Metrics are becoming increasingly important for companies however most people are just interested in the vanity metrics – the ones which give you a nice warm feeling but give no indication if you’re doing the right thing. The important metrics are more difficult to find and understand but can have a huge impact on your product.
Difference behaviour in different browsers
Below is a screenshot from the new version (Released 23/01/12) of Mayday, using my existing data within Google Analytics. With a few targeted queries, Mayday has identified some interesting user behaviour patterns.
The most surprising fact is that IE has received the most visits (72% of traffic) however is 3rd in terms of conversions. This is a signifiant problem as we could be losing out on potential users. By comparing different aspects of users behaviour you can identify potential problems users are having.
Given the data above there are two initial assumptions:
1) There is a bug in the product.
2) IE users are a different market sector which respond differently to Firefox / Chrome users.
Give those assumptions, we have two actionable insights to try and improve the conversion rate.
1) Perform additional testing in IE around that area of the product to ensure no bugs exist.
2) Run A/B tests around language and pitch to the IE users segment.
After exploring a little more I found two interesting facts.
1) The homepage layout in IE was indeed broken. Since fixed it also doesn’t render as nicely due to the lack of HTML5 and CSS3 support which could also harm the conversions. I’ll be monitoring this closely.
2) There was a sharp rise in IE users followed by a quick drop-off, more than likely a bot.
Understanding technology use and browser support
Your metrics can help you make informed technical decisions about your product and website. While this doesn’t related to the current Mayday homepage, most websites do use Flash in particular ways. While most developers assume that everyone has Flash installed, we can see from the data below they would be correct – prove points are always better than assumptions. However, if we take mobile users into account then we can see 17% of users do not. This is a large percentage of missed opportunity and could justify a simple mobile-focused website.
This type of data allows you to understand which version to target. From this data set, you could assume that it would be best to target 10.3. Looking at a more narrow and recent slice shows 11.1 is rising and is the most common version. Informed decisions which could make a huge impact on how you create your website.
As Mayday continues to release additional functionality we’ll continue to look at how other metrics and user behaviour can indicate a problem.
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