4 types of website visitors that are statistically more likely to have bigger conversion rates
By: Aleksandra Lazovic
Tags: Startup, Growth Hacking, UX Research, UX, Metrics

“What’s user experience got to do with conversions? Everything.“ (CXL)

About two years ago, when I was writing my thesis in Business Analytics, I had zero clues that my career will bring me into the world of UX. At that point, I was working in Digital Marketing and wanted to use my thesis to help a client make smarter decisions and get more business inquiries (conversions) while investing in digital advertising.

I’ve revisited this research and I’ll try to share my findings the best way I can. It’s probably nothing groundbreaking or eye-opening, but it might help some of you shape some studies of your own or help you prove some ideas you had in your work.

This article is a part of my thesis “The role of multivariate analysis in evaluating KPIs for Digital Marketing activities”, done in September 2017. at the University of Belgrade, under the direction of Dobrota Marina, PhD.

Study Summary

In this study, the idea was to collect 12 months' worth of data on visitor behaviors and use the findings to improve marketing efforts. The company in question is Maxifit, a distributor of fitness equipment (B2B segment) in the Balkans region — Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

I’ve collected 12 months’ worth of data in order to understand which users the client should focus on because they show stronger indications for conversion.

Objectives

Understand which user segments show behaviors related to conversions

Understand which channels bring higher-quality visitors

Give the client enough information to help him better invest the Marketing budget in different channels and targeting options

Research Process

Make an initial hypothesis about the relationship between user behavior and positive results Collect data about the user behavior Use multivariate analysis to process the data Present key findings and give recommendations

Digital Marketing is considered to play a dominant role in today’s business world. The traditional media is stepping down, and the shift toward new technologies is inevitable. Consequently, investments in Digital Marketing activities are growing daily. That is why it is necessary to make informed decisions, which will return the investments to the greatest possible extent.

Maxifit is a fitness equipment distributor. Their main objective is to receive as many business inquiries as possible through their contact form.

To briefly give some context, Maxifit is a company that is an exclusive distributor of XBody EMS fitness devices for the Balkans region (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia). Their main goal is to sell as many XBody devices or open Maxifit brand franchises as possible. Read more about the business concept HERE.

Training on XBody Electro-Muscle Stimulation (EMS) device

Usually, in e-commerce businesses, it is easy to draw a correlation between our activities and the results, because we can see direct sales online. In this case, the product is very expensive and a contract needs to be signed before purchase. That’s why our goal is to achieve as many email inquiries on the website from people interested in purchasing the product. That is what we would call a “conversion”. Then the sales staff takes over.

Research Model & Hypotheses

The goal of all marketing activities is to get as many conversions as possible. In order for the conversion to happen, a potential customer has to go through the sales funnel. The focus of this study was the top and the middle part of the sales funnel — brand awareness and showing interest.

H1: User behavior on the website affects the conversion probability

H2: There is a significant correlation between the means of acquiring users and their website behavior

In this article, I will solely focus on Hypotheses 1, since it is more closely related to the topic User Experience, while the other one might help digital marketers.

Collected data, Variables and User Segments

“The most valuable users are the ones who navigate deeper into the website — they are usually returning visitors, who come from the search engines, visit multiple pages on the website and have a higher average visit duration.”

According to previous research (Plaza, 2011), visitors that are expressing the following behaviors have greater indications that they will become our customers:

Spending more time on the website

Visiting multiple pages on the website

Visiting the website more than once

Visiting website from search engines

This is why I’ve chosen to match different user segments with variables related to the indicators above and see what kind of relationship they have.

Variables that indicate positive behaviors:

Sessions — Number of visits an individual user has on the website

Bounce Rate — What is the percent of users who leave the website right after their first page (landing page)

Pages per Session — Number of pages visited during one session

Average Session Duration — How long does, on average, a user stay on the website during one session

I’ve decided to test the differences between (H1a) Desktop and Mobile visitors, (H1b) visitors that came through Facebook ads and search engines, (H1c) new vs returning visitors, and (H1d) visitors from different age groups.

User segments that were tested: