditional channel analytics focus on KPIs specific to those channels such as clickthrough rate, time to serve, time on site, etc. This does not provide a picture of the CX challenges a specific user is having. This is why customer intent is so important to the picture. If a customer is trying to reset a password or search for information on changing their service, traditional marketing analytics will register them as failed conversions. In both cases, the customer is trying to interact with the brand but is having CX issues that are preventing them from achieving the desired behavior.

Benefits of Journey Analytics

Journey analytics helps you understand:

• Customer needs, desires and expectations
• Which efforts drive or hinder revenue
• How to improve the customer journey and CX through actionable insights

By using this information to improve CX, you can:

• Improve conversion rates
• Increase customer loyalty and retention
• Boost revenue and reduce cost

Journey analytics also helps you:

1. Improve the contact center agent experience, engagement and retention by:

• Giving the agents insights about customers that empower them to be more successful in their roles and provide better CX
• Helping agents understand customer behavior in real time, enabling them to assist customers quickly

2. Identify the customer journeys that have the biggest impact on specific business goals. For example, are customers delayed in bill payment because they are having login challenges?

3. Make data-driven decisions and respond more quickly. You can refer to real-time data analytics for the information you need right now instead of relying on guess work or waiting for reports from IT teams who may not have all the answers needed to handle an immediate problem.

Related Blog: Multivariate Testing vs. A/B Testing: Total Experience Optimization

How Does Journey Analytics Work?

Journey analytics tools continually track the paths and steps customers are following as they interact with your organization, giving insight into why customers are doing what they’re doing.

The reporting provides a visual representation of all customer journey steps (e.g., viewing products on your website, logging in to their account, calling the contact center). CSG’s journey analytics system assigns each step a positive, neutral or negative value, allowing you to see at a glance if journeys are leading to positive action (e.g., purchasing something or paying a bill).

Journey analytics measures these and other key metrics:

1. Customer Intent Indicators

• Intent to purchase, cancel, etc.
• Observed product preferences
• Switched channels
• Journey completion

2. Key Marketing Indicators

• Page loading times
• Email open rates
• Clickthrough rate

3. Key Service Indicators

• First-call resolutions
• Dropped calls
• Customer satisfaction

And addresses questions such as:

• What were the most popular first and last steps (e.g., brand discovery or churn)?
• What were the most commonly used channels (e.g., email or SMS)?
• How are journeys performing against goals and key performance indicators (e.g., conversion rates)?
• What is the overlap between journeys?
• How many times has this journey been executed?

Journey analytics goes beyond email analytics (e.g., open or clickthrough rates) or survey analytics (e.g., customer satisfaction), providing insight into what customers experience , their emotions and sentiment at each touchpoint throughout the journey, and what interactions had the largest impact on customer behavior. Using natural language processing, journey analytics can determine negative sentiment in customer actions and prioritize journey steps that will resolve.

Related Report: The State of Customer Experience 2023

Xponent Journey Analytics

CSG’s Xponent Journey Analytics provides data-led actionable insights for a deeper understanding of customer interactions, helping you enhance customer journeys and overall CX, and expand customer lifetime value.

Discover how customers are moving across channels and touchpoints—not just how they’re responding at a single step in the journey. Easy-to-understand, actionable data visualization reveals journey insights.

Monitor and manage journey activity in real time. You can identify and adjust journey steps where customers are stalling and potential overlaps in real time to meet customer needs and business objectives. For example, if a customer is complaining about receiving a faulty product in the mail, they shouldn’t be emailed about an upcoming sale.

Improve customer journeys for better business results by correlating key journey behaviors to critical KPIs like conversion rates and on-time bill payment. Breakdowns into critical segments and comparisons of various journeys give your team a robust view of journey performance.

Not sure where to start?

Assess your company’s CX maturity and identify areas for improvement with CSG’s CX Maturity Model. Then deploy one or two journeys, taking advantage of Xponent Ignite’s pre-built journeys for four industries: telecommunications , financial services, retail and healthcare . Xponent Ignite includes powerful journey analytics to help you improve journeys, overall CX and your company’s bottom line.

Contact us to learn more about how you can make your data more actionable.

Blog / Journey Measurement

Customer Journey Measurement: Charting the Path to Success

• February 29, 2024

Table of Contents

Customer experience (CX) is critical to a business’s success. In a recent study, customer-centric brands reported an 80% increase in their revenue . Proactively measuring CX will make sure you identify and optimize any weak points in your strategy.

However, most businesses miss the boat in their analysis and instead focus on simply understanding how to better convert leads and increase sales. They miss seeing things from the customer’s point of view: their holistic journey interacting with the brand, as well as the points that either increase their engagement or lead them to drop off. This is where customer journey measurement and analysis comes into play.

Instead of focusing solely on conversion, you’ll track metrics that best reflect your customers’ experience with your brand. Using these figures, you can monitor the steps each customer takes to reach their goal and gain the insights you need to improve your CX.

What metrics should you measure throughout the customer journey?

Among the multiple data points available for customer behavior, it’s sometimes hard to know where to start and which metrics to track. When you’re looking for customer journey analytics ideas , where do you even start?

Too much irrelevant or misleading data can mean you ignore the actionable insights from your analysis, so it’s important to focus on the metrics that matter at every stage of the journey.

“ Numerous customer journey points are monitored by us, such as website visits, social media activity, customer service conversations, and purchasing trends. Key metrics like how long customers spend on our website, conversion rates, and the feedback we gather from surveys are incredibly telling. They draw attention to the areas of our business where we are succeeding as well as those where we might be falling short of what our customers want. ” — Jake Munday , Co-Founder & CEO at Custom Neon

Awareness stage

When customers aren’t even aware of the problems your product can solve, how can you be sure you’re on the right track? By measuring these metrics:

Reach, impressions, and rankings

Your reach quantifies the potential audience exposed to your content—a broader reach expands your brand’s visibility. To enhance your reach:

• Create relatable content
• Leverage referral marketing for word-of-mouth recommendations
• Consider partnerships with other brands to tap into their audiences

Impressions indicate how often your content is displayed to your audience. This offers insights into findability, search ranking, and content shareability.

Similarly, SEO ranking determines how well your content ranks on search engine results pages (SERPs.) Higher rankings contribute to increased organic traffic, which is often highly targeted and valuable for conversions.

Optimize your impressions and SEO ranking by focusing on factors like:

• Using varied keyword match types for relevance
• Creating engaging headlines to increase impressions
• URL and content optimization
• Content quality improvement
• Optimizing page loading times
• Ensuring mobile-friendliness

Bounce rates and time on page

Bounce Rate and Time on page are crucial metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of a website in engaging visitors and guiding them through the customer journey.

