Analyzing a user’s journey at Simplilearn
A user journey is the experiences a person has when interacting with something, in this context, software. User journey is used in designing websites to identify the different ways to enable the user to achieve their goal as quickly and easily as possible. It is a strategic approach to better understand customer expectations and optimize their experience. To track a user’s journey at Simplilearn we use a marketing automation tool called WebEngage.
What is WebEngage?
It is a marketing automation tool that enables growth in the user base by engaging users via multiple channels. This includes use of various notifications methods such as Email & WhatsApp, In-app, SMS, On-site, Web Push.It helps businesses achieve sustainable growth via data-driven engagement across users’ lifecycle. By providing real-time insights into the users and their interactions with apps, websites, and campaigns.It helps us seamlessly engage users at each stage of the user journey.
This is why user-related data (referred to as User Attributes) and behavioral data (referred to as Events & Event Attributes) lay the foundation for all user engagement activities. Let’s further discuss events and event attributes.
What is an Event?
The term event refers to all the actions performed by users while interacting with mobile apps, websites and campaigns. Some of the examples include actions such as
- a product page viewed
- user hovering actions on buttons of interest
- product review user profile clicked
Events are classified into 2 categories:
System Events
A set of pre-defined and generic actions that users can perform while interacting with an app, website or campaign are referred to as System Events and are automatically tracked for your platforms once you integrate them with your account.
Some of the examples include
- user login
- user logout
- installation of an app
Custom Events
Behavioral data points that can custom define and track users across apps and websites. These enable us to understand users better and deliver contextually personalized experiences in real-time.
Depending on business, these events could be anything like:
- product page viewed
- course details viewed
- Video Played
- Video Paused
- Video Ended
What is an Event Attribute
The term event attribute refers to all the details attached to an event which help us understand its context. We can think of attributes as adjectives which give an event a character and explain what it’s all about. Examples include Product Name, Product ID and Product Category.
Event Attributes are classified into 2 categories
System Attributes
Predefined and generic attributes which are tracked by default for all the users who interact with the website like a user’s gender, date of birth and so on are called system attributes.
Custom Attributes
Custom Attributes are details that can be attached to each Custom Event. We can choose to attach a maximum of 25 custom attributes of a single data type to each Custom Event to better understand each user’s platform interactions and contextually engage them. Examples include Course Name ,Course ID , Course Value , Course Duration
Let’s now discuss how we at Simplilearn analyze users’ activities.
Firing Events from the website
- When a user lands on any product page of Simplilearn website we fire the event- Product Page viewed, which gets stored against that user
2.If a user is a new user on our website, an anonymous user is created for which the user’s journey is tracked.
3.If the new user submits any lead form on the website, the user is logged in to the dashboard and thus the user becomes an “identified” user. At this stage we have some of the user’s personal information like email ID and phone number.
4.If the user is an existing user (already identified) then all the new events are tracked against the same existing user in the dashboard to track the user’s activities thereafter.
5.There are many other events such as FAQ questions explored and Product Reviews View More Clicked and user makes payment that we fire to track the user’s journey with Simplilearn.
Now once we have tracked our user’s journey let’s understand what use this information is put to.
Marketing with WebEngage
- Email Campaigns
An email campaign is an email (or a series of emails) sent to achieve a specific goal of marketing by the company. It helps in driving the user to a point of conversion — whether conversion means becoming a lead, becoming a customer, or becoming a repeat customer. Simplilearn also uses email campaigns.
We trigger campaigns only for those users who have performed a particular event on our website. For instance, when a user refers someone to our courses, we send a mail to the referred contacts letting them know that they are referred by their friend.
2.On site Notifications
Engaging site visitors with highly targeted and personalized messages is one of the most effective ways to build trust. WebEngage allows us to show attractive onsite notifications to the users to engage them, which helps in converting them to happy customers. At Simplilearn we use banners for onsite notifications, informing them about course discounts, referral offers, and vouchers.
3.In app notification
In app notification helps in targeting users with contextual in-app messages that increase engagement and drive revenue.
At Simplilearn, in-app notifications include upskill notification on Free Course pages after 45 seconds of page load.
4.Funnels
A funnel refers to the path a user can take through the website or mobile app to reach the end goal.
We at simplilearn use this to analyze several metrics like:
- Total conversion rate (ratio of leads to orders)
- The average time that a user takes to exit the funnel
- Conversion rate between each step
This lead to order conversion funnel tells us that 7.3% of the users who create leads in Simplilearn, purchase a course and become our customers. This helps us to analyze if we need a new strategy to better engage our users with the goal of not only making them happy but also happy repeat customers.
Let’s now see the positive impact that marketing using WebEngage has made at Simplilearn.
Impact of using WebEngage as the marketing tool
Marketing with WebEngage has proven to be a success on Simplilearn. It has helped us in converting our inactive users to our active and happy customers. We have seen a significant increase in revenue contribution.
Summing Up
Using WebEngage as the marketing tool in Simplilearn has proved to be extremely effective. It has made it very easy to follow users’ journeys and send exciting emails targeting them to convert them to happy customers.
Stay tuned for more blogs from Simplilearn.
