The Importance of Non-Click Behavioral Data

Do you track how visitors of your ecommerce website behave?

Of course you do! Everyone knows how important analytics are. However, what most people don’t know is just how important non-click analytics can be for increasing conversions.

What Is Behavioral Data and Why Are These Analytics Important?

As the name suggests non-click behavioral data refers to a school of analytics that analyzes how people behave online without taking into consideration what they actually click on. While it may seem strange to some, these analytics can actually play a huge role in conversion optimization on a website. But before we get into the nuts and bolts of these analytics, let’s briefly touch on behavioral data as a whole. Generally speaking, behavioral data is not static data. It goes above and beyond traits that may slowly change over time, like someone’s:

• Education
• Geographic Location
• Income
• Occupation

Instead, behavioral data is analytics about someone’s actions. You probably can’t accurately assume someone’s level of education just by looking at them. You’d have a much better chance of guessing if they had recently purchased McDonald’s or what kind of phone they use. These are observable traits tied to actions (i.e. if they are holding a bag from McDonald’s or a certain type of phone).

If you can get a sense for someone’s behavioral traits, you can use this information to sell to them. This has become especially true in the digital age, thanks to personalization. Ecommerce websites can now keep track of a visitor’s behavior and modify their approach to increase the chance of a conversion.

7 Examples of Non-Click Behavioral Data

Non-click behavioral data falls under this umbrella of analytics but is concerned with how people behave before and after an actual click. Common examples of this include:

• Hovering over an image
• Inactive time on the page
• Leaving the page
• Mouse movement
• Other types of “exit intent”
• Scrolling down a page
• Time spent on the page

How Non-Click Behavioral Data Impacts Ecommerce Websites 

With so many different types of analytics available these days, it’s understandable if you’re wondering why non-click behavioral data should be considered so important to your ecommerce website, especially when the alternative is to track actions related to purchases. There are actually two reasons these analytics have become recognized as playing such a vital role in conversions: affinities and intent.

Affinities: What a Visitor Prefers to Do

A visitor’s affinities tells you about what they did on your site (that didn’t involve clicking), which can then tell you about their preferences. Obviously, if you understand a visitor’s preferences, you can make changes to your website to make it more accessible in the future. You can also use personalization, making your website more accessible to two different people with completely different preferences. Conventional analytics will tell you when someone visited your ecommerce website and clicked on a few different pages.

That’s helpful, but you want to understand their affinities. You want analytics that will tell you that, after visiting the second page, they immediately clicked away. Then, on the third page, they actually spent several minutes scrolling and hovering. You can combine this information with the information you already have about these pages. If they were product pages, you’d know what products and brands they were and what type of price range they represent. If they were blogs, you’d know what the content was about and what categories they fall under.

Altogether, these analytics speaks to the visitor’s affinities, something you wouldn’t know about if all you did was check where they clicked.

Intentions: The “Why” Behind a Visitor’s Actions

What a visitor does is important to track, but if you know why they did it, you have taken a huge step toward greater conversions. One way to do this is by figuring out what their non-click behaviors tell you about what their future behaviors will be.

A simple example would be that a visitor who returns to your ecommerce website again and again, continuously viewing the same product is probably going to eventually buy it. So even though they never click their mouse once, you can use this data to personalize their experience and help increase the chances of that purchasing happening. You could also modify your site so that it shows this soon-to-be-customer other products related to the one they’re interested in, increasing their final cart.

Combining Non-Click Behavioral Data with Retargeting Ads

Perhaps one of the most powerful ways with which to leverage these analytics is by combining them with retargeting ads. In short, a retargeting ad is one that “follows” visitors to your site once they leave. For example, even though they’re no longer on your site, an ad related to their interests may show up on Facebook, reminding them about your product. So instead of paying for ads on sites you believe your market regularly visits, these ads show up on sites where they definitely do.

You can base your retargeting ads based on behavioral data, like products someone has already purchased from your site. However, you can also use non-click behavioral data to stay in front of customers who came so close to purchasing before leaving your site. You can even provide them with special deals to help motivate them to return and purchase.

Considering Pre-click Behavioral Data

Pre-click behavioral data is one of those incredibly powerful analytics that all-too-often go ignored. For those companies that are able to harvest these types of analytics, though, conversion optimization on their website inevitably increases. While you certainly want to monitor what someone does after a click, what they do beforehand is just as important. Again, this would include how long they spent on certain pages. It would also cover people leaving your page before taking an action or staying on it for long periods of time without doing anything.

Increasing Conversion Optimization on Your Website with Non-Click Data

By now, hopefully it has become clear that non-click behavioral data represents a school of extremely powerful analytics. They can inform how you should design your site and go on to implement personalization. In the end, this data can play a huge role in the conversion optimization of your website.
If you’d like help putting these analytics to use, contact Segmentify today and let’s talk about your company’s needs.