A high bounce rate shows that users are leaving without interacting, which can mean your pages aren’t attracting or retaining the right audience.

On the other hand, time on page helps gauge user engagement by revealing how much time visitors spend consuming content. It indicates which pages are captivating and which can be optimized.

To improve these metrics, follow these best practices:

• Enhance website usability, navigation, and responsiveness to make the user experience enjoyable.
• Ensure compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) that encourage users to explore further and take meaningful actions.
• Create consistent high-value content to captivate users’ attention and encourage longer stays.
• Use tools like Google Analytics to measure time on page and identify top-performing pages.
• Include interactive elements like videos, quizzes, or infographics to enhance engagement.
• Make navigation intuitive to guide users seamlessly through the site, encouraging exploration.

Consideration stage

When customers have finished their research and start actively considering solutions, clicks become a leading sign of a healthy customer journey.

Clicks and click-through rates

While clicks indicate the overall user engagement with website elements, media content, links, and CTAs, CTR measure the success of specific links by comparing the number of clicks to the number of impressions.

Here’s how to improve both these metrics:

• Analyze user sessions and identify issues such as confusing navigation or broken links that may impact clicks.
• Use heatmaps to gain insights into the areas users engage with the most, helping make effective changes to drive conversions.
• Optimize your headlines and copy and make sure they appeal to users by addressing and solving their problems.
• Include clear and compelling CTAs positioned prominently above the fold to guide users on where to click.

“ Recognizing a high drop-off rate at the inquiry stage, we simplified our inquiry process, making it more intuitive. The change led to a significant uptick in inquiries, and demonstrated the value of listening to—and acting on—customer journey insights. Adjustments will improve current customer interactions and also lay the groundwork for future client engagements. ” — Alex Ugarte , Marketing & Operations Manager at London Office Space

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Decision stage

The decision (or purchase) stage means the customer has chosen your product– or not. These metrics can indicate success or a need for improvement:

Conversion rate

Conversion Rate represents the percentage of users who complete a desired action (conversion) out of the total number of website visitors. It tells you how well a website or campaign guides users through the customer journey to take a specific action.

Here’s how you can improve your conversion rate:

• Use exit-intent surveys to understand why users aren’t converting.
• Conduct A/B tests on CTAs, landing pages, buttons, and key elements to identify variations that drive the most conversions.
• Use optimized headlines and high-quality product images to encourage users to explore further.

Sales and Cost Per Conversion (CPC)

Sales represent the ultimate conversion, indicating that users have progressed through the customer journey to become paying customers. Meanwhile, CPC measures the cost of a website element or advertisement relative to the conversions it drives.

Both metrics provide insights into revenue generation, conversion efficiency, and the overall success of your marketing efforts.

“The main information that we look at is:

• How happy our customers are.
• How much our customers might be worth over a long period of time.
• How many customers have stopped doing business with us?
• How much does it cost us to get a new customer?

What we learn from these details really helps us build a stronger business:

• We can make sure each customer gets what they want from us.
• We’re always learning and getting better because of it.
• We take smarter steps to make our products meet our customer’s needs.” — Natalie Suppes , Founder at S & S Creative

Here’s how to optimize these metrics:

• Identify pages that convert the most. Allocate more budget to promote those pages to maximize conversions and minimize costs.
• Determine when users are most active. Display key promotional content during these specific times to increase the chances of conversions.
• Leverage social proof to build credibility and gather user feedback to tailor solutions and marketing strategies.
• Optimize the timing of ads and content based on user activity patterns to enhance the efficiency of marketing spending.

Retention stage

How do you retain customers after the initial purchase? Measuring these metrics can help to spotlight opportunities:

Customer loyalty

Loyalty measures the likelihood of customers engaging in repeat business with a company or recommending them to others. It also indicates the customer satisfaction levels with your products.

Satisfied and loyal customers are likely to become advocates for the brand, contributing to positive word-of-mouth marketing and a great brand reputation.

Here’s how you can improve this metric:

• Offer excellent customer service to support customers, addressing their queries and concerns promptly.
• Implement a loyalty rewards program to acknowledge and appreciate customer loyalty. Exclusive gifts, discounts, and offers can incentivize repeat business.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS gauges customer loyalty and satisfaction by asking customers to rate their likelihood of recommending your brand to others.

Here’s how to improve your NPS score:

• Leverage the feedback collected through NPS surveys to make informed decisions and implement changes that positively impact customer satisfaction.
• Track and measure NPS scores over time to understand the trends and effectiveness of your implemented improvements.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV measures the revenue generated over the entire lifecycle of a customer’s relationship with a company. It provides insights into the long-term profitability of the business based on customer interactions.

Here’s how to improve it:

• Focus on enhancing the onboarding experience and testing the onboarding process to streamline product adoption and improve user satisfaction.
• Ensure a seamless navigation of your websites and product pages to exchange user experience.

How to measure the customer journey in 4 steps

Every customer journey is different, but the general method to measure and improve them can be summarized in four steps:

1. Determine your priority

Not all customer journeys are the same—one customer may have found you through Google ads, while the other may have found you through word-of-mouth. You may be looking at hundreds of customer journeys, which can be overwhelming to analyze without a structured process.

Here, you need to determine the top priority for your business and focus on analyzing customer journeys in that area. Here’s how to go about it:

• Revisit your marketing goals and understand what you need to focus on at a point—is it optimizing customer support, improving your onboarding process, or addressing your cart abandonment issues?
• Organize customer journeys into different groups. For example, create a group segment for customer journeys where the users sign up for the trial or subscribe to your newsletter.

In the end, the selection of customer journeys depends on what conversion means to you and what aligns with your business and marketing goals the best.

2. Identify the customer data points you need

Customer journeys are a lot more than channels—your customers may be reaching a common goal through different touchpoints.

Customer touchpoints are specific interaction points between a customer and a business throughout the entire customer journey. For example, in a scenario where a customer interacts with a company’s mobile app to browse products, track orders, or participate in loyalty programs, mobile apps serve as a touchpoint.

Once you’ve decided on the customer journey you’re going to measure, start collecting data points stage by stage—from awareness to loyalty.

