Customer engagement is an important aspect of the success of any business. It can take many different forms depending upon the unique characteristics of the company in question. But at heart, customer engagement simply refers to how much and how often your target audience interacts with your website, your social media, your email campaigns or any other facets of your business, online or offline.
Knowing how to measure customer engagement is crucial to developing your business model, since it will notify you of where your strategy is performing well and – most crucially of all – where it requires improvement. Though the definition of customer engagement may vary according to the industry you operate in, the products or services you offer and the audience you wish to target, there are a few key metrics you should monitor in order to keep abreast of your performance.
5 key customer engagement metrics
- Session length
Seeing as how your website is likely to be the first point of contact you have with many customers, it seems a sensible place to begin measuring their engagement. The length of time they spend on your site in a single visit – commonly referred to as a session – is a strong indicator of how much they’re engaging with you. Generally speaking, the longer that a visitor spends on your website, the better.
Of course, it could be that they’re only there for a short period of time because they know what they want and your site layout is optimised for them to obtain it. However, that’s only true in cases where the visit ends with a purchase or other conversion. More commonly, short session lengths point to insufficient quality of content on your site, technical issues (such as slow page loading speeds or broken links) or other problems. Once you become aware of them, you can address them.
- Bounce rate
For the uninitiated, the bounce rate of your site is defined as the percentage of visitors to your site who do not navigate past the first page they land upon, before closing the window or moving onto another site. It can be directly linked to session length, since those users who navigate through multiple pages are more likely to spend more time on your site.
Bounce rates are very important in that they not only give you a good idea of when and how often people are bouncing off your site without giving it a second glance, but that they also have a direct impact upon your search engine results page (SERP) rankings. Sites with a high bounce rate generally perform worse in SERPs, so find out why people are navigating away and offer them a reason not to do so.
- Loyalty analysis
Any business owner will know that converting new prospects into customers is the first step in achieving your goals. But retaining repeat custom is the Holy Grail of the business world. Monitoring a customer’s interest in your loyalty programme by analysing how often they take advantage of what it offers is a great way of measuring customer engagement. It gives you the opportunity to see what percentage of your converted leads are coming back for more.
Since the majority of businesses offer some sort of loyalty scheme these days, it’s becoming increasingly important to set yourself apart from the competition with new and novel ideas. One such method is the use of gamification techniques to maintain an intrinsic enjoyment in the loyalty scheme itself in addition to the extrinsic rewards it offers, thereby encouraging customers to participate for the sheer joy of it alone.
- Social media
Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal, allowing you to reach wider and more targeted audiences than ever before. There are a variety of customer engagement metrics associated with social media, including how often your posts are liked, shared and commented upon by your target audience. Word of mouth is a big driver of business to your site and friend referrals, positive product reviews or other beneficial comments are all great indicators of a robust social media presence.
However, it should be remembered that social media interaction is a two-way street. It’s not enough to simply measure user engagement on these platforms. You must also actively encourage it. For example, social media is a great place to answer questions or provide more details about the products and services you offer to potential customers curious about how they might benefit them. Take the time to foster strong social media connections and the customer engagement will follow.
- App uptake
The stats show that people are increasingly using their mobile devices to search, browse and shop online. In fact, a recent survey revealed that 65% of all ecommerce traffic and 53% of all sales took place on a mobile device. With that in mind, you must ensure that your online presence is optimised and available across all channels. A bespoke app for your company is the best way to make sure that happens.
Once you’ve commissioned, created and launched your app into the world, it’s then a matter of seeing who and how many people bite. As well as tracking the number of downloads of your app, you should also monitor how often users spend on it, as well as which pages they visit and when. This can help you to create pop-ups, notifications and emails alerting them when products relevant to their tastes become available or discounted, thus maximising engagement and sales in one fell swoop.
Turning customer engagement metrics into actionable insights
It’s one thing measuring customer engagement, but it’s quite another to delve into those metrics and reveal actionable insights that will actively improve the performance of your business going forwards. At 3radical, we can help with both.
We excel at attracting attention to your brand and encouraging two-way interactions, as well as gauging how well those strategies are working with your target audience. We can also analyse the raw numbers to derive useful findings that can inform your decision-making processes in the future, ensuring you are best placed to engage customers, encourage them to buy more and even motivate them to share your message with their friends and family.If you’d like to learn more about how our innovative used of gamification techniques and advanced digital strategies can help your business, the informative video below should introduce you to the 3radical way of doing things. On the other hand, feel free to get in touch more directly by emailing us at info@3radical.com for a discussion of your company’s unique wants and needs.