Your users are having a party on your website — but do you know what music they are playing? — Canecto.com

Understanding how your users interact whit your content can lets you know when the party is on and what music they are playing. Here is why.

The way people interact in the online world is very similar to how they are actually behaving in the real world.

People follow their passions in the online world as much as they do in the physical world. So, a Manchester United fan is very much behaving as a Man United fan in both worlds. If he is interested in information about the newest player in the troop, then this will have his interest in both the online and physical world.

So, in other words. How users act online is very much representative of the overall mindset that they have on whatever topic that interests them at the time being.

We probably all also know that our collective attention span is very low. You do not get any Facebook likes on posts that are more than 24 hours old, and the same goes for LinkedIn articles.

Social Media expert knows this and they spend their whole career optimizing content on social media sites so that they cache the attention of a crowd that has the shortest possible attention span.

So, what about the party on my website?

There is no reason to believe that your users do not act in precisely the same way on your website, with precisely as short an attention span as they do on the social media platforms. Your problem is that you never knew that there was a party on your website before it was over, and you miss the opportunity to capitalize it.

And why is that?

Because you do not have the tools that enable you to know that the party is there. The conventional web analytical tools let you know with of your pages are the most viewed. The problem is that people do not interact with pages, they interact whit your content, so you will never know what they are interested in if you only look at the top pages — which by the way properly is a pretty static list that does not change much over time anyway

If you what to know what your users really are interests in, then you need to focus on how they interact whit your content. For example, you need to know what content elements the most viewed on the landing pages, so you know why they came on the site.

You also need to know what content topics that they are most interested in right now, and you need to watch to the topics that are trending. Watching trending topics makes it possible for you to identify areas where your users are moving towards, and you need to know the reverse scenarios as well. What used to be hot, but now has lost their interest, and what are the most dominating topics on the exit pages?

Activate your knowledge

If you know all this, then what? Then you are on eye-sight with your customers. You can speak to your customers on what matters to them when it matters to them. You make yourself relevant and a becomes a partner that understands their needs and interest.

Because you know when the party is and how you can capitalize on it. You can use this information on your general approach on all the platforms that you meet your customers.

You would approach your users, on Social media, you would do it on your own website and most likely on your newsletters as well.

If you were an online retailer of women’s accessories, then you would have suppliers who are offering you a new product line every 6 to 8 weeks. So success will very much be aligned with your ability to market what you believe would be what the market is looking for in a very short time span before your stock gets outdated.

Become the host at your own party

So, understanding how your users interact whit you content can lets you know when the party is on and what music they are playing. It is possible one of the strongest platforms that you have in your marketing palette, all you need it the insight to activate it….

Originally published at www.canecto.com on August 1, 2017.