Business Intelligence Interview Questions

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Business Intelligence Interview Questions

Business Intelligence Interview Questions

Business Intelligence is nothing but a term that helps the user in decision making to run the business or important questions related to business. It helps the user in the management of any organization for the growth of their business. BI helps the user to make the decision that leads to growth in their business with the help of the appropriate reports and data of any business, which is very important.

So you have finally found your dream job in Business Intelligence but are wondering how to crack the 2021 Business Intelligence Interview and what could be the probable Business Intelligence Interview Questions. Every interview is different, and the scope of a job is different too. Keeping this in mind, we have designed the most common Business Intelligence Interview Questions and Answers to help you get success in your interview. You can easily crack these Business Intelligence Interview Questions, which are asked in an interview.

Top 10 Business Intelligence Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is Business Intelligence?

Answer:
The term ‘Business Intelligence’ (BI) provided the user with data and tools to answer any decision making the important question of an organization; it can be related to run the business or part of a business. In short, business intelligence is used for reporting the specified data of any business, which is very important and using which higher management of any organization will make the decision for the growth of their business. Normally below decisions can be decided by any organization from the Business Intelligence tool:

2. What are the different stages and benefits of Business Intelligence?

  • Data Source: It is about extracting data from multiple data source.
  • Data Analysis: It is about providing a proper analysis report based on useful knowledge from collecting data.
  • Decision-Making Support: It is about to properly using the information. It always targets to provide a proper graph on important events like take over, market changes, and poor staff performance.
  • Situation Awareness: It is about filtering out irrelevant information and setting the remaining information in the context of the business and its environment.
  • Risk Management: It is about to discover that what corrective actions might be taken or decisions made at different times.

3. What are different Business Intelligence tools available in the market?

4. What is the universe in Business Analytics?

Answer:
The universe is a kind of semantic layer between the database and user interface. More correctly, it is one of the interfacing layers between the client (business user) and a data warehouse. It actually defines an entire relationship between various tables in a data warehouse.

5. Define or list the differences between OLAP and OLTP?

Business Intelligence interview questions

6. What is a dashboard in a data warehouse?

Answer:
The dashboard is nothing but the arrangement of all the reports and graphs on one page. It is nothing but the collection of reports in a different format that has the same functionality display on the same page.

7. Explain the difference between data warehouse and transnational system.

Transactional System Data Warehouse System
It normally designed to process with day to day data, so it mainly concentrates on high volume transaction processing rather than backend reporting. It normally designed to processed high volume analytical reporting and subsequence. It is also elaborating report generation.
It is normally processes driven, which means it depends on a business-specific task or execution. It is actually subject-oriented, which means it loads data from a transactional system, then open to use for any kind of analytical reporting, which helps the organisation make proper decisions based on that specific subject.
It is normally handling current transactional data. It is normally handling historical data.
Data within a transactional system can insert or update or delete in each task. Data warehouse data is called as non-volatile, meaning that new data can be added regularly, but once loaded, those data are rarely changed.
In case of performance or speed, we should always prefer a transactional system for inserting, updating or deleting small volumes of data. We should always prefer a data warehouse to fast retrieval of a relatively large volume of data.

8. Explain the Fact and Dimension table with an example.

Answer:
A Fact table is the center table in the star schema of a data warehouse. It was actually holding quantitative information for analysis, and maximum time it de-normalized.

Customer ID Name Gender Income Education Region
1 SS M 2 3 4
2 AC M 3 5 1
3 MS F 1 7 3

Basic Business Analyst Interview Questions

1. What is the role of a business analyst in an organization?

It is the most fundamental question you can expect during your interview. You can answer this question by explaining that a business analyst is a liaison or a link between different stakeholders belonging to different domains in an organization. A business analyst should have the capabilities to fulfill the business objectives and balance the needs of various stakeholders.

2. How do you see yourself fit for the role of business analyst in our company?

With this type of business analyst interview questions, the interviewer wants to assess your understanding regarding the job role and whether you match the company’s expectation of the desired candidate.

You can give examples of the previous works that show the interviewer what benefits you will bring to the company. Make sure your answer has a problem and the solution you implemented.

3. What, according to you, are the core competencies of a Business Analyst?

It is one of the most common business analyst interview questions. Although every company is different, the core requirements of a business analyst profile are quite similar. Make sure to go over an organization’s job description in detail to understand the required core competencies and include them in your answer.

You can answer this by stating that a business analyst must have exceptional communication and negotiation skills. Analytical thinking, problem-solving, and decision making are also vital attributes. A business analyst should have industry knowledge, business process management skills along with technical proficiency.

4. List some of the skills and tools used by Business Analysts.

5. Do you have any technical skills? Can you list your database skills or business intelligence skills?

It is not compulsory to have advanced technical skills like relational databases and SQL, but the more technically proficient you are as a business analyst, the better. These skills are most desirable and widely used, so if you have some experience in using these technologies, make sure you explain them to your interviewer.

FREE Business Analytics With Excel Course

6. What is INVEST?

INVEST is an abbreviation of Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Sized appropriately, and Testable. This term is used by business analysts and project managers to deliver quality services and products.

7. Are you aware of the different techniques like MoSCoW and SWOT?

MoSCoW stands for Must or Should, Could or Would. A business analyst should implement this process by comparing every demand with other needs to prioritize the framework requirements. For example, is this requirement a must-have or should have?

SWOT or Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis is the most widely used technique in organizations for proper resource allocation. A business analyst should be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of any corporate framework and translate them into opportunities and threats.

8. What do you mean by project deliverables?

9. How do you keep yourself updated about the latest business trends and knowledge?

The interviewer wants to know what actions you take to keep your knowledge and skills updated. You can answer this question by including references to news and industry publications. You can also list the events and conferences you attend to connect with the business community.

10. What are the various stages of a business project?

What are the five major stages of business intelligence?

Business Intelligence (BI) is the process of transforming the obtained information from business data into knowledge that could be used to enhance the business’s growth. Data represents facts and figures, while information is processed data. And when the information is further processed, it adds sense and meaning to it to become knowledge.

1. Data Sourcing – Obtaining data from different sources in the electric form, such as digital cameras, database queries, computer file access, web searches, scanners, etc.
2. Data Analysis – The data is analyzed by estimating current trends, understanding and predicting missing information, summarizing the available information, and predicting future trends.
3. Situation Awareness – BI is about filtering the irrelevant information to stay only with the relevant information that can be of any value.
4. Risk Assessment – BI is about assessing the risks and benefits of different decisions that are taken.
5. Decision Support – BI helps to assess every decision that has been taken to improve on portions where it is required and make everything smooth.

What are the key elements of the business intelligence system?

One of the most common mistakes made by organizations is that they consider front-end BI tools to be similar to BI systems. But, there’s a lot more included in every BI system that can be of huge help for the organization.

There is a huge variety of business reports. If we move towards the category of managerial processes, the major categories can be grouped into balanced scorecard-type reports, dashboard-type reports, and metric management reports.

1. Metric Management Reports – These reports include outcome-oriented metrics based on the key performance indicators.
2. Dashboard-type Reports – These reports provide static as well as a customizable view of different performance indicators on a single page.
3. Balanced Scoreboard-type Reports – These reports include an integrated view for determining the company’s health from different perspectives, including financial, growth, customer, and business view.

Resource:

https://www.educba.com/business-intelligence-interview-questions/
https://www.simplilearn.com/business-analyst-interview-questions-article
https://www.upgrad.com/blog/business-intelligence-interview-questions-and-answers-beginners-experienced/

7 Tips on How to Manage and Resolve Conflict in the Workplace

Phone

7 Tips on How to Manage and Resolve Conflict in the Workplace

Conflict Resolution Strategies

Conflict is not a strange thing for people. Human beings experience it in their day-to-day lives – with their friends, families, and more so their professional lives. In the workplace, conflict causes a massive degree of frustration, pain, discomfort, sadness, as well as anger. It is a normal life aspect. In the world of today, organizations hire employees from diverse geographical locations with dissimilar cultural and intellectual backgrounds, as well as various viewpoints. In a working environment where people have disparate outlooks toward the same problems, disagreements are bound to happen.

side-background

Are the stars to blame for your workplace conflict?

Conflicts are inevitable in a person’s day-to-day life. And when they happen, the idea is not to try to prevent them but rather to resolve and manage them in an effective manner. When people use the appropriate tools of resolution to address issues, they will be able to keep their differences from rising to major problems. “Establishing conflict management processes in a company is fundamental as it helps reduce conflict instances among employees,” says Casper Hansen, an expert in resume writing from Resumethatworks. Conflict resolution is integral in the corporate world as it helps to distinguish a good business from a bad one. So, as a business owner, what steps should you follow to resolve a conflict? Well, below are some ways through which you can manage and resolve conflict in the workplace.

