Tealeaf Offers Insight to Mobile Customer Behavior
Customer experience management (CEM) software and even basic Web site analytic software, such as Google Analytics, can tell you a lot about your desktop users, but there is an entire group of user data being left — customers who are transacting on your site with mobile devices.
Tealeaf, a company specializing in CEM software, just announced several new offerings, including the Tealeaf CX Mobile Experience Manager, which can be used by e-commerce businesses to gain insight on how their mobile customers, therefore giving them the information they need to provide a better mobile customer experience.
Mobile Commerce: Addressing the Growing Trend
Mobile commerce is a growing trend, and according to Nielsen Mobile, there are more than 40 million monthly active mobile Internet users in the U.S., a number that has grown by 73 percent since 2006. Industry analysts say to capitalize on the trend, online sellers need to provide a mobile customer experience that meets expectations of this growing group.
Tealeaf provides a software platform that Web site owners can use for CEM. This service records all unique user interactions on their Web site. Online merchants can virtually see all Web site user interactions, such as how visitors interact with applications.
The recently announced extension, Tealeaf CX Mobile Experience Manager, expands on the company's CEM product by allowing Web shop owners to access this same type of customer data on those online visitors using a mobile device.
With this mobile user information, e-commerce business owners can then determine any obstacles in the transaction path, gaining a better understanding of trends; such as changes in conversion rates, dropped shopping carts and spikes in customer service calls. They can gain insight on why these issues are popping up, regardless if the customer is using a desktop or mobile platform.
Mobile Analysis and Session Replay
When using Mobile Experience Manager, you are able to identify the specific brands of mobile devices that are being used to interact and conduct transactions on your site, such as Windows mobile devices, RIM, Palm, iPhone and many other popular mobile platforms.
John Dawes, vice president of product management, said that being able to see which devices are being used for on-site interactions can be a big asset to businesses trying to figure when they should invest in mobile site development.
Since Web sites and applications are displayed differently on mobile devices, a mobile analysis of your site can give you detailed information to determine if you need to offer a mobile version of your site, and which specific mobile platforms the site should be optimized for.
If you see, for example, a steady growth in iPhone users, this is a good indication that you should look at investing in mobile site optimization for this platform to provide your customers with the best possible customer experience on your site.
In addition to providing a mobile analysis of your users, Mobile Experience Manager also offers a Mobile Session Replay feature that captures complete interactions of every mobile user. With this new module, you can play an exact browser-level recording of each mobile user session, taking into account mobile variables, such as specific device capabilities, screen sizes and other mobile browser limitations.
This replay of a customer transaction lets site owners see exactly how a customer interacted with applications using his or her own mobile device. It also lets you identify and diagnose mobile site problems, compare mobile customer experiences with desktop visitors or between different mobile devices).
New Bot Reporting and Community Learning
In addition to the new Mobile Experience Manager product, Tealeaf also updated its CX Solution to offer businesses a better understanding of bot behavior. Bots are used by search and price engines for Web indexing, and they frequently make up a high percentage of a site's traffic.
New bot features provide a unique combination of actual user traffic alongside bot traffic, including which bots visit a site, their frequency and how they are traversing the site during each visit. E-commerce businesses can benefit from the bot reporting options as it gives you a better understanding of bot behavior.
With the bot data, e-commerce businesses can see exactly how product pages are being indexed and ranked by search engines. Not only can this help you in your own SEO efforts, but you can also use the data to launch new product pages and prices to get better results in organic Web searches.
Lastly, rounding out its announcement of new features and solutions, Tealeaf launched new user community-based templates, including dashboards, reports and events for common data captured across customer visits. The Community templates, according to the company, will provide Tealeaf users with an easy way to access best practices for leveraging and gaining value from Tealeaf data.
Tealeaf CX Mobile Experience Manager is a module existing customers can add on to their Tealeaf CX solution for a minor additional cost, the amount of which is dependent on the customer's set-up. The new bot reporting features and user community-based templates are available as part of the Tealeaf Customer Behavior Analysis Suite.
Vangie Beal is a seasoned online marketplace seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and avid online bargain hunter. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com.
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