Everything is customer centric – products, services and even their marketing. An organization’s website is an important part of their marketing and sales outreach to prospective customers. However it comes with its own sets of challenges. One of them being User Intent.
Getting loads of web traffic is good, but all those hits on your website need to mean something – are they helping you achieve your goals from your website? Is your website catering to the requirements of the user who wandered across from a google search?
Why determining User Intent is key
It’s quite common to stumble across web pages that you did not intend to visit, but if it’s your website you want to make sure that whoever visits it is there for what you’re offering.
“Is user intent matching your website’s intent?”
There are usually 3 key reasons for a user to visit a website.
Transactional Intent – They’ve come to make a purchase.
Navigational Intent – They’ve come to read up on a resource or a specific page on your website.
Seeking Information – They want additional information on a certain topic or want answers to a specific question.
Determining visitor intent – Explicitly
Sometimes the best way to determine why someone is visiting your website is to simply ask them. Modern survey tools can be easily integrated into your website in an unobtrusive manner and pop-up at opportune moments. You can then use these to query visitors and gain insights into user intent and customer behavior.
Implicitly determining User Intent
Even if you’ve integrated a survey tool in your website to query the user on their behavior, they may not always respond. This can be due to a lot of factors – they may not have the time, lack the motivation to do so etc.
Website analytics tools can help you identify user behavior on your website – how long are they spending on each page? Did they purchase anything? Or did they add something to their cart and not make the final purchase?
You should also check website analytics for users who’ve filled up your questionnaire to see if their behavior matches with their declared user intent.
What can you do with User Intent?
Once you’ve determined what the visitor is there for, you need to verify if they’re able to accomplish their task. User intent surveys can help you identify if users are able to complete their objectives, or if they’re facing difficulties. You can also use survey tools to gauge user intent and take feedback as well.
Actively implementing user feedback into your offerings or implementing their suggestions about your website helps build brand loyalty. Users are likely to hold your business in good standing after positive feedback experience as well.
Determining user intent also helps you identify content on your website which is drawing in quality traffic. Based on these findings, you can choose to create & post more of the same content. You can even integrate these insights into content which you feel isn’t performing well, and provide visitors more of what they’re looking for.
Voxco is trusted by researchers across verticals in 30+ countries. Our powerful Free Survey Tool can help you systematically measure & improve your website experience.

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