7 Ways to Track and Analyze Cross-Device User Behavior
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital analytics, we sought the expertise of CEOs and marketing executives to shed light on cross-device user behavior tracking. From using heatmaps to leveraging dynamic tracking links, explore the seven distinct methods these professionals recommend for gaining comprehensive user insights.
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Use Heatmaps for Cross-Device Insights
To effectively track and analyze cross-device user behavior, I recommend using tools like Hotjar for heatmaps and session recordings. These tools allow you to visually see where users click, scroll, and hover on your site or app, across different devices.
By understanding these interactions, you can identify user pain points, optimize your interface, and improve the overall user experience. This method is straightforward and provides actionable insights to enhance user engagement and conversion rates.
Matias Rodsevich, Founder & CEO, PRLab
Implement Retargeting Pixels and Tags
One method my company uses to analyze cross-device user behavior is implementing retargeting pixels and universal analytics tags on our website. Retargeting pixels allow us to identify users across devices by capturing their information when they first visit our site. We then serve them targeted ads on any device. By monitoring who clicks our retargeting ads, we see how people engage with us across devices.
Universal analytics tags give us a more complete view by detecting users’ devices and combining them into one customer profile. Analyzing metrics like engagement and conversion rates across devices shows us where the experience could improve for each device. For example, we found that tablet users were more likely to convert when shown shorter, more visual retargeting ads with fewer form fields. Implementing these insights increased our tablet conversion rate by 12% and mobile by 8% in under three months.
Cross-device tracking has been invaluable for understanding our customers and improving metrics. I recommend any business implement a cross-device solution, analyze the data, and customize the experience for each device. When optimized, the impact on revenue and customer experience is substantial. Using cross-device tracking and making data-driven decisions has turned our business around this year.
Joe Amaral, Founder & COO, Anthem Software
Require User Authentication
User authentication is the most effective method for tracking and analyzing cross-device user behavior. To use this strategy, simply require users to log in to your service across all their devices. You can make this easier for them by using a single sign-on (SSO) system or providing social login options such as Facebook and Google. This allows you to easily track a user’s activity across different devices. Conducting a path analysis, where you analyze the sequence of interactions across devices leading to a conversion or key action, helps you gain insights on aspects you can optimize to encourage desired user behavior across different devices.
Clooney Wang, CEO, TrackingMore
Link IDs via Internal CRM
Tracking user behavior across multiple platforms and devices is crucial for increasing sales conversion and repeat sales, as well as for measuring and evaluating overall business performance.
Today, users have the opportunity to order a product or service off a website, on an iOS/Android app, or offline in a store. To be able to effectively communicate with your audience and correctly assess the impact of any advertising message on the whole ecosystem, it is necessary to combine all these channels in business analytics.
For comprehensive cross-device and cross-platform tracking of user behavior, we use an internal CRM (Salesforce) where we can link multichannel attribution by internal ID. Different sources can have different IDs: e.g., Google Advertising ID (GAID) for Android, Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) for iOS, pseudo-ID or User ID for websites, or the actual person offline. All these different IDs need to be interlinked in order to track user behavior as that of one person, not four.
A great way to deal with this is a loyalty program where tagging is done through a single login and password, or the common user’s ID across all channels. This way, we can track the entire user journey, and see how and when they make decisions.
An interesting case from the pharma industry: There is a distinct trend in online pharmacies—customers fill their shopping cart in the mobile app while driving to or from work, but they usually don’t place an order at that time. The final purchase decision is made from a desktop, where it is more convenient to read detailed descriptions and reviews. If pharmacies don’t link the behavior of both on the app and website, they will see a large number of incomplete orders. Consequently, they lose the opportunity for additional monetization, e.g., through retargeting web campaigns when a user arrives at the office or at home, urging them not to forget to place the order.
Different patterns in user behavior across various platforms and devices exist for every industry, every season, and every GEO. The better we are at recognizing and linking such patterns, the more effective and the more personalized our end-to-end multi-channel ad campaigns will be.
Andrew Bluemental, CEO & Co-Founder, Lemon AI
Integrate Google Analytics With Mixpanel
One specific method for tracking and analyzing cross-device user behavior involves integrating Google Analytics with other popular software tools like Mixpanel and Segment. By leveraging these tools, we can gather comprehensive data on user interactions across multiple devices and touchpoints.
First, we set up Google Analytics to collect basic user data, ensuring that cross-device tracking is enabled. This allows us to track user activities across different devices using unique user IDs. Next, we integrate Mixpanel to gain deeper insights into user behavior through event tracking and detailed user segmentation. Mixpanel’s advanced analytics help us understand how users interact with our platform on various devices.
Additionally, we use Segment to unify data collection and ensure consistency across all our analytics tools. Segment acts as a single source of truth, collecting data from multiple sources and sending it to Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and other tools simultaneously. This integration allows us to create a holistic view of user behavior, track user journeys seamlessly, and identify patterns that inform our product development and marketing strategies.
By combining these tools, we can accurately track and analyze cross-device user behavior, ensuring that we understand how users engage with our platform regardless of the device they use.
Combine Probabilistic and Deterministic Tracking
We tend to favor probabilistic tracking for marketing purposes, and deterministic tracking for UX design purposes. Probabilistic tracking gives us a good sense of where our potential customers lie and what their demographics are; we used it to help identify the need for our apartment-moving services and figure out where to launch those services first. Deterministic tracking helps us understand how users interact with our website versus with our app, and helps us to improve both over time. We tend to favor pushing users to our app, since it provides us with more security and reliability, as well as better tracking.
Nick Valentino, VP of Market Operations, Bellhop
Leverage Dynamic Tracking Links
As the President and Owner of Empathy First Media, I have found that one effective method for tracking and analyzing cross-device user behavior is leveraging dynamic tracking links. By using unique URLs for each device or campaign, we can monitor the flow of traffic across multiple platforms and devices, allowing us to gain deeper insights into user behavior.
For example, when working with a client in the e-commerce industry, we implemented dynamic tracking links across their social media, email, and website channels. By analyzing the data from these links, we were able to determine that a significant portion of users were engaging with the brand on mobile devices but converting on desktop. This led us to optimize the mobile user experience and ultimately increase the client’s overall conversion rate.
In conclusion, dynamic tracking links are a powerful tool for understanding cross-device user behavior and optimizing marketing strategies. By tailoring our approach based on these insights, we can drive better results and create a more seamless experience for our audience.
Daniel Lynch, President & Owner, Empathy First Media
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