Causes of conflict in a relationship

Conflict arises from differences, both large and small. It occurs whenever people disagree over their values, motivations, perceptions, ideas, or desires. Sometimes these differences appear trivial, but when a conflict triggers strong feelings, a deep personal need is often at the core of the problem. These needs can range from the need to feel safe and secure or respected and valued, to the need for greater closeness and intimacy.

Think about the opposing needs of a toddler and a parent. The child’s need is to explore, so venturing to the street or the cliff edge meets that need. But the parent’s need is to protect the child’s safety, a need that can only be met by limiting the toddler’s exploration. Since these needs are at odds, conflict arises.

The needs of each party play an important role in the long-term success of a relationships. Each deserves respect and consideration. In personal relationships, a lack of understanding about differing needs can result in distance, arguments, and break-ups. In the workplace, differing needs can result in broken deals, decreased profits, and lost jobs.

When you can recognize conflicting needs and are willing to examine them with compassion and understanding, it can lead to creative problem solving, team building, and stronger relationships.

You and Your Team Series

How to Control Your Emotions During a Difficult Conversation
How Self-Managed Teams Can Resolve Conflict
Even Experienced Executives Avoid Conflict

If you first sit down with them separately, don’t focus the discussion on how to resolve the conflict, but rather on gaining an understanding of the disagreement and convincing each that you are willing to listen and anxious to understand their concerns.

Research has shown that initial separate meetings are more successful if the manager spends time building empathy and gaining an understanding of the problem. There will be plenty of time in subsequent meetings to talk about how to resolve the conflict. Also be sure in this initial meeting that you are using empathy (That must have been really hard for you) and not sympathy (I feel sorry for what you have been through). An expression of empathy is respectful but relatively neutral and it does not imply support for the person’s position.

The risk in starting separately is that each colleague may think that the other is going to use that meeting to sway you to the other’s perspective. You can avoid this by explaining that the purpose of the meeting is to understand both sides of what is going on, not for you to form an opinion on who is right and who is wrong.

Meeting jointly at first has its upsides too. Giving each a chance to do some controlled venting in a joint session may clear the air between them. You should check with both before proposing this approach since you want to be sure that they can engage in such a session without losing their composure, making resolution even more difficult. And be sure to set some ground rules — each will have a turn, no interruptions, for example — before you begin and be prepared to tightly control the session and even break it off if you cannot control it, otherwise it can turn brutal.

Another good reason to have your colleagues meet together is that ultimately, they need to own the resolution of their conflict and they need to develop the ability to talk to each other when future conflicts arise. Of course, the risk in meeting jointly is that you cannot control the process and the meeting only escalates the conflict.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to pick one mode of meeting and stick with it throughout the process. You can switch between modes. However, our research suggests that starting separately and building empathy and then moving to joint is more effective in resolving conflict than starting jointly and then meeting separately.

What should you accomplish in your first meeting? Whether you’re meeting together or not, there are several things you want to do in the initial meeting. Explain that you see your role as helping them find a mutually acceptable resolution to their conflict, but also to ensure that the resolution does not have negative implications for the team or the organization. Make clear that deciding whether a particular agreement is acceptable requires their buy-in and yours. And then set out some rules for whenever you meet together. For example, treat each with respect and don’t interrupt.

The goal of the initial meeting is to have them leave with emotions abated and feeling respected by you, if not yet by each other. With that done, you can then bring them together (if you didn’t meet jointly the first time), and focus on getting the information that you all need in order to resolve the conflict.

What information do you need to draw out in subsequent meetings? In order to resolve the conflict, you’ll need to know from both people their positions (what each wants), interests (why each is taking that position, how the position reflects their needs concerns), and priorities (what is more and less important to each and why).

You can gather this information by doing several things: asking “why?” or “why not?” questions to uncover the interests that underlie their positions, listening carefully to identify those interests, reformulating what you think you understand about one colleague’s interests to make sure you understand and that the other colleague also is hearing them.