Here’s how to go about it:

• Awareness stage : Understand how customers are discovering your brand, the channels they’re using and how appealing are your websites and social media channels in order to attract your leads.
• Consideration stage : Outline the specific metrics you need to track, such as lead generation, content engagement, and email sign-ups resulting from your lead magnet. Implement conversion tracking for certain actions you want your customers to take and track engagement metrics.
• Decision stage: Examine the sales funnel to identify where potential customers either drop off or convert and pinpoint any bottlenecks in the decision-making process. Don’t forget to gather feedback from your sales team based on customer inquiries, objections, and interactions.
• Retention stage : Pay the most attention to your churn rate, as this tells you how many customers stopped using your product within a time period. Also, track how often customers make repeat purchases, and see if this pattern changes over time.
• Loyalty stage : Analyze the purchase history of loyal customers to discern trends, including the consistent products or services they buy and any seasonal variations. Continuously keep tabs on your NPS.

3. Map your customer journey

By now, you may have collected tons of data in isolated databases—you need to integrate it all to interpret it well and make data-informed decisions.

That’s when funnel mapping comes into play.

“ Monitoring these indicators provides a lot of advantages. They give us guidance on how to improve every customer experience, assess the effectiveness of our advertising, and streamline our operations. Each time a customer interacts with our brand, it is now more distinct and rewarding, because of CX optimization. And that’s only been possible because of the insights gained from analyzing their journey measurements. ” — Jake Munday , Co-Founder & CEO at Custom Neon

Using funnel analytics tools like Funnelytics, you can visualize this data into a canvas and gain actionable insights to streamline your customer journey. It acts as a central repository of all your data—just integrate all your analytics tools into it, and it’ll help you create stunning—and understandable—journey maps.

Here are different ways to use Funnelytics for reporting and analysis :

• You can create beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert-level canvases, depending on how complex your strategy or customer journey is.
• You can use it to measure the performance of a page while measuring every element of the page and see how each action on that page contributes to conversions.
• You can create notes and to-do lists on the side panel of your canvas to log your progress or updates. There’s also an option of creating notes for individual steps in your journey, which makes it easy to annotate while working on the map.
• You can map your customer journey in any format you like—value ladder, flow charts, step-by-step process, and so on.
• You can add custom icons to any of the steps—for example, a screenshot of an email or a product image.
• You can use it for trend analysis in different stages of your customer journey.

4. Score your customer journeys

Scores determine how a customer journey is performing. You can define journey scores using a combination of metrics that capture the unique customer experience and the value generated when customers complete a specific journey.

Here are the factors to consider when scoring your customer journeys:

• Analyze the differences between a streamlined journey and a challenging or painful journey to achieve the same goal. A positive outcome alone doesn’t guarantee a high score—the ease and satisfaction of the journey are also important.
• Monitor metrics that cover both the in-journey and end-of-journey processes.
• Calculate the scores on a micro-journey level by only considering a particular stage of the customer journey or a particular step in that stage.

Unlock your marketing potential with customer journey measurement

Analyzing customer journeys doesn’t have to be complicated—all you need is the right approach and tools. You can conduct a customer journey analysis across multiple touchpoints and find out what makes them take an action or drop off from your funnel.

“ Customer journey measurement is crucial for understanding our clients’ experiences from initial interest to final transaction. It has taught us the importance of each touchpoint when shaping customer perceptions and decisions. The end transaction isn’t even the half of it. Ensuring a positive experience at every step builds long-term, loyal customer relationships. ” — Alex Ugarte , Marketing & Operations Manager at London Office Space

While there are many customer journey analytics platforms to help you measure your customer journeys effectively, Funnelytics makes this process fun and engaging. Easily visualize your data and interpret it with ease without spending hours analyzing journeys manually—simply drag-and-drop elements into the canvas to create steps, fetch data, and build a stunning journey map.

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1. When should you measure the customer journey?

2. what customer journey metrics should i measure, 3. where does traditional customer journey mapping fail.

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Sales Funnel vs. Customer Journey: What are the Differences?

Cracking the Code: Funnel Reporting for Marketers

The Customer Lifecycle Journey: What it is and How to Use it to Create Repeat Customers

9 Best Funnel Tracking Software Tools to Streamline Your Sales Success

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Customer Journey Analytics: Tools, Metrics, and Best Practices

Part of being successful in business is knowing how your target customer interacts with your brand, knowing what inspires them to take action, and guiding them from being a new follower to a paid supporter. Mapping out this process and tracking your customer journey analytics provides several benefits for businesses of all kinds.

Source: Crazy Egg

First, it allows you to better understand what new prospects want to see from you. From there, you can establish a stronger connection with them through the content you publish. And ultimately, you’ll be able to boost engagement and your conversions.

However, it’s not enough to just map out your customer journey and call it a day. It’s essential to have the right tools, know which metrics to track, and understand the best practices to ensure this is a successful venture for you. This post shares everything you need to know.

Key Takeaways

• By creating a visual representation of your target customer’s journey, you’ll be able to spot gaps in your content strategy, make improvements to your user experience, and more.
• With the right tools in your arsenal, you can easily view your customer journey analytics and see what you can change to drive better results.
• Always review your data regularly to ensure you’re on the right path toward your end goal.

What is the Customer Journey?

The customer journey reflects the overall experience a customer has while engaging with your brand. It outlines everything from the initial discovery of your brand to making that first purchase and the evolution of the relationship thereafter. 

However, the customer journey goes beyond just the buying process and actions your customers are taking. It also looks at how they feel after interacting with your brand.

Determining what your customer journey looks like isn’t something you can just guess. To effectively map out your customer journey, you’re going to need data. Data that you’ve gathered from your existing analytics, as well as data from having one-on-one interviews with your target customer to understand their motives and needs better.

It’s helpful to map out this process by creating a visual representation of the steps someone goes through from being a prospect to a customer of your business. For instance, it begins with the awareness stage where someone first discovers your website and begins consuming your content, moves into that next step where they may join your email list, and ultimately leads into that critical buying stage where they make their first purchase.

Taking the time to do this allows you to identify any gaps in your content marketing strategy and provide insights into providing a better experience for your customers. After all, 33% of customers will consider switching to another brand after only one bad experience.

Helpful Customer Journey Analytics Tools

Once you’ve created and implemented your customer journey map, you’ll need to monitor results along the way. This is how you’ll ensure a high rate of people are moving from prospect to customer.

Here are a few tools that will get the job done:

• Google Analytics: Most creators already use Google Analytics to track page views, popular content, and more. However, you can also use it to set specific customer journey-related goals to track awareness, engagement, and conversions.
• Adobe Customer Journey Analytics: While most know Adobe for its photo editing tools, they also offer customer journey analytics so businesses can efficiently analyze cross-channel data to remove barriers in the customer conversion process.
• MXTR: And of course, we have to mention our own tool ! We help our users visually map out their customers’ journeys and automate their marketing . Then, we provide tailored data to make enhancements through various journey stages.

