Frontlines Interview with Katie Wallshein: Experience Analytics at 60+ Companies

No better way to learn about Everyday Experience Analytics, than to be working with the people that use it daily. In today’s frontlines interview, we hear from Katie Wallshein, a New York City-based colleague of mine for many years.

Katie, what Experience Analytics metrics surprise users the most?

While I do love several of the Experience Analytics metrics, there are a few that are especially fun for clients. For example, the fact that there are four different metrics all related to hovering. That’s really unique.

I have a client that recently launched a new top nav on their site, and at first glance it appears a little confusing to visitors. This is the perfect opportunity to deep dive into Float Time, Hesitation Time, Engagement Rate etc. to see if visitors understand how they are supposed to be interacting with the menu. Even more importantly, are they currently aware that they are on the correct page? Visitors tend to hover over the menu item for the page / section they are already on!

Another great metric that really helps users is Attractiveness Rate. I love to tell clients how Click Rate is a big picture element, whereas Attractiveness Rate changes the denominator to allow us to understand how likely a visitor is to click on a zone after having been exposed to it. This metric lets us understand popular zones on a page and if there should be an A/B test conducted to bring the element up further on the page.

What is one thing users wished they had known earlier about Experience Analytics?

Clients are constantly excited when we go through a zoning in Contentsquare and review key Experience Analytics. Within just a few minutes, we are able to identify several quick wins and low hanging fruit.

The ability to call out UX recommendations for clients in real time is such a special and unique aspect of Contentsquare. While a client could have been very happy with their Google or Adobe Analytics, they did not necessarily understand all the in-page metrics they were missing.

Teaching a client about Experience Analytics for the first time is very rewarding because within just a single Zoom call, you can see how excited they are and how quickly they become hooked on the possibilities of what they can uncover.

What is the one piece of advice for everyday decision-making with Experience Analytics?

I cannot stress this enough, at no time should anyone ever rely on one single metric to make a business decision. Experience Analytics are designed to allow us to tell a complete story, and one metric should never take priority over another.

For example, on a Homepage we may see that the Purchase Conversion Rate Per Click of an element is 90%, but what does that 90% really mean? Before we get too excited, we have to check on how many visitors actually clicked on that banner- was it 1 single visitor, or 100,000 visitors?

Another great metric to check in Revenue Per Click (on average, how much revenue is being brought in from a single click on this zone). We can also explore Click Recurrence- are there any elements on this banner that are not clickable but should be?

This is the flow I walk my clients through on a daily basis, because as we say, without data it’s just another opinion. 

Katie, how did you get into Experience Analytics?

I started off on the sales team at Contentsquare and was constantly pitching the value of UX analytics. But I did not necessarily understand the impact or how to piece together a story with the different metrics available. It was only when I joined the Customer Success team and became a Solutions Expert, that everything really began clicking for me.

After a few years in that role, you could say I fell in love with how websites are made which ultimately led me to enroll in Grad School for Web Design part-time. I am constantly so inspired by what we uncover on a daily basis here at Contentsquare via Experience Analytics and know that this is only the beginning. 

Awww. Thank you, Katie!! It’s so fun to step into your shoes and feel a bit of that excitement that you see every day.

Our customers are lucky to have you. Best wishes in the part-time Web Design program. Keep up the great work with making the digital world more human!