What are the pitfalls to avoid? There are several ways that these discussions can go wrong. For one, either colleague can try to convince you that their view of the facts in the only correct view, that their position is the “right” one, or that they should prevail because they have more power. We call these facts, rights, and power arguments and they are detrimental because they distract everyone from seeking a resolution that will satisfy everyone’s interests.

The facts argument is an interesting one. Both colleagues may have been at the same scene but each remembers it differently. They both think that if they could only convince you and their colleague of their view of the facts the conflict would be over. The problem is that even if you had been there, it is counterproductive to try to convince others of your view, because without new credible information they are unlikely to change their minds about what happened. The best approach to closing this trap is to agree to disagree, and move on.

Source:

https://www.hrcloud.com/blog/7-tips-on-how-to-manage-and-resolve-conflict-in-the-workplace
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/conflict-resolution-skills.htm
https://hbr.org/2017/07/how-to-handle-a-disagreement-on-your-team

26 Best Small Business Ideas to Start in 2022

LTDO-website-screenshot

26 Best Small Business Ideas to Start in 2022

Illustration of a woman tossing a coin into a basket ball net placed very low as a metaphor for a low investment business idea.

Contrary to popular belief, there are actually many ways to start a business that let you focus less on the logistics and upfront costs and more on getting your ideas started. Let’s get you past the first major mental hurdle of “I want to start a business but have no ideas”.

These 26 small business ideas, make a great entry point for beginners, bootstrappers, or anyone with a busy schedule, and let you pick up a side business without having to drop everything else.

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How to Start Investing in Small Businesses

1. Find Deals Worth Pursuing

man looking at tablet for information 1

2. Perform Due Diligence On Market Opportunity and Business Strategy

coworkers taking notes and working together 1

First, look at the business plan and strategy and assess for yourself the potential risk. You’ll also want to look at the current state of the business, financial projections, market opportunity and industry, and anything else pertinent to the companies before offering financing.

3. Understand How the Business is Funded

woman on phone and red pen 1

Many small business funding avenues are available, including Small Business Administration Loans (SBA Loans), debt and equity investments, venture capitalists, and angel investors. Funding could also be acquired through banks, credit unions, and even business credit cards.

Especially if you’re a potential equity investor, you’ll want to understand other funding options open to you, those the business has already utilized, and the status and results of that funding.

4. Meet with Small Business Owners to Solicit Interest

successful man on phone medium 1

Some business owners may not be ready or interested in individual investors. Still, for those that are, this meeting is an opportunity to ascertain business goals, financial goals, and the intended use of the funds.

5. Negotiate Terms

purchasing real estate medium 1

When you’ve found entrepreneurs interested in your financing, it’s time to negotiate terms. If you’re an equity investor, you’ll need to agree to a percentage of ownership, percentage of profits, and financing amount.

6. Close Deal

young woman and man shaking hands medium 1

In return, you’ll receive compensation based on the terms of your contract, which may include stock, dividends, a percentage of ownership and profits, capital gains, or another form of payment.

7. Stay Involved

man reviewing financial information on computer 1

Even when the deal is done, and the returns from your funding begin rolling in, it’s a good idea to stay actively involved in the company. Things can change quickly with a business, and as an investor, it’s essential to keep the pulse of any companies you invest capital in.

How to Invest in a Portfolio of Small Businesses as a Passive Investor

mainvest sign up 1

While the process outlined above will be best-practice for most small business investments, there is a way for investors to help small businesses without much active involvement.

When you walk down this main street, you can feel the sense of community that fills the air. People stop by each other’s businesses to chat about their day or lend a helping hand when needed; it feels like everyone is family here. And that’s because they are, whether you realize it or not.

It’s not just one small company that provides jobs for this town; rather, every store owner has created their own niche business, bringing joy and financial stability to those around them. Wouldn’t you want to support such a community and see it flourish?

Opportunity: Invest in small businesses local to you or nationwide. Have an impact investing approach to place money into businesses that drive the majority of employment in America.

Risk: These are small businesses, some of which are in their infancy. They also have exposure to risks related to public policy, such as shelter-in-place orders enacted by many states and localities as a result of the pandemic.

These business ventures act as income generating assets that offer returns between 10-25% per year through revenue-sharing notes, which act as financial agreements to share revenue with investors until reaching a certain return.

mainvest revenue sharing notes 1

Mainvest holds responsibility for protecting investors from businesses that don’t have a strong direction or investment rationale for retail investors. As such, the service only accepts 5% of businesses who sign up for the platform to raise capital to grow their businesses.