Metrics to Track in Your Customer Journey Analytics

As you begin mapping everything out, you’ll see that there are different stages that a customer will move through, from first discovering you to purchasing. This means there are different metrics to track in your customer journey analytics, depending on the stage they’re in. Here are a few to watch:

Source: Social Media Examiner

• Awareness: How many people visit your website, and how are they discovering you? To get people into your funnel in the first place, you need to increase traffic by publishing optimized content and promoting it via your social media channels.
• Engagement : In this stage, you’ll want to pay attention to actions taken, such as visits to a sales page or joining your list. With 31% of B2Bs believing that email newsletters are key to nurturing leads, you’ll want to track subscriptions to your list since that’s where you’ll be able to promote offerings.
• Completion: The all-important final step is when someone fully commits to your brand by making their first purchase. In fact, 78% of B2Bs view lead conversions as a performance metric, as it indicates how their content, strategy, and customer journey map is performing overall.

Best Practices for Mapping and Analyzing Your Customer Journey

These tips will help ensure you’re successfully mapping out each step of your customer’s relationship with your brand.

Source: Medium

1. Get Clear on Your End Goal

When you think of someone visiting your website for the first time, what actions do you want them to take? You probably want them to read your content, join your email list, and eventually make a purchase. The point here is that knowing your end goal allows you to work backward to lead a new prospect to that final stage where they make a purchase.

2. Develop Maps for Each Different Buyer You Serve

The customers in your business are all unique, not just in their demographics but in how they engage with your brand and what drives them to make purchases. That’s why it’s essential to understand the different buyer personas of those who are going to be interested in your brand. This way, you can create a customer journey map that speaks directly to their needs.

3. Review Customer Journey Analytics Regularly and Tweak as Needed

This isn’t one of those “set it and forget it” types of things when it comes to your business. You need to check in with your customer journey analytics every so often to see how things are performing. If you’re not seeing your desired results (for instance, conversions), then you’ll know that you need to change something in your content or your overall strategy.

Do a deep dive into your analytics quarterly, at least. This way, you can make any necessary tweaks. However, if you release a new offering in your business before then, you’ll want to review your customer journey map and refresh it after that launch, so it reflects your current products and services.

Use Automation to Enhance Your Customer Journey 

Because you can’t be there manually sending messages to nudge your customer from one phase of their journey to the next, you need tools to help you get the job done.

At MXTR, we are committed to making marketing automation easier and stress-free. With our tool in your arsenal, your entire customer’s journey will be visually mapped out. From there, you can view data that will help you enhance the customer’s overall experience, optimize messaging, and more.

Interested? Schedule a demo to see how our marketing automation tool can assist with buying decisions and generating leads in your business.

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The Customer Journey Metrics Map

Pave the way to better product analytics and get alignment on the customer journey metrics that matter for growth, why do you need a customer journey metrics map:.

Use this framework to align your team on the same objectives and definitions, from product to marketing and customer success.

Proper analytics setup

Set the foundation for an accurate product analytics setup. You know what’s important to track.

Relevant insights

Gain the ability to find insights on the metrics that matter for growth and optimization.

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How to create your Customer Journey Metrics map:

Build it in an instant, share it with the team, come back to it any time you need.

Our wizard (free for all, forever!) generates the customer journey metrics map showing what metrics to monitor for each growth pillar: acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral.

Less than 10 minutes.

The answers are saved automatically, and you can come back and revisit them at any time..

Almost 90% of those using customer journey mapping said their growth program is delivering a positive impact.

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ADOBE CUSTOMER JOURNEY ANALYTICS

Adobe Customer Journey Analytics features.

Our advanced capabilities give teams across your organisation the real-time, cross-channel insights they need to create better customer experiences.

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Data collection

Get accurate analysis data in near real-time by taking advantage of streaming data collection from both online and off-line channels, data cleansing and field-based profile stitching.

Field-based stitching combines IDs from multiple channels and devices and assigns them a single person ID with the ability to restate data.

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Transform data from multiple sources with standard XDM and get more with a flexible data model that’s not bound to the hit-visit-visitor model.

Combine metrics to create unique mathematical operations that become new, more valuable metrics to match with audience segments.

Provide users of Customer Journey Analytics a way to make sophisticated updates to the data, restatement and retroactive, so that it is usable, accurate and actionable.

Data manipulation

Easily change analysis with data manipulation tools and maintain customer privacy and meeting organisational and regulatory policy obligations with patented data governance.

Artificial intelligence (AI), Generative AI (GenAI) and machine learning (ML)

Workflow automations make sophisticated analysis available to non-technical team members, opening up insights to marketers, customer service and sales teams.

Get access to attribution and propensity modelling for deeper analysis and insight discovery with Customer and Attribution AI.

Augment attribution rules with best-fit algorithmic models to discover and solve for unique attribution use cases across paid, earned and owned marketing activities.

Automatically find statistically significant, unexpected trends in your data.

Explore customer movements through your sites and apps quickly in order to understand customer journey. View entry, exit and sub-flow activities to create unique segments based on user journeys.

Build a funnel quickly with drag-and-drop tools and rearrange funnel steps on the fly in order to analyse customer conversion and compare fall-out across touchpoints and segments.

Create and compare groups of customers with shared characteristics and over time to help you to recognise and analyse significant trends. Discover engagement or churn trends that help you to understand customer lifetime value.

Journey visualisation

It’s hard to know what your customer’s journey is when major landmarks are missing from your map. Customer Journey Analytics collects touchpoints from online and off-line channels and presents them in context so you can create experiences that really matter.

Data democratisation

Advanced data governance and data sharing tools protects customer privacy while getting the right information to the right team members. These tools let every member of your organisation contribute to the customer experience and makes it easy to remain compliant.

Monitor your business using key metrics and mobile-ready scorecards and apply breakdowns and segments directly from your phone. (Available for iOS and Android.)

Curate and share projects to make analysis easy for everyone. Teams can also share reports and subsets of data based on their needs and business goals.

Create and refresh reports using Customer Journey Analytics data in Excel for Windows, MacOS and WebOffice.

Create unique omnichannel audience filters based on behavioural insights that can be pushed to other Adobe Experience Platform applications such as Real-time CDP and Adobe Journey Optimizer for activation.

Create subsets of individuals based on behavioural characteristics or interactions to serve more targeted, personalises experiences.

Select first-touch, last-touch, linear, participation, same-touch, U-shaped, J curve, inverse J, time decay and customised models on any metric and goal — not just conversion-based.

Audience behaviour and segmentation tools

A unified omnichannel profile gives you insights to make more refined, valuable segments while also finding new customers.

Integrations

Along with the seamless connections with other Adobe products made possible by Adobe Experience Platform, Customer Journey Analytics integrates easily into your existing technology, as well as any future technology.

