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December 17, 2024
Welcome back to our Fullstory Level Up Series, which are expert-lead webinars of power user-level content. In this session, we took a deep dive into two powerful features: Journeys and Retention Charts. Our goal was to show you how to uncover granular user behaviors, streamline workflows, and drive data-informed decisions with these tools. Below is a recap of the key insights and practical techniques we explored. Check it out!
A few quick disclaimers:
✦ The recording includes visuals from a demo Fullstory site, features available within your Fullstory instance may differ..
✦ Fullstory continues to make changes and improvements to the product, so if you’re watching this recording at a later date, know that some changes to features, functionality, and user interface may have occurred.
✦ The below recap was supported in part with AI, so to ensure complete accuracy of webinar contents, please watch the webinar itself.
We kicked things off by revisiting the fundamentals of Journeys, focusing on how they can go beyond surface-level navigation flows. By diving deeper, we can better understand user behaviors and identify hidden patterns that impact the user experience.
Key Techniques:
1. Cutting Redundancy: One way we cleaned up our journeys was by hiding repetitive events that didn’t add much value. This simplified the view and allowed us to focus on the key paths users take, making it easier to draw meaningful insights.
2. Grouping by Properties: Using the “group by property” feature, we organized events based on specific properties, like user feedback categories. This made it possible to break down user experiences more granularly, uncovering trends we might have missed otherwise.
3. Drilling into "Other" Events: Previously, ungrouped events were lumped into an “Other” category, making it hard to analyze them. Now, we can drill down into those events and see a full ranking of the top 50s, offering a much clearer picture of what’s happening.
Use Case Example: To show how this works, we isolated complaints like "Payment system declined my card" and used advanced settings to trace how users arrived at that issue. This approach let us pinpoint the moments of friction and identify where we might need to improve.
We also explored how to use Popular Paths to identify the most frequent sequences users follow. This is an excellent way to understand common behaviors without being overwhelmed by the complexity of every possible path.
Considerations:
- Popular paths must be at least three steps long and exclude repeated events within a sequence.
- These insights can help you optimize workflows or address recurring issues in key user journeys.
Here's a resource from Fullstory on Popular Paths ↗
Next, we turned our attention to Retention Charts. These charts are a great way to understand how users return to your site or feature over time. Similar to funnels, in that they track drop-off between steps, retention charts also show how often users return to complete specific actions as well as the typical delay.
Key Insights:
1. Measuring Return Behavior: We demonstrated how to track users who left a negative NPS (Net Promoter Score) and whether they came back. By refining our returning event to include “entry page,” we ensured we were only analyzing true re-engagement, not just continued activity in the same session.
2. Identifying Patterns: Since each column in a retention chart is independent, users in one column may not appear in another. For smaller datasets, we used session playlists to cross-check and better understand individual behaviors.
3. Chained Events: We also explored adding multiple return events to see if users with a negative experience later returned and provided more positive feedback. In our example, we didn’t find any cases where users had a better experience the second time, which highlighted the need for proactive interventions.
We wrapped up the session with some actionable advice:
1. Optimize Checkout Flows: If users are reporting friction during checkout, simplify the process or offer incentives to encourage them to try again.
2. Dig Deeper with Granular Analysis: Use advanced settings and custom properties to zero in on specific pain points, like identifying which user groups encounter particular errors.
3. Drive Decisions with Data: Tools like journeys and retention charts give us the ability to go beyond assumptions and make changes backed by real user behavior data.
This webinar was all about helping you unlock deeper insights and make impactful improvements to your user experience. If you missed the session, be sure to check out the recording (link above) and try out the features we covered. There’s a wealth of data waiting to be explored—go ahead and dive in!
Missed the first part in this webinar series, which was a technical dive into elements and properties in Fullstory? Check out that recording here.
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