How to Analyze User Behavior?

Good products are built through iteration. Product iteration relies on user feedback. Understanding user behavior means mastering the basis for product iteration.

6.1 A Beginner's Guide to Website Statistics

As a website product owner, it is crucial to understand how users interact with your site. You should be familiar with the following concepts:

1. Unique Visitors

• Meaning: The number of distinct users who visit your website within a specific time period. A user is counted as only one unique visitor, no matter how many times they visit.
• Why it's important: This is the most basic metric, directly reflecting the size and appeal of your website's audience.
• Industry Benchmarks:
  • To earn $10,000/month from AdSense alone: around 1 million monthly visitors.
  • To earn $10,000/month from subscriptions: 100k-300k monthly visitors (mainly from developed countries).
  • An AI product that's a serious contender: over 1 million monthly visitors.
  • A mid-tier AI product: 3-5 million monthly visitors.
  • A top-tier AI product in a niche category: over 10 million monthly visitors.
• Suggestion: Focusing on the growth trend of unique visitors is more meaningful than a single number. A steady growth curve is usually healthier than short-term spikes.

2. Bounce Rate

• Meaning: The percentage of visitors who leave the site after viewing only one page.
• Note: Search engines pay a lot of attention to this metric! They prefer to give priority traffic to high-quality websites. If users of a certain site always leave after one page, search engines will tend to think it's not a great site.
• Why it's important: A high bounce rate usually indicates that visitors didn't find what they were looking for, or the website experience is poor.
• Industry Benchmarks:
  • Excellent: 20-40%
  • Average: 40-60%
  • Needs improvement: Over 70%
  • Exceptions: For single-page websites, blog posts, or pages for specific information queries, a high bounce rate is normal.
• Suggestion: Improving navigation, content relevance, and page load speed can reduce the bounce rate.

3. Average Session Duration

• Meaning: The average amount of time visitors spend on your website.
• Note: Search engines love this data! The longer the average user session, the more it proves you have a high-quality website.
• Why it's important: A longer session duration usually means users are interested in the content and have high engagement.
• Industry Benchmarks:
  • Excellent: Over 5 minutes (some special categories like gaming websites can reach over 8 minutes).
  • Average: 3 minutes
  • Poor quality site: Less than 1 minute
• Suggestion: Engaging content, easy-to-navigate design, and internal links can extend session duration.

4. Pageviews

• Meaning: The total number of times all pages on the website have been viewed.
• Why it's important: Reflects the overall traffic and content appeal of the website.
• Suggestion: Analyze in conjunction with other metrics. High pageviews alone could be caused by a few visitors refreshing or browsing frequently.

5. Pages Per Session

• Meaning: The average number of pages a visitor views in a single session.
• Why it's important: A high number indicates that visitors are exploring your site in depth and are interested in multiple pages.
• Industry Benchmarks:
  • Excellent: Over 3 pages
  • Average: 2-3 pages
  • Needs improvement: Below 2 pages
• Suggestion: Optimizing internal links and recommending related content can improve this metric.

6. Traffic Sources

• Meaning: How visitors find your website, e.g., search engines, social media, direct visits, etc.
• Note: For excellent websites, organic search traffic often exceeds 30%, and traffic from social media tends to be stable at over 20%.
• Why it's important: Helps you understand which channels bring the most visitors to your site, allowing you to optimize your marketing strategy.
• Common Source Types:
  • Organic Search: Visitors who find your site through a search engine.
  • Paid Search: Visitors who enter through paid ad clicks.
  • Social Media: Traffic from platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  • Direct: Visitors who type your URL directly into their browser.
  • Referral: Visitors who enter by clicking a link from another website.
• Suggestion: Don't rely too heavily on a single traffic source. Diversifying traffic channels can reduce risk.

7. Conversion Rate

• Meaning: The percentage of visitors who complete a specific goal (e.g., purchase, registration, download).
• Why it's important: Directly reflects the business effectiveness of the website and the achievement of user behavior goals.
• Industry Benchmarks:
  • Subscription/Paid Conversion Rate:
    • Organic Traffic: Median is 0.5%, over 2% is excellent.
    • Paid Traffic: 2%-8% (depends on ad precision and product strength).
  • Email List Sign-up Rate: 2%-5%
  • E-commerce Purchase Rate: Around 2%
• Suggestion: Even a small increase in conversion rate can lead to significant revenue growth. Focus on user experience and clear calls-to-action.

8. Exit Rate

• Meaning: The percentage of sessions for which a specific page was the last one viewed.
• Why it's important: A page with a high exit rate may have problems or be a natural departure point.
• Suggestion: Analyze whether high-exit-rate pages are natural endpoints like purchase confirmation or contact pages, or if they have issues that need to be optimized.

9. New vs. Returning Visitor Ratio

• Meaning: The ratio of first-time visitors to repeat visitors.
• Why it's important: Helps to understand the website's ability to attract new visitors and retain old ones.
• Industry Benchmarks:
  • New Visitors: 40-60%
  • Returning Visitors: 40-60%
• Suggestion: A healthy website should be able to both attract new visitors and maintain the loyalty of returning ones.

10. Device Type Distribution

• Meaning: The percentage of visitors using different device types (mobile, tablet, desktop).
• Why it's important: Helps ensure the website displays well on all devices.
• Industry Trends:
  • Mobile: 50-70%
  • Desktop: 25-45%
  • Tablet: 5-10%
• Suggestion: Ensure your website uses a responsive design for a good experience on all devices.

11. Top Pages

• Meaning: The most visited web pages.
• Why it's important: Helps identify the most popular content and guide future content creation.
• Suggestion: Analyze the common features of these pages to understand what attracts visitors most.

12. Geographic Distribution

• Meaning: The countries/regions your visitors come from.
• Why it's important: Helps to understand the geographic location of your target audience and optimize localization strategies.
• Suggestion: Adjust content, language, and promotions based on major visitor regions.

Experience Sharing

• Review Regularly:
  • Analyze data daily. Address any unusual data promptly.
  • Review weekly or monthly to find anomalies and opportunities.
• Multi-dimensional Analysis: A single metric can be misleading. Please analyze multiple metrics together.
• Set Baselines: Record your baseline data to compare progress over time.
• Be Action-Oriented: The purpose of data collection is to guide action. Remember, even small, continuous improvements can lead to significant results over time. Be patient.

6.2 How to Collect User Data

A comparison of common website data analytics platforms:

6.3 Watching User Session Recordings

• Tool: Microsoft Clarity (Free) https://clarity.microsoft.com/
• Value: Not only tells you "what happened" but also shows "how it happened".
• Method:
  • Watch full user session recordings.
  • View individual samples to find a basis for improvement.

6.4 Analyzing Website Heatmaps

• Tool: Microsoft Clarity (Free) https://clarity.microsoft.com/
• Method: Analyze heatmaps to get statistically significant data and find a basis for improvement.

6.5 Other Ways to Collect Feedback

• Early Product Stage: Offline research
• Few Users: Online chat
• Growing User Base: Discord community
• Many Users: Email