Use Analysis Workspace on stitched multi-channel datasets to show flow, fallout, attribution and dimensional breakdowns.

Novice users can self-serve answers to business questions quickly using an easy interactive design.

Project and report creation

Customer Journey Analytics gives you insightful, out-of-the box reporting capabilities, as well as the ability to create your own custom reports that let you answer questions quickly and easily.

CREATED FOR:

Metrics allow you to quantify data points in Analysis Workspace. They are most commonly used as columns in a visualization and tied to dimensions.

Types of metrics

Adobe offers several types of metrics for use in Analysis Workspace:

Standard metrics : Example of standard metrics are People, Sessions, Events.

Metrics are flexible in their use within Analysis Workspace. Drag a metric to an empty Freeform table to see that metric trended over the project’s date period. You can also drag a metric when a dimension is present to see that metric compared to each dimension item. Dragging a metric on top of an existing metric header replaces it, and dragging a metric next to a header lets you see both metrics side-by-side.

Calculated metrics

Calculated metrics allow you to easily see how metrics relate to each other using simple operators or statistical functions. There are several ways to create calculated metrics:

You can select Components > Calculated metrics . This takes you to the Calculated metric builder , where you can build custom metrics from existing metrics.

To make it easier to quickly create calculated metrics, Create metric from selection has been added to the column right-click menu in Freeform Tables. This option displays when one or more header column cells are selected.

Calculated Metrics: Implementation-less metrics (3:42)

Compare metrics with different attribution models

If you’d like to quickly and easily compare one attribution model to another, right-click a metric and select Compare Attribution Models :

This shortcut lets you quickly and easily compare one attribution model to another without dragging in a metric and configuring it twice.

A Beginner’s Guide to Omnichannel Analytics

• April 14, 2024

Linear customer journeys are as obsolete as dial-up internet and floppy disks. As a marketing manager, you know better than anyone that customers interact with your brand hundreds of times across dozens of channels before purchasing. That can make tracking them a nightmare unless you build an omnichannel analytics solution. 

Alas, if only it were that simple. 

Unfortunately, it’s not enough to collect data on your customers’ complex journeys just by buying an omnichannel platform. You need to generate actionable insights by using marketing attribution to tie channels to conversions. 

This article will explain how to build a useful omnichannel analytics solution that lets you understand and improve the customer journey.

What is omnichannel analytics?

Omnichannel analytics collects and analyses customer data from every touchpoint and device. The goal is to collect all this omnichannel data in one place, creating a single, real-time, unified view of your customer’s journey.

Unfortunately, most businesses haven’t achieved this yet. As Karen Lellouche Tordjman and Marco Bertini say:

“Despite all the buzz around the concept of omnichannel, most companies still view customer journeys as a linear sequence of standardised touchpoints within a given channel. But the future of customer engagement transforms touchpoints from nodes along a predefined distribution path to full-blown portals that can serve as points of sale or pathways to many other digital and virtual interactions. They link to chatbots, kiosks, robo-advisors, and other tools that customers — especially younger ones — want to engage with.”

However, doing so is more important than ever — especially when consumers have over 300 digital touchpoints , and the average number of touchpoints in the B2B buyer journey is 27.

Not only that, but customers expect personalised experiences across every platform — that’s the kind you can only create when you have access to omnichannel data.

What might omnichannel analytics look like in practice for an e-commerce store?

An online store would integrate data from channels like its website, mobile app, social media accounts, Google Ads and customer service records. This would show how customers find its brand, how they use each channel to interact with it and which channels convert the most customers. 

This would allow the e-commerce store to tailor marketing channels to customers’ needs. For instance, they could focus social media use on product discovery and customer support. Google Ads campaigns could target the best-converting products. While all this is happening, the store could also ensure every channel looks the same and delivers the same experience. 

What are the benefits of omnichannel analytics?

Why go to all the trouble of creating a comprehensive view of the customer’s experience? Because you stand to gain some pretty significant benefits when implementing omnichannel analytics.

Understand the customer journey

You want to understand how your customers behave, right? No other method will allow you to fully understand your customer journey the way omnichannel analytics does. 

It doesn’t matter how customers engage with your brand — whether that’s your website, app, social media profiles or physical stores — omnichannel analytics capture every interaction.

With this 360-degree view of your customers, it’s easy to understand how they move between channels, where they encounter issues and what bottlenecks prevent them from converting. 

Deliver better personalisation

We don’t have to tell you that personalisation matters. But do you know just how important it is?  Since 56% of customers will become repeat buyers after a personalised experience , delivering them as often as possible is critical. 

Omnichannel analytics helps in your quest for personalisation by highlighting the individual preferences of customer segments. For example, e-commerce stores can use omnichannel analytics to understand how shoppers behave across different devices and tailor their offers accordingly.  

Upgrade the customer experience

Omnichannel analytics gives you the insights to improve every aspect of the customer experience. 

For starters, you can ensure a consistent brand experience across all your top channels by making sure they look and behave the same.

Then, you can use omnichannel insights to tailor each channel to your customers’ requirements. For example, most people interacting with your brand on social media may seek support. Knowing that you can create dedicated support accounts to assist users. 

Improve marketing campaigns

Which marketing campaigns or traffic sources convert the most customers? How can you improve these campaigns? Omnichannel analytics has the answers. 

When you implement omnichannel analytics you automatically track the performance of every marketing channel by attributing each conversion to one or more traffic sources. This lets you see whether Google Ads bring in more customers than your SEO efforts. Or whether social media ads are the most profitable acquisition channel. 

Armed with this information, you can improve your marketing efforts — either by focusing on your profitable channels or rectifying problems that stop less profitable channels from converting.

What are the challenges of omnichannel analytics?

There are three challenges when implementing an omnichannel analytics solution:

• Complex customer journeys : Customer journeys aren’t linear and can be incredibly difficult to track.  
• Regulatory and privacy issues : When you start gathering customer data, you quickly come up against consumer privacy laws. 
• No underlying goal : There has to be a reason to go to all this effort, but brands don’t always have goals in mind before they start. 

You can’t do anything about the first challenge. 

After all, your customer journey will almost never be linear. And isn’t the point of implementing an omnichannel solution to understand these complex journeys in the first place? Once you set up omnichannel analytics, these journeys will be much easier to decipher. 

As for the other two:

Using the right software that respects user privacy and complies with all major privacy laws will avoid regulatory issues. Take Matomo, for instance. Our software was designed with privacy in mind and is configured to follow the strictest privacy laws, such as GDPR. 