You can choose companies based on location, industry, and risk appetite by comparing terms and qualitative data for the 300+ investment opportunities that have launched on the small business investing platform since its founding.

Which Is Better: Equity Investment or Debt Investment?

As with many things in life and business, there is no simple answer to this question. If you had been an early investor in McDonald’s and purchased equity, you’d be rich. If you had bought bonds (a debt investment), you would have earned a decent return on your money. On the other hand, if you buy into a business that fails, your best chance to escape unscathed is to own the debt, not the equity.

All of this is further complicated by an observation that famed value investor Benjamin Graham made in his seminal work, “Security Analysis.” Namely, that equity in a business that is debt-free cannot pose any greater risk than a debt investment in the same firm because the person would be first in line in the capitalization structure in both cases.  

The Problem of the Preferred Equity-Debt Hybrid

Sometimes, small business investments straddle the ground between equity investments and debt investments, modeling preferred stock. Far from offering the best of both worlds, preferred stocks (priority stocks, first in line for fixed dividends over common stock) seem to combine the worst features of both equity and debt—namely, the limited upside potential of debt, with the lower capitalization rank of equity.

To find small businesses, you need to look for opportunities in your personal network. You can also network with other investors, check trade publications for news about new startups, and call the local chamber of commerce. Once you find some opportunities, take the time to interview the entrepreneurs and decide which might be a smart investment for you.

Source:

https://www.shopify.com/blog/low-investment-business-ideas
https://youngandtheinvested.com/how-to-invest-in-small-businesses/
https://www.thebalance.com/types-of-investments-in-small-business-357246

Why increasing website engagement is important?

So, your website is fast and well-designed. The first steps towards getting the users’ interest are made. But they will worth nothing without engaging content. Here are some tips on how to engage website visitors with the help of content.

Cleveroad responsive design

The answers determine how engaging your website is and the benefits it can bring to your business. The idea behind measuring your website engagement metrics is to understand how your users and visitors are performing the desired actions.

1. Add live chat for real time assistance

The impact of long queue time can be significantly reduced by implementing live chat . It helps you to engage website visitors in real time when they land on your site and what they expect. There is no better website engagement tool to offer instant assistance to your visitors and customers.

2. Automate your website engagement with AI bots

Chatbots are drastically changing the way brands are interacting and engage with their customers. They are considered to be the best conversational tool that delivers convenience, personalization, and decision support when your support team is on the go. 35% of customers want to see more companies using chatbots.

3. Provide live assistance with co-browsing & video chat

Companies that empower their support team with live customer engagement tools develop personal relationships with them. With video chat and co-browsing solutions , the support team can simplify the complex form fill process through personalized face-to-face conversations and provide a virtual in-person experience.

4. Make your messaging crystal clear

Suppose, if a visitor comes to your product page, your core products must be positioned in such a way that it clearly conveys the message that your business wants. The intent of the visitor and the messaging of the web page should be matching to each other.

5. Highlight your social proof to improve website engagement

Social proof can be in the form of testimonials, reviews, star ratings, and real-time statistics. Businesses can help increase conversions by validating the buyer’s decision, which is why it’s essential to incorporate it into your marketing strategy. In the long run, it helps in building brand credibility.

6. Make your Call to Action (CTAs) compelling

CTAs should be prudently used across the website to boost customer engagement. You can direct your visitors to comment on your articles, ask them to subscribe to your email list. You can also ask them to connect with you via social media.

The key to making your CTAs stand out is using the right language according to situations and consider their placement carefully. The business profits and revenue greatly depend on judiciously using CTAs.

7. Personalize your communication to increase website engagement

Today’s consumers expect businesses to understand their needs and provide relevant and desirable information, products, services, and solutions. They would rather cut off from a business that doesn’t make the effort to communicate in a meaningful and pleasing way.

Smart brands know that the more personalized they can make their messaging, the more likely a customer is to respond to it. By harnessing the power of data analytics, your brand can create a detailed plan for customer-focused marketing messages.

8. Make your website mobile responsive

For website owners, such a shift in how people interact with the web is quite normal. But it increases the urgency you need to have in making your website mobile responsive. If your mobile visitors don’t have a good experience when they land on your website, you are possibly driving away from a huge portion of your potential traffic.

