It would not be wrong to say that every business, every company works for its customers. You may argue that the primary focus is on money, but no customers means no money, so technically, we are right.
At the same time, overestimating your success may harm your strategy planning and morale a lot. Unfortunately, it happens quite often that one customer can be tracked as two or more. They may have accessed your website from another device, or cookies have already expired, or something else happened; we are concerned by the results, not the reasons.
In such situations, while using first-party cookies solves the problem with their expiration, cross-device tracking may actually decrease the effect of customer duplication. We are going to focus on the latter point today. What is cross-device tracking, and how does it actually influence the way you analyze your customers’ journey and the results of such an analysis? Let’s find out!
Cross-device tracking explained and analyzed
If we are already familiar with the problem of user duplicates, let’s move to its solution. We have mentioned that cross-device tracking “decreases” the effect of user duplication, which is not entirely accurate. If set up correctly, cross-device tracking neglects it completely.
In its essence, this approach identifies a user across all the devices one may use (for instance, they accessed the website from their PC, and continued surfing on their cell phone), and consolidates acquired data into one user profile.
Cross-device tracking becomes possible thanks to several technologies: device IDs, cookies, and tracking systems based on a customer’s login are among them. If all these tools are used together, this helps businesses to track users consistently across different platforms. But let’s get back to our topic: how does it affect the customer journey analysis?
Why cross-device tracking matters for understanding the customer journey better?
Why it is important to understand when you face two different conversions from two different customers or two conversions from the same customer might seem obvious. Many businesses, however, focus on numbers instead of results, which is why we feel that we must explain why big numbers do not always mean big profits and how cross-device tracking is essential to break this illusion.
- Accurate measurement
Cross-device tracking is your must-have tool if you want to improve your attribution and management. We should introduce here the idea of customer interaction fragmentation, which keeps becoming more and more serious with the development of the mobile market. People often start interacting with your online store on one device, then switch to another, and may end up on the third one. In such cases, a conversion may be attributed to the wrong device and source, which leads to twisted analytics and misallocated spending on marketing.
Cross-device tracking allows you to disregard the number of devices a customer uses to interact with your product and time gaps between these interactions. No matter when and from what your customer accessed your store or website, and how many times, it will still be counted as one conversion.
- Better personalization of customer experience
What makes customer service good customer service? To illustrate our point better, we would like you to compare these two situations and think about an answer: in which case would you be more satisfied, and to which shop would you return?
| You enter a comic shop, where you have been buying comics regularly for the last year. The shop assistant approaches you, asks how they could help, and upon getting an answer, “I am just checking what you have, thank you”, returns to the counter. | You enter a comic shop, where you have been buying comics regularly for the last year. The shop assistant recognizes you, has a small talk, and then says, “Oh, by the way, we have new “Batman” issues and an exclusive issue of “Justice League”, would you like to take a look? |
Well, we would return to the second store again and again. And now imagine that every time you wear something different, the shop assistant does not recognize you and considers you a new customer.
With cross-device tracking, you will recognize returning customers no matter what device they use and the color of the socks they wear. This would allow you to customize their experience and offer products similar to what they have already viewed and are more likely to be interested in.
- Optimization of multi-channel strategies
Customers often interact with ads and promotions launched through different channels. Some people often click on paid ads when scrolling through their feed on social media on their cell phone, but tend to complete a purchase on their desktop. Others tend to do everything on their mobile phones. A clear understanding of how their customer journey looks and what types of campaigns tend to be more effective than others allows you to optimize your marketing efforts and invest more into that type of promotion that is more effective for your product and target audience.
Conclusion
Obviously, even without cross-device tracking, your business has all chances to succeed and be profitable. The technology we are talking about in this article is aimed at improving your understanding of your customer and providing a better experience with your product and/or online store. Knowing people’s habits, campaigns that work with them, and a customer journey that fits their idea of a great experience would allow you to reach another level of service and success.
Read more: Online Learning Review: Best Free Education WordPress Theme
Contact US | ThimPress:
Website: https://thimpress.com/
Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/ThimPress
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ThimPressDesign
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/thimpress
