Seeing the Future with Predictive Analytics

Las Vegas. Even when we know “the house” has rigged the games to tip the odds in its favor, we all can’t pass-up the chance for a win. When anyone walks into the casino, however, there is predictive model in place to understand how much the average person bets and the Casino already knows he or she is going to lose.

What sorcery is this? How can you apply the Vegas approach to your eCommerce and digital marketing goals? Simple: customer experience.

Predictive analytics “exploits patterns found in historical and transactional data to identify risks and opportunities.” In other words, predictive analytics customer experience is really about the past and the present more than it is the future. For eCommerce and digital marketing, predictive analytics involves:

• Customer data analysis.
• Machine intelligence.
• Predictive models based-on mining structured and unstructured data.

Predictive analytics brings the power of real-time data driven decision making into the hands of your team to empower the delivery of excellent digital experiences, benefitting the business and your customer. Sound beyond your capacity? Don’t worry. Here are a few key components to focus on for your predictive analytics customer experience.

Know What Your Customers Have Done

There’s a great quote from one of my favorite movies, Amistad. At the end of Sir Anthony Hopkins’ monologue making his case to the Supreme Court, he emphasizes, “Who we are is who we were.” He was speaking about the drive to do what is right as a country, but the same holds true for your customers and visitors. Their patterns and trends are not going to change much, if at all, so knowing this gives you your first advantage. Here’s the good news: You’re probably doing this already with your digital analytics tools. Congratulations!

Know What You Want Your Customer to Do

“You need to set goals for the future!” said all parents to all kids. We should all set goals in life and in business, and as straight-forward of a concept as it is, its application escapes lots of organizations because it typically does not involve just you. Here’s some advice: If you are on the hook for the eCommerce or Marketing spend in any capacity and goals have not been set by everyone involved, set the goals for them. It’s always easier to edit something than it is to create something from scratch, so putting goals out there will absolutely jumpstart the conversation to creation.. Start with baseline metrics to which you can set measurable goals:

• Revenue
• Page views/hits
• Registrations
• Sales
• Percentage of users affected by an error/struggle
• Downloads
• Average session time
• Conversion percentage

Once you set goals, for either yourself or for others, they will evolve to be more intricate to match what drives your business… but you have to start somewhere!

Measure, Measure, Measure

Have you ever gone on a diet or trained for a marathon? You did yourself a disservice if you did not keep yourself honest by regularly stepping on a scale or tracking your time. The same is true for the eCommerce or digital marketing goals you set: know what is working, what is not working, and then make insightful decisions to help reach those goals. With Quantum Metric, you can understand at glance which content is helping your visitors and customers get to where you want them to be.

(Perhaps Most Importantly) Know What Is Stopping Your Customers

No matter how much time you put into the design of your digital properties, the focus groups you hold, and the feedback you apply, you will have a percentage of customers who are going to struggle. Knowing what works is great but knowing what is not working or what is affecting your customers’ experiences adversely is even more powerful.

At Quantum Metric, we apply machine intelligence and predictive model based-on your customers’ and visitors’ struggles. The platform tells you, in real-time:

• How many customers or visitors are affected.
• Why they are not getting to where you want them to be.
• Where on your digital property or funnel it is occurring.
• The impact it is having on your business.

This real-time information helps you not only be proactive with what you should address and fix so that future visitors and customers do not experience the same struggle, but also helps you uncover future strategies to enhance the digital experiences you provide your customers and visitors.

Interested in tipping the odds in your favor? It’s simple: reach out to Quantum Metric for an evaluation!