9. Make your website loading time faster

One of the common challenges faced by users is the website loading time. Your web pages should load instantly for visitors if you wish them to hand on to your website and smartly engage them with different web elements.

10. Run contests as a lead magnet

Well planned and executed contests/giveaways bring a good boost to your website traffic while the prizes are up grabbed by the winners. Continuous web visitors will be motivated to join, and you can also notice an increase in the customer base.

11. Incentivize with offers & discounts

Discount in the form of coupons not only impacts your overall sales but also helps to create the buzz around the brand in the long term. Thus it is recommended that a business should opt for various interesting ways to offer discounts and attract more and more customers.

12. Make your brand messaging clear

Brand messaging is all about what your brand promises. Whether building a brand from the beginning or revamping an existing brand, select the right messaging that will resonate with your audiences, from their point of view.

13. Make your website customer experience-centric

Everything you do impacts your customers’ perception and their decision to return back to your website. Great website experience comprises each and every interaction that a customer has with your business, from website navigation, customer service interaction to the final purchase of products or services.

Key website engagement metrics & KPIs

Website engagement metrics and KPIs measure what users are actually doing on your website. Having in-depth insight into what drives user engagement helps the business to understand their customer better and helps them make informed decisions.

  • Number of engagements – It is an important metric to measure the number of visitors being engaged out of the total number of visitors. Suppose, your website has 10,000 visitors per day out of which only 25% i.e. 2500 visitors are engaged in some way or the other. It means the number of engagements was 2500 visitors.
  • Number of leads – This lead generation KPI helps to find out the exact number of website visitors converted as customers. It means the visitors who make sales, out of the total number of visitors on your website.
  • Time on page – It helps you to determine the quality of your website traffic. It is a key indicator that your targeting strategies are not doing well and need to be adjusted.
  • Pages per session – It offers more information about a visitor’s actual interaction with the site. It conveys the amount of time a user spent on any given page.
  • Pageviews – Measuring page views can help you to understand how often people visit your website.
  • New vs. returning visitors – The more number of returning visitors indicates a bigger group of engaged customers to build a strong relationship.

Why does web engagement matter?

First and foremost question – what is user engagement? In plain English, user engagement (also customer engagement) is a degree that shows how much time a user spends interacting with your website. Engagement is commonly derived from different interactions, such as downloads, comments, click-throughs, shares and so forth.

In the highly competitive tech world, it is quite hard not only to capture a user’s interest but to simply make users know about your website. The main problem of high competitiveness is that users can simply switch to another site if they don’t like something on your web page. That’s why engaging website visitors is a huge concern for many business owners. According to a survey by McKinsey&Company, C-level executives find building website engagement strategies a first priority task.

User engagement stats

Sources:

https://www.revechat.com/blog/increase-website-engagement/amp/
https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/5-best-tips-and-tricks-to-increase-user-engagement-on-website/
https://www.genesys.com/capabilities/predictive-web-engagement
Web engagement

Website user engagement isn’t just about engaging with a new visitor once. It also concerns your ability to drive visitors back to your site. You can do this by collecting their email address, which you can use for sending new content updates. Plug-ins like Bloom provide great tools for creating an opt-in form and building your email subscriber list.

website metrics: revenue attribution report in HubSpot

10 Actionable Ideas to Increase Website User Engagement

Website user engagement is an important indicator determining the success and ranking of your site. Every website is competing with rival brands to increase its engagement levels. Even if you attract a huge amount of traffic, this won’t mean much unless you’re able to engage visitors and get them to perform the desired action.

Engaging users is the crucial first step in the conversion process. You must engage your audience before you can convince them to buy or subscribe. Also, having users leave your website within a few seconds will negatively impact your bounce rate. So if website user engagement is so important, how exactly can you increase it? In this article, I’ll outline 10 proven tips that can help you effectively engage with visitors.

1. Reduce page load time

You’ve probably had an experience with slow-loading pages yourself. You find a website that looks interesting, then you click on the link only to be kept waiting for it to load. You likely exit the website because it’s frustrating to wait and wait. A study conducted by Soasta found that pages loading just one second slower can experience a 56% increase in their bounce rate. That spells trouble for website user engagement.