Tying omnichannel analytics to marketing attribution will solve the final challenge by giving your omnichannel efforts a goal. When you tie omnichannel analytics to your marketing efforts, you aren’t just getting a 360-degree view of your customer journey for the sake of it. You are getting that view to improve your marketing efforts and increase sales.

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How to set up an omnichannel analytics solution

Want to set up a seamless analytical environment that incorporates data from every possible source? Follow these five steps:

Choose one or more analytics providers

You can use several tools to build an omnichannel analytics solution. These include web and app analytics tools, customer data platforms that centralise first-party data and business intelligence tools (typically used for visualisation). 

Which tools you use will depend on your goals and your budget — the loftier your ambitions and the higher your budget, the more tools you can use. 

Ideally, you should use as few tools as possible to capture your data. Most teams won’t need business intelligence platforms, for example. However, you may or may not need both an analytics platform and a customer data platform. Your decision will depend on how many channels your customers use and how well your analytics tool tracks everything.

If it can capture web and app usage while integrating with third-party platforms like your back-end e-commerce platform, then it’s probably enough.

Collect accurate data at every touchpoint 

Your omnichannel analytics efforts hinge on the quantity and quality of data you can collect. You want to gather data from every touchpoint possible and store that data in as few places as possible. That’s why choosing as few tools as possible in the step above is so important. 

So, where should you start? Common data sources include:

• Your website
• Apps (iOS and Android)
• Social media profiles
• PoS systems

At the same time, make sure you’re tracking all relevant metrics. Revenue, customer engagement and conversion-focused metrics like conversion rate, dwell time, cart abandonment rate and churn rate are particularly important. 

Set up marketing attribution

Setting up marketing attribution (also known as multi-touch attribution) is essential to tie omnichannel data to business goals. It’s the only way to know exactly how valuable each marketing channel is and where each customer comes from. 

You’ll want to use multi-touch attribution , given you have data from across the customer journey.

Multi-touch attribution models can include (but are not limited to):

• Linear : where each touchpoint is given equal weighting
• Time decay : where touchpoints are more valuable the nearer they are to conversion
• Position-based : where the first and last touch points are more valuable than all the others. 

You don’t have to use just one of the models above, however. One of the benefits of using a web analytics tool like Matomo is that you can choose between different attribution models and compare them.

Create reports that help you visualise data

Dashboards are your friend here. They’ll let you see KPIs at a glance, allowing you to keep track of day-to-day changes in your customer journey. Ideally, you’ll want a platform that lets you customise dashboard widgets so only relevant KPIs are shown. 

Setting up standard and custom reports is also important. Custom reports allow you to choose metrics and dimensions that align with your goals. They will also allow you to present your data most meaningfully to your team, increasing the likelihood they act upon insights. 

Analyse data and take action

Now that you have customer journey data at your fingertips, it’s time to analyse it. After all, there’s no point in implementing an omnichannel analytics solution if you aren’t going to take action. 

If you’re unsure where to start, re-read the benefits we listed at the start of this article. You could use your omnichannel insights to improve your marketing campaigns by doubling down on the channels that bring in the best customers.

Or you could identify (and fix) bottlenecks in the customer journey so customers are less likely to fall out of your funnel between certain channels. 

Just make sure you take action based on your data alone.

Make the most of omnichannel analytics with Matomo

A comprehensive web and app analytics platform is vital to any omnichannel analytics strategy. 

But not just any solution will do. When privacy regulations impede an omnichannel analytics solution, you need a platform to capture accurate data without breaking privacy laws or your users’ trust. 

That’s where Matomo comes in. Our privacy-friendly web analytics platform ensures accurate tracking of web traffic while keeping you compliant with even the strictest regulations. Moreover, our range of APIs and SDKs makes it easy to track interactions from all your digital products (website, apps, e-commerce back-ends, etc.) in one place. 

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Guidance on building better digital services in government

Delivering seamless customer journeys

When two rivers meet

Let’s do a little experiment. Visit two government websites on similar topics (for example, try buy.gsa.gov and gsa.gov/buy ). Do they look the same? Probably not.

There is a natural phenomenon that happens when you see two rivers meet. They’re both water, they’re at the same spot, they have the same people fishing right there, same fish, but where the water touches, you can see a seam that separates the two bodies of water.

At the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), we’ve found that we have many websites that share a similar purpose, but just like those two rivers, they start in different places, they’re managed by different offices or programs, and as a result they look different. When it comes to customer experience, a seam between two related websites is a distraction that makes our websites harder to use than they should be.

So, how can we make things seamless? GSA’s Office of Customer Experience decided to figure it out.

4 steps to create a seamless customer journey

Step 1. determine the services offered.

The Office of Customer Experience conducted a high-level content analysis on GSA’s 184 public-facing websites to determine the services each site offers. By coupling this analysis with a manual review of each website, we’ve identified 75 separate services that GSA offers to the public across all agency websites.

Is each website dedicated to a single service? No.

Of those 184 sites, 102 (57%) of them provide more than one service. Of that 102, 86 of them provide the same service as another site in that group, typically with a slight difference in scope. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but we do recognize that, to outside users, similar services are like those two rivers meeting in one spot, and it is GSA’s responsibility to make them flow together seamlessly.

Step 2. Define the challenges

It would be a mistake to assume all website managers face the same challenges. Some of our websites support up to five different services, and it’s a complicated challenge to build a website that seamlessly serves multiple audiences, services, or customer needs.

Another complexity is in the realm of documentation and compliance burden. A single website manager could be operating nine different websites tied to 10 different services (a real example we uncovered in our research at GSA). Each federal website must comply with hundreds of federal requirements. That’s a lot of institutional knowledge, and a lot of documentation that a single person or team must maintain.

To complicate matters further, of the 75 services we identified at GSA, only 16 of them are supported by a single website dedicated to that purpose. In other words, of all the services GSA provides, more than half are carried out by people who work for different bosses in different reporting structures.

Pairing our knowledge of website managers with human resources data, we dug in to figure out what the added cost of collaboration is for the people doing this work, right down to the supervisors, website managers, and content contributors that need to be on the same page. In some cases it’s an enormous challenge. The manager of a website marketing a GSA program might need to coordinate with 17 other sites, 12 other website managers, 11 GSA departments, and 5 other business lines.

Step 3. Determine common metrics

Back in October 2022, the Office of Customer Experience wrote about measuring over 70 agency websites in the six areas of:

• Customer-centricity
• Accessibility
• Performance
• User behavior
• Implementation of hyperlinks required by policy and law
• Implementation of the U.S. Web Design System

We generated narrative reports, with visualizations that look like the following:

Each slice of this colorful “pie” represents one of the six categories above. The bigger the slice, the closer the website is to performing in an ideal manner, according to our methodology. Read more about how we use this methodology to determine the true value of a website .

