We live in an extremely data-dependent society. The volume of data created online every day is massive, mainly because today’s economy runs online, making it so much easier to generate and collect information. An IBM study reported that the average person generates about 1.7 megabytes of data every second.
While so much data floating around may raise major privacy and security concerns, it can also greatly help businesses with user engagement. The information collected by an organization on its users can be leveraged to drive marketing and engagement strategies.
What is software user data?
Software user data is info generated by the interactions a user makes while using software or a platform. This data is essential because it can give businesses volumes of important insights across the entire user-experience cycle. After all, usage patterns can indicate what customers might like or dislike. These insights can be turned into actionable strategies for cross-organizational teams to ensure users stay happy.
Build a better software experience for customers
Data is more powerful than you might think. It can help improve a software’s user experience, allowing businesses to deliver a more streamlined and personalized encounter by helping them to understand exactly what features users engage with the most, how they make use of their functionality and what they find lacking, among other things. Identify areas for improvement to build a better and more functional version of the software to keep users happy and retain them.
Elevate your software users’ experience
Although there’s been a lot of talk going around about the lack of privacy and data security across the globe, it’s been established that data can be used to positive effect as well. For SaaS businesses that depend on user satisfaction to keep afloat, engaging with users allows them to ensure customers are satisfied with all that the software is offering and find ways to improve satisfaction levels.
Software-based businesses can make use of data to improve their end-user experience by:
- Scrutinizing all available data: There’s no need to start from scratch to collect data to improve user engagement. Scan through all the data you already have –user hours, most- used features, user tickets, support queries, grievances, etc. Once all this info is compiled, organizations can gain deeper insight into their users, allowing them to develop a plan on how to use the data effectively and ultimately leverage it to create an updated and more efficient user experience.
- Making way for personalization: When an organization has in-depth data on its users and their preferences, they can be segmented by usage statistics, features they use the most and common issues faced, just to name a few. Once the users are segmented, the organization can then devise an optimization plan based on behavior. These core segments can then be used to further create personalization approaches that improve their interactions with the technology and maximize retention.
- Paying attention to feature popularity: Software usage data can tell a business how much its users interact with the various features that it offers. Tracking this data helps businesses identify the feedback they need to collect to make improvements and increase users. Based on activity, software usage data can also help identify which users would benefit from a feature they are not currently using. This also allows businesses to cross-sell to their users. Additionally, this data helps businesses gauge user satisfaction on new rollouts.
- Ensuring users get value in return for using their data: People are worried about their privacy and the security of their data, and when they willingly share their info, they expect something in return. Organizations must ensure this data is only used to improve their experiences with their software. For instance, their data can be used to identify opportunities and present them with add-on value propositions that can help them improve their overall interaction with the software.
Data is the future; embrace it!
With the rise of artificial intelligence, data will be key to boosting engagement in the years to come, especially with the AI market expected to reach $997 billion by the year 2028. All the signs point to the fact that the predictive power of data-backed analytics is getting more powerful. Businesses now have an opportunity to become early adopters of using data-backed methods of increasing user engagement to create a product that will keep their users satisfied for the foreseeable future.
