All you need to know about qualitative website data

Now, first, let’s start with understanding what qualitative data is and how it can give you customer insights. 

What is qualitative data?

Qualitative data is non-numerical and is gathered through observation. The website analysis is qualitative data that can help you to understand users’ behavior. This type of data helps to identify patterns and trends in user behavior that you can’t discover from numerical and quantitative data. 

To get a clear view of your customers, you should combine both quantitative and qualitative data. For instance, take the average time spent on a page (quantitative data) with the session recordings (qualitative data). This will show you which content of the page is getting people’s attention. It will also help you to set your optimization goals taking the data into consideration.

What makes comprehending qualitative data difficult?

Qualitative data is not collected easily and doesn’t show up automated in the spreadsheets like quantitative data. It takes time & effort to collect qualitative data, and comprehending it is not easy. 

Recognizing behavioral patterns and trends requires constant analysis. Then, you have to execute diverse rounds of testing to carry out the optimization process. However, with WebMaxy Analyzer, you can watch the session recordings of website visitors and see which content is driving their interest.

How to gather qualitative data? 

Consider what your questions are:

The first step is to ask yourself the right questions, like the ones we have given below. This will help you in deciding an appropriate research process and setting key performance indicators. 

How to gather quantitative data?

To collect quantitative data, you can use Google Analytics which is a free tool for website optimization. You can start by noting down the important metrics and conversion goals of your business. 

Supposedly, if you have an ecommerce website, then you can consider the following metrics. (Note: the values given below are just for the illustration purpose)

How to use this data?

From the data above, you can see that the average time of visitors on the website is relatively low, along with the number of visitors coming to the site for the first time. In this case, your goal should be to increase the average time of visitors to the website. You can add engaging content and more CTAs to increase the conversion rate. 

Now, you must be thinking about how you can use qualitative data to understand why these metrics are low. What can you do to optimize these metrics in the first go? 

Execute qualitative data analysis

Qualitative data will help you to know directly why the visitors are spending less time on the website. You can also discover some specific behavior patterns that people might be following, and you want to break them. 

For example, you find that people are engaging less with a CTA button. Then, you can set up a dynamic heatmap to get accurate data. Later, you find out that people are not scrolling down the page to click on the CTA button. Then, you can consider changing the page design and layout so the CTA comes above the page. This way, people won’t need to scroll down, and it will improve your conversion rate. 

Another way to go about it is to place your top-selling or bestseller products at the top of the page. This might entice the website visitors to click on the CTAs. You can also include different sub-categories that can attract the attention of distinct types of people.

Begin the modification process

From the quantitative data, you can identify issues like (the avg. time of new visitors on the site). Combined with qualitative data, you can know why the users are staying less on the site and not converting. From here, you can start to optimize your website to improve your customer experience.

You can deduce that both quantitative and qualitative data can help you to upgrade your business strategies and tactics. Whether you want to improve your website or increase the conversion rate. The best way to find out any website issues or problems is to utilize both types of data in frequency and prominence. 

Document and communicate your findings with teams  

No matter what data analysis you are conducting. Ensure that you keep all your team members on the same page. Document your findings of session recordings, heatmaps, or website analysis and share them with your teams. The simplest way to start is by noting the research findings in a spreadsheet. 

The Bottom Line 

In the above blog, we have explained quantitative and qualitative data analysis can help you along with website optimization examples. There are many benefits of utilizing them together for the website optimization process. For gathering quantitative data, you can use free tool for website optimization like Google Analytics. 

Are you looking for qualitative website optimization tools free? WebMaxy Analyzer is a free tool that can help you track your users’ activity and gather behavioral data. It has a wide range of features such as live session recordings, heatmaps, form analytics, funnel view, surveys & polls, segmentation & filtering, advanced integrations, and much more.