From metrics to motivations: How to combine quantitative and qualitative data

What do you need quantitative data for

Its main purpose is to measure website performance and user behavior in a quantitative, numerical manner, providing an overview of how many, how much, and how often users interact with your website. It is also crucial for identifying seasonality, trends, patterns, and anomalies in user data, especially in long-term analysis.

Here are a few examples of questions quantitative data can answer:

• How many users visit the website each day, week, or month? Are there any specific days or hours when traffic is the highest?
• What are the most popular pages on the website and what are the average time user spends on them?
• What is the conversion rate for specific actions (e.g., sign-ups, purchases)? How many of these actions were performed last week, day, or quarter?
• Which traffic sources drive the most visitors to the website (e.g., organic search, social media, paid ads)? Which of those sources better convert to specific actions?
• What devices and browsers do users use to access the website?

What do you need qualitative data for

Qualitative data in web analysis plays a crucial role in gaining a deeper understanding of user behavior and preferences. It serves to unveil the context behind the quantitative data. Depending on your chosen analytics tool, it can help you understand users' motivations, pain points, distractions, opinions and perceptions about your website. Additionally, qualitative data enables you to map out the most popular user flows and create data segments or user personas, all based not on demographic data but on specific actions and behavior patterns.

What questions it can answer:

• Why do users visit the website? What are they searching for, and where are their main areas of focus?
• What problems or frustrations do users face when navigating the site or using specific functions?
• What features or content do users find most valuable and engaging? Are there any signs of hard-to-find/scan/read content?
• What are users' expectations and preferences when interacting with the site or navigating through it?
• What do users think about the website's design, usability, and content? What improvements or changes do they suggest for the website?

How to combine quantitative and qualitative data

By combining both types of data, you can gain a more holistic understanding of your website's performance and user experience. Quantitative data answers the "WHAT", “WHEN“, and "HOW MUCH" questions while qualitative data provides you with the "WHY" and "HOW".

Here's how they work together:

• Understanding high bounce rates: If your quantitative data shows a high bounce rate on a particular page, qualitative data can reveal that users find the content confusing or irrelevant. Additionally, quantitative data may help you to segment the visitors of that page, identifying which segment performs the worst - for example it could be a specific traffic source, device, or browser. Qualitative data will then uncover the specific problem behind it, whether it’s the wrong landing page for a campaign, misleading search results, or problems with layout.
• Boosting conversion rates: Quantitative data might reveal that your e-commerce site has a low conversion rate. Qualitative data can then uncover that users are hesitant to trust the payment process due to security concerns, lack of their preferred delivery method, or a technical issue that doesn’t allow them to proceed further. This approach is not just theoretical, it has delivered significant results for companies like T-Mobile. You can read more about how T-Mobile overcame a conversion drop and experienced an impressive overnight increase of 68% in conversions by combining quantitative and qualitative insights here.

How can CUX help you in combining both types of data:

CUX is a unique tool that combines both quantitative and qualitative data, making your web analysis even more straightforward. Here’s what sets CUX apart:

1. Amount of collected data: Analyzing only 3-5% of your traffic increases the likelihood of accidental findings and conclusions. It’s challenging to ensure sufficient statistical significance and data variability in such a small sample. CUX, on the other hand, captures all possible visits. You simply select the appropriate monthly traffic level when purchasing a subscription. This ensures the most comprehensive overview and enables you to identify and deepen the qualitative analysis without risking distorted results.
2. Auto-collected events: CUX automatically gathers all basic events like clicks, scrolls, page loads, and form submissions. It also employs algorithms to capture Experience Metrics such as Rage and Dead clicks, Rage key presses, Chaotic Movement and Scrolling, Zooming, and Bounce Backs. This minimizes the time needed for tool configuration and provides a better understanding of the overall user experience and potential frustrations.
3. Goals and Waterfalls: These are features designed to track specific user actions or sequences. Goals not only provide visit counts with defined actions but also furnish additional metrics related to those visits, such as devices, traffic sources, top entry pages, and user activity on a weekly basis. Waterfalls are indispensable for examining user flow through a series of steps, including success rates and drop-offs at each step.
4. Segmentation options: In addition to Goals and Waterfalls, CUX offers various segmentation options. Recordings can be precisely analyzed by applying different filters, such as device characteristics, browser language, visit length, engagement time, new or returning visitors, Experience Metrics, and many others. Additionally, you have the option to save a filtered recordings segment for easy access whenever needed.
5. Linking quantitative and qualitative data: Heatmaps and recordings offer qualitative data for observing user behavior. To fully unlock their potential, it’s best to approach them with quantitative data. CUX integrates its quantitative features like Goals, Waterfalls, and Experience Metrics with Heatmaps and Recordings, enabling you to swiftly uncover the reasons behind anomalies or points of frustration.

And that’s not all CUX offers in terms of combining both types of data. Here are some proven tips to elevate your analysis:

1. Extend data retention: When selecting a subscription plan, CUX allows you to determine how long it will retain your collected data. We recommend extending this period to at least three months. Doing so not only enables you to collect and analyze more data but also helps you track trends and seasonality more effectively. This is particularly crucial for businesses with longer conversion cycles or a higher proportion of regularly returning customers.
2. Leverage other quantitative analytical tools: Consider incorporating other quantitative analysis tools to complement your CUX data. While these tools may require more complex setup and configuration, they can assist in tracking advanced events, providing a quicker overview of website traffic, or delving deeper into collected data. Don’t hesitate to utilize available resources to enhance the efficiency of your analysis and the accuracy of your decisions.
3. Integrate CUX with Google Analytics (GA): If you have GA installed on your website, we recommend integrating your CUX project with a Google Analytics property. This integration enables CUX to capture User IDs or GA4 Session IDs and push CUX recording URLs to GA. By doing so, you open up more opportunities for segmentation and in-depth analysis of the data you collect.

To summarise all the above, CUX is a versatile tool that seamlessly combines both quantitative and qualitative data for efficient web analysis. It stands out with features like comprehensive data collection, auto-captured events, user action tracking, and efficient ways of linking quantitative and qualitative data together, offering valuable insights to enhance user experiences and decision-making based on data. Take the first step toward improved web analysis by exploring CUX for yourself today!