What is clickstream data? Why it is useful?
February 2, 2023
Nothing beats the feeling of seeing millions of visitors on your website. But how long does this feeling last? A few minutes?
A big reason why your website isn’t retaining quality leads is that you don’t know why your visitors leave.Your Google Analytics probably tells you what pages are most popular and what devices visitors use. But it doesn’t give you insight into the path they take to your website.
Enter clickstream data.
In this mini guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about clickstream data, including what it is, its benefits, and how you can use it to make better business decisions.
What is clickstream data?
Clickstream data is any information collected while users navigate the internet. It’s a roadmap of the user’s path before and after visiting your webpage.
You can use clickstream data to learn more about:
- What search term visitors typed into Google that resulted in your page popping up
- The page the user first landed on
- Where they clicked after landing on your page.
But what sets clickstream data apart from traditional web analytics is what it tracks. Analytics data follows what happens on your website, while clickstream data tracks visitors across multiple websites.
So, for example, you’ll be able to see which competitor websites users are visiting and how long they stay on these websites.
Why is clickstream data useful?
Here are some benefits of clickstream data:
- It shows the big picture
- It offers real-time insights
- It doesn’t take much to maintain
It shows the big picture
The main reason why companies utilize clickstream data is that it provides insight into the customers’ web behavior. With digital analytics, you’re limited to visitors’ actions on your website.
Although this is valuable, clickstream data takes data collection a step further. It emphasizes what users do across the web, including their activities on competitors’ websites, allowing you to learn more about your customer and optimize the user experience (UX).
It offers real-time insights
Another benefit of using clickstream data is that it provides data as users scour the web. Unlike surveys, transactional data, and focus groups, which can take time to analyze and understand, clickstream data gathers data in real time. This ensures no delays, and you can immediately use data for personalized marketing or product development.
It doesn’t take much to maintain
The setup process of clickstream data is intimidating and sometimes tiring, which is a significant reason marketers shy away from it. But once everything is set up and your team has developed working algorithms, it takes almost no work to maintain.
What information can you obtain from clickstream data?
Here are some common metrics you can expect to gather from clickstream data:
- The website the user comes from before landing on your website
- The website the user visits next
- If a user adds and removes an item from their cart
- How long it takes each page to load
Why do you need to use clickstream data?
The primary reason why more businesses are using clickstream data is that it helps gather information about competitors.
Clickstream data is like powerful binoculars that allow you to see what your competition is doing. And every marketer’s dream is to gather analytics about how their competition attracts customers.
With clickstream data, you can see what users are doing on your competition’s websites. This can help you make informed decisions when tweaking your website and marketing copy because you learn from your competition’s mistakes and successes.
How to use clickstream data analysis to benefit your business
If you’re thinking about using clickstream data analysis to benefit your business, follow these three steps:
- Gather data from good sources
- Organize it in a customer data platform
- Use this data to make business decisions
Step 1: Gather data from good sources
There are countless ways to gather clickstream data. However, if you’re already using Google Analytics, you’ll be glad to know that you can set up custom dimensions and export clickstream data into any database within your Google Analytics dashboard. The initial process is long and technical, so hiring a developer isn’t a bad idea. But if you want to do this on your own, there are multiple in-depth articles and videos about gathering clickstream data from within Google Analytics.
Step 2: Organize it in a customer data platform (CDP)
Once you’ve exported clickstream data from Google Analytics, it’s time to clean and organize it in a CDP. By organizing data logically and conducting funnel analysis, you’ll be able to spot patterns and customer behaviors.
Step 3: Use this data to make business decisions
Now comes the fun part: using this navigation analysis to make more informed business and marketing decisions. As you learn more about your customer—not just on your own website but on your competition’s website—you’ll get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
Utilize clickstream data to its full potential with Lytics
Collecting clickstream data is an effective way to learn more about your customer. This allows you to tailor marketing around their preferences and make better business decisions. If you’re struggling to organize raw clickstream data, consider Lytics CDP, a tool that lets you integrate Lytics into Google Analytics and automate the clickstream data exportation process.
