Everything You Need to Know About Cross-Platform Analytics

Data is an essential part of any business. It helps you understand your customers, optimize your website, grow sales and achieve future success.

But customer data can be hard to find and even harder to analyze with brands having a multichannel presence. That’s why many companies turn to cross-platform analytics tools.

These platforms help you gather information from multiple sources in one place so you can easily track your progress against competitors using benchmarking reports.

This article will discuss the basics of cross-platform analytics and why it matters for your small business.

What is Cross-Platform Data Collection?

Cross-platform data collection is the ability to collect and analyze user behavior data from multiple platforms. The term is often used in online marketing, allowing you to track users across different channels and mobile apps. This can be useful for measuring the success of your marketing campaigns on various platforms and tracking customer behavior on multiple sites.

How Does It Work?

There are a few different ways that cross-platform data collection works. You can use a tool like Google Tag Manager or Adobe Analytics, which allows you to collect data from multiple platforms through one central solution.

Another option is to build your own tracking code for each platform and combine them into one tracking system, or simply pull out the data manually.

The latter option is more time-consuming but can also be easier to manage; the other two require you to have tech-savvy staff on hand.

You’ll need to decide which option works best for your business. The most important thing to remember is that cross-platform data collection requires a solid tracking system before you can begin collecting data from multiple platforms.

After your tracking system is set up, the next step is to identify the most critical metrics for each platform and determine how they relate to one another.

Once you have a clear idea of the metrics you want to track, the next step is to create tracking codes for each platform. If you’re unfamiliar with tracking codes, they’re essentially small snippets of code that allow you to collect data about users interacting with your content.

For example, if you create a tracking code for Facebook or Instagram and then share it on your page or profile, the platform will track how many people click through to your website, what they do there, and more.

Collecting this information over time will allow you to see which social media campaigns are driving the best results and adjust them accordingly.

Why is It Important for Ecommerce?

Cross-platform analytics is a valuable tool for eCommerce businesses because it provides information about what’s happening across all your marketing channels.

You can optimize your site to convert customers at higher rates by seeing where you are getting the most traffic. This can also help you understand which content or products are performing well to focus on them and ensure they are present on all other platforms.

These analytics are also helpful because they allow you to track how your content performs on different platforms. This can help you determine whether it’s worth the time and effort to create new content for those channels or whether it would be better to focus on optimizing what is already there.

How to Collect and Analyze User Behavior from Your Website?

Customer behavior is one of the most important metrics you can track on your website. It lets you know how people interact with your site, what they like and dislike, and where they get stuck along the way. Collecting this data can improve conversions and make your mobile site more user-friendly.

There are many ways to collect user behavior data, but here are some of the most effective:

• Heatmaps – This visualizes where users click on your website. It can tell you if there’s a lot of clicking in one section or another and whether people are using the same path, you expected them to take.

• Funnels – Funnels show how many people drop off at each step in the conversion process. For example, suppose your goal is for visitors to fill out a lead generation form. In that case, having a funnel showing how many people enter their information and get sent an email confirmation is essential.

• Session Recording – This is a great way to find out what users are doing on your website. You can see exactly what they click on and how far they scroll down the page. Session recordings also show where users exit, giving you an idea of what kind of content isn’t working for them.

How to Use this Data to Optimize the User Journey

The user journey is a complex series of steps, interactions, and decisions that takes users from the first moment they engage with your product to its final use and the relationship in the post-sales period.

The user journey can be divided into distinct stages driven by user actions and motivations. By analyzing what users do at each step, you can identify areas where they experience problems and make changes to improve their experience.

Cross-platform analytics can help you optimize the user journey by providing data on how users interact with your product across different devices, including desktop computers, mobile phones, and tablets.

It can help you understand how well your product meets users’ needs, what they do when they experience problems and how they interact with it.

This data can improve user experience and increase engagement by identifying pain points in the user journey and making changes to the product that address those issues.

It can also provide insights into the performance of your marketing campaigns which allows you to identify areas where they may need improvement so that the user journey can be optimized.

The 10 Best Cross-Platform Analytics Tools

Cross-platform analytics tools are a great way to get an overview of your business’s digital performance across multiple platforms. They also offer custom reporting and dashboards that let you dive deeper into different aspects of your business’s digital presence than traditional analytics packages do.

Here are 10 of the best cross-platform analytics tools on the market today: 

1. Google Analytics

Many marketers say that Google Analytics is their go-to website analytics tool. It’s free and easy to set up, so there’s no excuse not to use it. Google Analytics gives you the data to measure your website’s traffic, conversions, mobile visitors, and more.

It’s also one of the only website analytics tools that offer conversion tracking. It lets you see how many people take the desired action on your site and then measure the effectiveness of different marketing strategies.

You can set up conversion tracking by adding code snippets to your website or app. Google Analytics also has a robust API that allows other services to integrate, so you can get even more data about your business’s digital presence (for example, if you use Salesforce).

Google Analytics is a great way to get started with analytics. It’s free and has most of the features you need to collect data on your website or app’s traffic and conversions. If you want more advanced features, such as campaign tracking or custom reports, other paid tools might suit your needs better.

2. Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics gives businesses a holistic view of their digital performance. It provides actionable insights and allows you to set up custom reports and dashboards.

It’s available as part of Adobe Experience Cloud, including other marketing tools like Adobe Campaign, Adobe Social, and more.

If you use Adobe’s Creative Cloud, then this is a no-brainer. It’s free and offers a wide range of features, including real-time data analysis and historical data for up to 90 days.

It also integrates with many other popular services, such as Google Analytics, making it easy to view your site’s performance alongside other digital properties.

The only downside is that it’s only available for websites that use Adobe’s Creative Cloud. 

3. Tableau Public

Tableau Public is a free online analytics platform that offers a robust set of features. You can create interactive dashboards and data visualizations using this tool, which makes it great for beginners who aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of data analysis. It also offers more advanced features like collaborating with others on your projects.

You can also embed Tableau Public projects into other websites, such as blogs, to help drive traffic back to your site.

As a free tool, there are some limitations on what you can do with Tableau Public, but if you’re looking for a simple way to visualize data and get started with analytics, it’s worth checking out.

4. Clicky Web Analytics

Clicky is a popular web analytics tool that offers comprehensive reporting and deep insights into your website’s performance.

It provides real-time data, which means you can see how many users are on your site presently and what they’re doing. Clicky also allows you to set up custom tracking parameters and track specific site elements such as contact forms or shopping cart functions (if applicable).

The user interface is easy to navigate and provides many different views, including heat maps and click maps. You can also view your data in real-time on the dashboard or download it into a spreadsheet for further analysis. Clicky offers a free trial and paid plans starting at $9 per month.

5. Kissmetrics

Kissmetrics is an event-driven web analytics tool that helps businesses track individual users, identify trends with cohorts and optimize their funnels. It has various add-ons and a fully customizable dashboard to improve analysis.

It also has a mobile app to help you track your business on the go. You can use Kissmetrics to see how different marketing campaigns are performing and how each one is affecting user behavior. It’s also easy to set up and use because it offers simple reports that let you dive into data as soon as it’s available.

6. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a powerful tool for understanding consumer behavior. It tracks actions and events in real-time.

Mixpanel also offers an easy-to-use analytics dashboard that provides insightful data about how users interact with your website or mobile app. You can also use Mixpanel to create custom segments based on specific criteria.

The platform has many integrations with other apps, including Slack, MailChimp, and Google Analytics.

Mixpanel is free for up to 1 million data points per month, but if your company needs more, you’ll have to pay about $199 per month.

7. Segment

Segment has developed a robust and scalable infrastructure for collecting data from any source—no matter how often it changes.

The tool lets you track user data across different platforms. The platform has integrations with over 100 different applications, including Google Analytics and Salesforce. You can use it to get an overview of your business’s performance on all major digital channels.

Segment also offers custom reporting, dashboards, and real-time data analysis capabilities.

8. Amplitude

Since its inception in 2012, Amplitude has been adopted by companies like Lime, Adidas, and Capital One.

Amplitude is a powerful enterprise-grade analytics tool that supports many data types, including consumer behavior and event tracking. It offers several features specific to mobile apps, including crash reporting and A/B testing. Amplitude also has an extensive API that allows you to integrate its data into other tools.

The tool offers deep marketing business insights into user behavior, including which features users engage with most often, where they drop off during onboarding and the path they take through your app. You can also track revenue data and identify which marketing campaigns drive the most conversions.

9. Heap Analytics

Heap is the leading digital insights platform that provides a 360-degree view of your user’s journey by combining quantitative and qualitative analytics. Heap does away with the annoying aspects of analytics so that companies can concentrate on making smarter business decisions.

The platform allows you to track user behavior and engagement on all major platforms, including web, mobile apps (Android and iOS), desktop apps, social media, email, and more. Heap Analytics is used by more than 100,000 businesses around the world.

The platform has several useful features, including real-time data collection and analysis, a heat map to track consumer behavior, and A/B testing tools.

10. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is the best cross-platform analytics tool for anyone who wants a complete view of their company’s performance across multiple platforms.

The platform offers powerful analysis and reporting capabilities that provide insights into how people interact with your website, including how they use it and how long they stay on each page. It also provides advanced heat map reports showing where visitors click on your site so you can optimize your content for maximum engagement.

The platform is easy to use and has a clean, intuitive interface that makes it simple for even beginners to understand. Plus, it’s affordable and offers a free trial, so you can test it out before committing.

Conclusion

Cross-platform analytics allows you to analyze user behavior data from multiple platforms. It can help your business to measure the success of your marketing efforts on several channels and mobile apps.

This data can help you optimize the user journey, giving you insights on how users interact with your product across different devices. Analyzing this data and acting upon it can improve user experience and increase engagement by identifying pain points in the user journey and making changes to the product, service and website that address those issues.

The best way to collect and analyze this kind of data is through cross-platform analytics tools. They all have their own unique benefits and drawbacks, and each can help you better understand your users and their behaviors. The key is finding the one that best fits your needs and budget.