Jakarta: Improving User Engagement Through Analytics – What, How and When to Measure and Act

Introduction

Businesses today focus the most on growth and user experience. They consider quite a few things while measuring their growth patterns and making vital business decisions for the future. Analytics is a hot concept these days,. It actually forms a foundation for tracking the actual data on which business decisions relating to growth, user engagement, investment & financials, human resources, etc., are based.

In simple terms, analytics is the schematic and systematic analysis of collected data. It is a simple yet organised interpretation of all numerical, statistical, and/or descriptive data at one’s disposal. Businesses use analytics mainly to keep track of their overall performance to wisely and effectively plan for their future. They use certain metrics while gauging the performance over a given timespan, which differ from business to business. Analytics helps businesses plan for their short-term and long-term goals and identify loopholes or fault lines in their current strategies.

An interesting panel discussion about how businesses can improve their user engagement and growth with the help of analytics was held recently in Jakarta. Here’s what the panellists – Irwan Suryady, CTO at Ralali.com; Iswara Gozali, Head of Product at Kredivo; Tushar Bhatia, AVP Growth at Bukalapak; and Dyah Wulandari, VP Performance Marketing at Tiket.com – had to say.

Identifying the North Star Metric

The main objective of every business is to achieve growth and customer satisfaction. But how each business measures or tracks growth over time depends on various factors, including its nature, organisational structure, long-term goals, and so on. Therefore, every unique business will have a specifically defined North Star metric, depending on which it can make impactful decisions for the future.

The idea of the panel discussion was to bring in varied perspectives from different industries. It started with the anchor asking the panellists about their North Star metrics through which they measure their user engagement and business growth. The answers were pretty interesting and enlightening.

While Kredivo, a fintech company, focuses on metrics such as the percentage of new and repeat users are entering their funnels each day, the number of credit and personal loan approvals daily, rate of user retention, and non-performing loans, Tiket.com, the online travel agency, focuses on measuring user activity on a monthly basis rather than daily, as people don’t travel every day. The number of repeat customers on a monthly basis is another metric they focus on. On the other hand, Bukalapak, the Indonesian e-commerce giant, likes to keep things simple and lays emphasis on a single North Star metric, the DAUs. Daily Active Users is the number of people who are actively using the app. So, if during the day the DAUs dip, Bukalapak’s strategy is to push a flash deal or a promo to keep users engaged. Ralali.com is a B2B online marketplace that serves small and medium enterprises. Repeat purchases are their North Star metric, which they monitor on a monthly basis, apart from DAUs, which they track daily.

It is vital to understand that business growth and user engagement can be measured on multiple levels, and one can really break the data down to a granular level if required. But, since there is always much more data than the human mind can process, it is wiser to start from the top of the funnel and dive deeper only if there are issues, which need to be fixed.

Enhancing User Engagement through Experimentation

Trial, error, and innovation are indispensable parts of every business. No business can survive without making changes and upgrades at the right time to keep up with the industry. Some of these upgrades and innovations might work; others might fail. But the point is that they make a significant impact on analytics. These changes might include launching new products, ideating new marketing strategies, improving customer relations, upskilling the workforce, and more. In the beginning, most of these so-called upgrades and innovations are mostly on a time-bound, experimental basis. However, if they continue to show positive results over a period of time, they may be adopted as long-term strategies as well.

There have been several occasions when Kredivo, Bukalapak, Tiket.com, and Ralali.com adopted such an experimental approach. Like several other companies around the world, they have applied some “growth hacks”, which have helped them improve their growth and customer experience as well. While Bukalapak launched a new product to enhance user experience on their app and Kredivo made the entire experience simple by incorporating the API of another payment app into theirs, Tiket.com adopted a more interesting approach. They aimed to focus not only on normal business growth but also on booster growth. They came up with the idea of “online travel week”, whereby they pushed a lot of discounts, promos, and unique deals. The results were much better than expected. Apart from the repeat customers who were loyal to them anyways, they noted a significant rise in the number of first-timers who wanted to try their app out. All they had to work on then was user retention.

There might also have been examples of failed experimentations, but the risk is an inevitable element in any business. The key is to keep a keen eye on industry trends and consumer demands and take the right steps at the right time.

The Road Ahead

Change is inevitable in any business, and as Tushar Bhatia from Bukalapak rightly said in the discussion, “there is always a lot that you want to change”. Since analytics plays a vital role in enabling businesses to foster their growth and enhance user experience, the data fed to analytics tools must be updated from time to time too. The biggest challenge is to identify the most relevant data sources, which can provide the most appropriate insights with respect to overall business performance. Analytics tools should be able to catch the most important trends, which can give 360-degree insights on growth and have maximum impact on business decision-making.