Just one click might be one click too late. Your competitor’s website is right at your visitor’s fingertips and you may be left with one less lead or sale.
Businesses are constantly looking for new, more efficient ways to determine their visitors’ next moves in order to know when and how to best engage them. Are they going to continue to hover on this page? View a different product? Or just abandon the site altogether?
Answering these questions requires sophisticated measurement and analytical technologies, and when leveraged correctly, can help better target and engage users, driving more conversions on your website.
I. Mouse vs. Click
One of the most common ways for companies to measure and target online behavior is through your visitors’ “click pattern” – an analysis of how your visitors reach your site, and where they’re clicking once they’re on your site. However, new research is indicating that mouse cursor movement may be a more sensitive and insightful indicator of visitor intent, due to its strong correlation with eye movement.
Researchers have been studying the relationship between mouse cursor tracking and eye movement over the past few years and, according to a Carnegie Mellon study, there is an 88 percent correlation between mouse behavior and eye movement. Further, a recent study from Microsoft indicates that mouse cursor behavior is strongly correlated to a user’s area of interest.
So, a click is not the only measurable expression of interest and intent. The level of insight provided by mouse movement would allow online marketers to bypass click-based guessing and target a visitor before a click is even made.
II. Better Targeting with Mouse-Based Analytics
Analyzing mouse movement can produce more effective targeting, and as a result, improve conversions, especially in the areas of lead generation, cart rescue, and visitor remarketing.
Among the tools that uses mouse behavior analysis is LivePerson’s LP Marketer, a real-time data-driven targeting solution that delivers relevant, personalized content to website visitors. With data-driven targeting solutions like this, companies are able to anticipate when a visitor is about to hit the “Back” or “Close” button—or even leave the site—to instantly create a dynamic interruption such as displaying a banner that speaks to the visitor’s shopping interests, customer history, geo-location, etc.
For example, if your visitor is in the process of completing a high-value form such as a mortgage or loan application and his mouse movement indicates that he is going to abandon the form, you can save the lead by proactively displaying a pop-up to enter their email address to continue the form at a later date.
In other instances, targeting solutions are used to deliver coupon codes, shipping offers or other personalized calls-to-action to successfully engage the visitor’s interest and prevent them from abandoning their cart, or the site entirely. This can provide a more dynamic customer experience and higher conversion rates than embedded display advertising.
By identifying and targeting mouse movement, companies may be able to win back more customers before they abandon the website, helping to increase leads and conversions, and ultimately, the bottom line.
The process of analyzing mouse movement to determine visitor intent continues to evolve and as the technology is refined, companies will be able to gain a stronger ability to anticipate visitor behavior on their websites in order to drive a more intelligent and successful online strategy.