A year later, we’ve reviewed 136 websites, and we’re reviewing the remaining sites this year to gain further insights from across our entire web portfolio.

We’ve learned that a small website about a single acquisition vehicle should probably not be evaluated in the same way as a site with the scope and size of, for example, our agency flagship website, GSA.gov. Grouping websites by services means that, at the very least, we consider similarities in customers when we compare measurements, which helps us begin to understand customers who are likely to visit more than one site as part of their journey.

Step 4. Connect people with data they can act on

Related services are more likely to share common customers. They also represent a collective set of “deal breakers” when it comes to customer experience. If customers who are particularly sensitive to performance issues use two related sites, poor performance on website A will reflect poorly on website B, even if there are no performance issues on site B.

When people have a bad experience with one government website, it may impact their impression of every government website. Consequently, every government website manager is not just responsible for their own website performance. They own some responsibility for every bit of traffic they pass on to other government sites, as well as how their site’s performance reflects on the trust and performance of the entire federal government.

Even when two sites are less likely to be in a single journey, if they offer a similar service, they are likely to ask the same fundamental questions, or provide similar functionality. It doesn’t matter if a site is about office supplies or lighthouses (two things GSA offers), both sites have to decide where and how to display products, present a price, and complete an online transaction. Each web team is asking similar questions. They need to learn from each other, to improve consistency in online interactions across the agency and the federal government.

What happens next?

We know that seams exist between our websites. We know who is creating each site, and that they each know something about their customers. We also know that these teams are commonly not in the same office — and as a result, not talking to each other as often as they could.

Here are the next steps in our quest to create a more seamless digital experience at GSA:

• Compile our research by business line and service
• Host workshops on service categories to help managers look across their organizational silos and determine what’s required to develop sustained collaboration
• Analyze the results of these conversations to learn how we can continue to refine our digital services

We are seizing this opportunity. As we unify website managers around their services and their customers, GSA’s digital ecosystem will no longer be separate “rivers” with offices flowing through them. Instead, we will be serving the people who are at the river to fish, boat, and have an enjoyable day.

What can I do next?

Review an introduction to analytics to learn more about measuring website effectiveness.

If you work at a U.S. federal government agency, and would like to learn more about this work, reach out to GSA’s Office of Customer Experience at [email protected] .

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Announcing Public Preview of Query editor in Azure Monitor Metrics

Published date: april 15, 2024.

Public Preview of Query editor in Azure Monitor Metrics is now Available!

We're excited to announce the Public Preview of Query Editor in Azure Metric Explorer through Azure Monitor Workspace (AMW). With this update, customers can directly query promotheus metrics using PromQL within their Azure Monitor workspace. This empowers users to efficiently explore and analyze their metric data by writing PromQL queries directly in Metric Explorer, gaining valuable insights to optimize their resources and enhance performance.

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How to establish IAM metrics within the Zero Trust framework

EY US Government and Public Sector Cybersecurity Partner/Principal

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How to establish iam metrics within the zero trust framework (pdf), an effective iam metrics program needs to link specific iam key performance indicators to broader iam and organizational goals..

G overnment agencies are implementing Zero Trust plans mandated by President Biden’s Exeucitve Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memorandum M-22-09. Zero Trust programs require the need to effectively measure identity and access management (IAM). To build or enhance an IAM metrics program, we recommend the following steps:

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Linking IAM metrics to organizational goals

An effective IAM metrics program needs to link specific IAM key performance indicators (KPIs) to broader IAM and organizational goals. As shown below, we will reference the Zero Trust M-22-09 Identity strategic goal: “Agency staff use enterprise-managed identities to access the applications they use in their work. Phishing-resistant MFA protects those personnel from sophisticated online attacks.”

1. Identify strategic goals

Start by identifying the strategic goals of the IAM program. IAM strategic goals should align with the broader objectives of the organization, such as enhancing security, improving user experience and achieving regulatory compliance. Examples of strategic goals for IAM could include reducing the risk of unauthorized access, streamlining user provisioning processes or enhancing identity governance. 

2. Define supporting goals

Once strategic goals are identified, then define supporting goals. These supporting goals represent specific areas or aspects that contribute to achieving the strategic objectives. For instance, if the strategic goal is to reduce the risk of unauthorized access, supporting goals could include strengthening authentication mechanisms, implementing role-based access controls or enhancing privileged access management.

Using the M-22-09 Identity strategic goal above, supporting goals could be “Agency staff use enterprise-managed identities to govern authorization to applications they use in their work” and “Agency staff use phishing-resistant MFA to access Agency resources.” There can be multiple layers of supporting goals, if needed.

3. Establish specific IAM KPIs

After supporting goals have been defined, establish specific IAM KPIs that measure the progress and effectiveness of the IAM program. KPIs should be specific and measurable and expressed as a proportion (percentage) so that various dimensions (departments, branches, regions, time periods, etc.) can be compared against each other. KPIs indicate the success or areas of improvement for each supporting goal. Examples of IAM KPIs could include the average time taken to provision user accounts, access policy violation rate, percentage of failed authentication attempts or MFA adoption rate.

In the example above, KPIs include “Percentage of employees with a centralized digital identity” and “Percentage of cloud resources that require phishing-resistant MFA to authenticate.”

To learn more about establishing new IAM metrics programs, download the whitepaper here

By aligning strategic goals with supporting goals and KPIs, organizations can establish IAM metrics programs that focus on measuring outcomes and tracking progress toward desired objectives. This structured approach facilitates effective monitoring, evaluation and continuous improvement of the IAM program. In the ongoing effort to mature IAM within the Zero Trust framework, establishing and integrating IAM reporting and metrics is critical to success.

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A year into working with Microsoft Copilot , we’ve learned a lot from our customers about how people are using AI at work. We’ve also learned from our own company-wide rollout to more than 200,000 employees —what’s working, where there are challenges, and what early behaviors can teach us about broader impacts to adoption and establishment of new work patterns. One of the biggest takeaways is that AI reinvention is a whole new way of working that involves both software and culture. It’s a cultural shift. Microsoft Viva empowers leaders and organizations to make that shift. We’re excited to announce new capabilities to help drive enterprise-wide adoption of Copilot, including the general availability of Microsoft Copilot Dashboard and Microsoft Copilot Academy, powered by Viva, which will be available to all Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers.

Empower and engage your workforce with next-generation AI and insights in Microsoft Viva.

