What is Behavioral Analytics? Definition, examples & tools

Behavioral analytics utilizes a combination of big data analytics and artificial intelligence on user behavioral data to identify patterns, trends, anomalies, and other useful insights to enable appropriate actions.

Read on to learn the essentials of behavioral analytics so you can personalize your digital products and drive business outcomes for your company.

Source: istock/photoimage

Behavioral analytics gives you the ability to find out exactly how your customers are using your product. With this information, you can continuously improve, adapt, and mold your product into the experience your customers are seeking.

Behavioral analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing data from actions performed by users of a digital product, such as an app or website. With this data, companies can see exactly how users interacted with the digital experience, and make decisions about how to improve digital products in the future.

Examples of User Behaviors Relevant to Behavioral Analytics

• Creating an account

• Filling out a form

• Playing a song

• Abandoning a cart

• Purchasing a subscription

These behaviors, otherwise known as events (for event-based analytics), are tracked in order to reveal user preferences, intentions, and habits. The better you understand your customers, the more value you’ll be able to offer them. And, in turn, you’ll nurture a loyal customer base that sticks around for the long haul.

Ready to learn more about how to implement behavioral analytics into your company?

Download Aeque's Analytics Metric spreadsheet to give you a head start!

Get the guide

The Importance of Behavioral Analytics for Your Business

The goal of behavioral analytics is to empower you to make informed decisions that drive specific business outcomes for your company. Increasing high-value metrics like retention, conversion, and engagement is extremely difficult if you can’t understand what’s influencing your customers at every stage of the customer journey.

Depending on surveys, questionnaires, reviews, and feedback is not a viable long-term solution. Customers’ actions convey much more meaning than words, and understanding how cohorts engage with the digital experience is key to driving critical metrics like customer lifetime value.

Data points like daily active users and bounce rates can help you determine where prospects come from and how long they stay but not necessarily why they choose your product. Without knowing the intent and motivation of your customers, any changes you make to your product will be based on intuition.

Behavioral analytics gives you raw data that can be used to form hypotheses, conduct A/B testing, and make changes with confidence. This constant refinement is what leads to highly personalized experiences that deliver value through every interaction and feature.

Different Types of Behavioral Analyses

Once you’ve collected behavioral data, you can run different types of analyses, tests, and experiments based on your goals. Not all behavioral analytics platforms offer the same capabilities, Aeque's team of analytics experts can help you understand the capabilities of each and how to implement them based on your needs.

A/B Experimentation

A/B experimentation lets you make product decisions with confidence. Not sure about a landing page? Wondering if a product feature is worth the trouble? Instead of making changes to your product based on intuition, you can determine the best course of action using tangible data generated from customer behaviors.

Armed with user behavior data, you can make big-picture adjustments that improve the customer experience without taking any chances.

Funnel Analysis

Every path a customer takes toward conversion presents an opportunity for progress or drop off. Funnel analysis enables you to examine every stage of the customer journey so you can fix pain points and/or confirm winning experiences.

As your business grows, you’ll likely have more funnels to maintain and optimize. Platforms such as Amplitude give you a holistic overview of all your funnels so you can understand user intent at every level.

Segmentation

Segmentation lets you discover trends and patterns by comparing groups of users and behaviors over time. For example, your product will likely find success with a group of core users who know your product inside and out.

If you segment that audience and pay attention to their behaviors, you can locate the most valuable aspects of your product. Then you can incentivize new users to engage your product the same way as your power users.

Key Takeaways

• Behavioral analytics refers to the method of tracking and analyzing user behavior in order to better understand what they want from your product or service.

• Data generated from behavioral analytics can be used to improve your product, satisfy customers, and boost key performance indicators.

• How you use behavioral analytics is dependent on your goals, but conversion, retention, and engagement are universally essential.

Ready to learn more about how to implement behavioral analytics into your company?

Download Aeque's Analytics Metric spreadsheet to give you a head start!