Behind every website visit lies a person with real needs, hopes and frustrations. Yet, for many of us running websites, these visitors remain faceless statistics in our analytics dashboards. Few people I speak with have no customer research and rarely have conversations with customers beyond sales and support enquiries. In truth, they have no idea what customers really need.
The good news is that you don’t need expensive tools or a suite of research experts. Some simple steps can go a long way to building customer understanding. I’ll help you get started.
1. Track Customer Behaviour
If you haven’t already, set up website analytics tools (i.e. GA4) and session recording tools (i.e. Crazy Egg, Lucky Orange, Hotjar...). These are useful for seeing what customers are doing. But just be aware that these tools tell only part of the story. Whilst you’ll see what visitors do, understanding why they behave in specific ways requires deeper investigation. If you only use behavioural data, it’ll lead you to assumptions rather than insights.
2. Set Up On-site Surveys
Most session recording tools allow you to set up surveys on your site. You can design triggers to target particular pages or devices. You can also set them to appear when someone has been scrolling a certain amount, browsing for a certain amount of time, and even when they are about to move up to the browser bar to leave your site. On-site surveys can give you invaluable insights into visitors’ needs and frustrations.
For example, when people are about to leave, you can set up a pop-up survey to ask if they found what they were looking for. You can have a question on your search results page to see if they found the specific thing they were searching for and if the results were helpful. You could even pop up after they’ve been browsing for a while to see what might make their visit better.
Over time, these responses highlight patterns in visitor behaviour and reveal whether your site structure truly serves their needs. When visitors can’t find something you already offer, it signals an opportunity to improve your site’s navigation or content structure.
3. Mine Your Search, Support & Live Chat Logs
You probably have a lot of valuable data that you’re not utilising. Search logs hold precious insights into visitor intentions and needs. This data reveals popular search terms that could be made more visible in the browsing journey and within page content. It signals that visitors may search for things you currently don’t offer, which can be valuable insight for shaping an offer that meets your customer’s needs.
Support tickets and chat logs similarly expose common pain points and areas where visitors need additional guidance. This insight proves particularly valuable for improving customer onboarding and early website experiences. With careful analysis, you can find some gems of information about your customer’s goals, fears, and needs.
4. Start Doing User Interviews
Speaking to customers and listening to their perspective is the most valuable of the four things listed here. Reach out to various customer groups - new, repeat, churned, and non-converting visitors. Listen objectively to their goals, why they chose you (or didn’t), whether they reached their goals, what competitors they considered before visiting you, and what would cause (or did cause) them to leave in search of an alternative.
Pro Tip - use the on-site surveys to recruit people to speak to. Ask live visitors to your site if they have 5 minutes for a chat and offer incentives like discounts or vouchers for their time. Although this all sounds like a lot of work, you only have to do a few each month for invaluable insights.
Long-term Benefits for Customer Understanding
If you try these methods and build on them each month. Bit by bit, you’ll build up so much insight into your visitors and what they need. You’ll have regular exposure to the people that matter most to the success of your business. You’ll understand where else they go, what needs are underserved, and what you can do to support customers better so they’ll have no desire to leave you for a competitor.
If you get stuck or need support in any of these areas, I’m here to help. Give me a shout, and I’ll be happy to jump on a call.
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‍Note: None of the tools I’ve mentioned here are paying me, and I’m sure there are plenty of good alternatives to consider that I haven’t listed.
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