Microsoft Copilot Dashboard is now generally available

The Microsoft Copilot Dashboard is an out of the box report designed for business leaders to easily understand the impact of Copilot for Microsoft 365 by providing privacy-protected insights across every stage of your AI transformation journey. Building on the initial release at Microsoft Ignite, which included readiness and usage data across Microsoft 365 apps, this release offers additional pivots that combine Copilot usage metrics with organizational context and collaboration data, enabling deeper views of adoption and impact. Copilot customers will have the flexibility to filter by attributes like department, teams, or roles, understand differences between groups, and compare those same measures between users and non-users. Viva Insights customers can use analyst workbench capabilities to dive deeper with custom reports, including incorporating data from other relevant sources. And for a limited time only , Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers will be eligible to access Viva Insights at no additional cost .  

We are also excited to announce that starting in 2024 Q3, the Copilot Dashboard will be available to all Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers at no additional cost and will not require a Viva license. You can access the dashboard in the Viva Insights app in Microsoft Teams or via the web app . Select the “Copilot Dashboard” option from the left navigation menu and start exploring results from your organization. Additionally, Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers will be eligible for a promotional offer that will provide access to all of Viva Insights , including Copilot Dashboard, as well as access to advanced insights and manager and leader insights. Contact your account team to learn more about how you can take advantage of this offer. 

In addition to having the right data-driven insights, successful AI reinvention often requires a change management strategy that includes arming employees with the right knowledge, developing clear and consistent communications, and understanding employee feedback to address any gaps or challenges. Microsoft Viva helps you develop employee skills, drive awareness, foster champions, and dig deeper into the impact of Copilot across your organization.  

Enable employees with AI knowledge and skills 

Our Work Trend Index showed that 82% of leaders said their employees will need new skills to be prepared for the growth of AI. I’m excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft Copilot Academy , where we’ve centralized those learning experiences for your organization to supercharge their Copilot skills. Copilot Academy is available in Viva Learning and starting in 2024 Q3, it will be available to all Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers at no additional cost and will not require a Viva license. 

The Copilot Academy includes curated learning paths designed by Microsoft experts to help your employees discover, learn about, and use Copilot experiences effectively. The initial release features a combination of standard generative-AI learning content (such as “Intro to prompts”) and a series of learning paths specific to Copilot for Microsoft 365 (such as “Summarize email threads with Copilot in Outlook”). We will continue to enhance Copilot Academy in the coming months, including hands-on experiences hosted by Copilot Lab in our next release.  

Copilot Academy is available in Viva Learning , your central hub for learning, so it’s easy for users to access, discover, and share within the Microsoft 365 tools they’re already using. It is preloaded and requires no admin setup or configuration, so your Microsoft 365 admins can focus on helping drive Copilot adoption. Check out our setup documentation to get started, and stay tuned for updates on content, experience, and feature enhancements coming soon. Additionally, to help our customers develop a skillset related to AI tool usage—like prompt engineering—we’ve developed a set of learning content available on Copilot Lab and Microsoft Learn that you can access today. 

Build excitement and momentum around Copilot

Getting the word out, often and early, about new technologies like AI is key to successful change management. With Viva Amplify , an internal communications platform, you can elevate your Copilot messaging and energize employees by reaching them in the channels they use most often—email, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Viva Engage. And we’ve designed the new Copilot Deployment Kit in Viva Amplify specifically to help you launch Copilot campaigns with ease. Your corporate communications team, your change team, or your early champions can use pre-built campaign templates to drive awareness, and help employees learn what it can do for them. It comes with pre-drafted content, videos, guides, and publications that can easily be customized and sent to help users learn about Copilot. And in the reporting tab, you have rich campaign analytics to understand engagement and where to make improvements.  

Grow the Copilot conversation through community

Fostering leadership communications and AI champions in your organization can also help accelerate Copilot adoption. Viva Engage can enable leaders and community champions to share strategy, learnings, and experiences broadly with their organization. In the coming weeks, Viva Engage will add built-in capabilities to help you accelerate adoption, where admins can enable a new custom-made Copilot community with one click that launches an onboarding checklist, recommends pre-seeded content and conversation starters, and supports dynamic community membership based your organization’s existing Copilot licensing allotment.  

Corporate communicators or community managers can build campaigns for Copilot based on what people are talking about, so the conversation remains relevant and reaches the right people. As people post comments, Copilot can help draft responses and provide analytics around engagement, trending topics, reach, and sentiment. And people can use Answers in Viva to ask questions and find Copilot knowledge and resources around the organization. The new Intelligent Importer —now generally available—makes it easy to generate and add your own question-and-answer for this community to support commonly asked questions.  

And lastly, new network analytics include detailed engagement metrics and theme extraction to show what’s trending and what’s top of mind for employees across all communities. 

Gain a deeper understanding of AI readiness, adoption, and impact

Innovative companies and early adopters keep up with their Copilot deployment by engaging employees through the journey, that includes continuously seeking employee feedback and making the right adjustments to manage a successful rollout. In addition to using Viva to measure organizational-wide employee engagement on your AI transformation strategy, we’re introducing new research-backed Microsoft Copilot Impact survey templates in Viva Glint and Viva Pulse designed to gauge sentiment on how Copilot is impacting employees while benchmarking those insights against industry research. The survey results will integrate directly with the Copilot Dashboard so that talent and business leaders can see the data in a unified view. Questions will include:

• Quality: Copilot helps improve the quality of my work or output.
• Effort: Using Copilot helps me spend less mental effort or mundane or repetitive steps.
• Speed: Copilot allows me to complete tasks faster.
• Productivity: When using Copilot, I am more productive.

By combining workplace collaboration and behavioral insights with employee survey data, Microsoft customer, dentsu , one of the top creative media companies in the world, was able to see the direct value and productivity impact of Copilot on its workforce.

“Our recent analysis shows employees are saving at least 15 minutes, if not 30 minutes a day by using Copilot. We are seeing a noticeable shift in how they are using the technology, spending less on meetings, emails, calls, or chats, using the time they get back to focus on deep work without interruptions and to invest in their teams.” —Kate Slade, Director of Emerging Technology Enablement at dentsu

Start using Microsoft Viva to help you drive Copilot adoption today

We invite you to discover the full capabilities of Microsoft Viva and the Copilot Dashboard as we prepare for the future of work together. Reach out to your Microsoft account team to get started today. 

To learn more about Microsoft Viva and how it can help you on our AI transformation journey, download our Copilot Success Kit , which includes a detailed overview on how to use each Viva app to accelerate Copilot adoption and engagement. Also, sign up for our upcoming webinar series to hear how our customers are using Viva to drive Copilot adoption and measurement.  

For the latest research insights on the future of work and generative AI, visit  WorkLab .

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