Reduce page load time

Conduct a page speed test using free tools like Pingdom and see if your site loads within two seconds. If not, take the steps to improve the load speed by removing unnecessary elements from your pages. Images can be engaging, but try to limit the number of images per post so that the page loads faster. You could also download plugins that will ensure image loading is delayed until readers scroll to the specific area.

What are website engagement metrics?

Website engagement metrics measure how much your website visitors are interacting with your website and online brand. These metrics can tell you where your visitors tend to go on your website, for how long, how often, and how they arrived on your website.

Ultimately, the goal of your site is to turn visitors into leads and leads into customers, but the journey there can be difficult to understand without hard data. Fortunately, website engagement metrics are here to clear things up. With the help of an analytics tool like HubSpot or Google Analytics, you can leverage engagement metrics to see where your site is capturing attention, and where you can make some tweaks to increase engagement.

You might find that a page is formatted poorly, or that some of your content doesn’t match user intent, or that your CTA’s ate underperforming. On the flip side, your engagement metrics may reveal that your marketing and content strategies are crushing it on every level. Either way, you won’t know until you lift the hood and see the data — let’s do that now.

Website Engagement Metrics to Watch

With so many website-relevant metrics available, it’s easy to become overwhelmed, especially if you’re just beginning. So, here are just 12 simple but important engagement metrics to inform your web strategy. For each one, we’ve included the process for analyzing and tracking it in HubSpot and tips for improving your results.

1. Page Views

Page views measure the number of times a page on your website is seen by a visitor. Any time a page on your website is loaded in a browser, this counts as one page view. So, if a visitor loads a page, then reloads the same page, this would count as two page views.

How to Analyze Page Views

A steady upward trend of page views generally indicates successful SEO, marketing, and brand awareness efforts. Still, while page views can tell you generally how popular your site’s pages are and how much traffic your site is receiving as a whole, they’re not useful without other metrics to give more context.

High page views could result from a thriving ad campaign or SEO initiative, but it could indicate something negative. For example, users might be frequently reloading your pages — a sign of performance issues — or wandering around your site without a clear goal — a sign of potentially poor navigation and/or structure.

How to Track Page Views

website metrics: total page views tracked in HubSpot

How to Improve Page Views

2. Average Time on Page

Average time on page measures how long visitors tend to spend on a web page. Time on page can be an excellent indicator of how engaging and effective your content is — the longer you hold visitors on a page, the better. Longer time on page also suggests that you’re attracting quality visitors who value your information, while shorter times generally indicate less interest.

How to Analyze Average Time on Page

Like page views, average time on page is also contextual. For example, you ideally want visitors spending more time on your product pages and blog posts. To increase time spent on these pages, you can add more relevant content to them, make your content easy to read and understand, and work to capture your intended audience through organic search and other channels.

On landing pages, however, higher time on page could hint that there are barriers to conversion. For instance, content and CTAs could be confusing. See our guide to landing page design for pointers on improving this part of your site.

How to Track Average Time on Page

website metrics: time on page tracked over year in HubSpot

6. Scroll down to the table below the chart and find the column labelled Time Per Pageview. The average will be listed at the bottom in the row labelled Total.

website metrics: average time on page for website pages tracked in HubSpot dashboard

How to Improve Average Time on Page

3. Average Session Duration

A session is a group of interactions with your site within a set time period, typically one to two hours. A session can be roughly equated to one person’s visit to your website, whether that’s viewing a single page or exploring more of your site.

How to Analyze Average Session Duration

Similar to average time on page, average session duration measures how long users typically spend time on your entire website. It’s calculated by dividing the number of sessions over a set time period by the total amount of time all users have spent on your site in that period. Since those who spend more time on your website are more likely to convert, you want to focus on increasing this metric.

How to Track Average Session Duration

4. Select the Sources, Topic clusters, UTM Parameters, Device types, Countries, or Browsers tab.

website metrics: average session length tracked over multiple years in HubSpot

website metrics: average session length tracked by device in HubSpot

How to Improve Average Session Duration

Improving average session duration is similar to improving average time on page. The key difference is that your aim is to optimize your entire website to get visitors to stay longer, not just individual pages. Improving your navigation, content, and visual design in general can promote longer sessions.

Audience-fly-wheel-Your Social Media Arsenal

Social media is intrinsically linked to everything that’s going on on your website. That’s why having powerful tools that give you an overview of what’s happening out there can help you identify both new leads and content opportunities.

Sprout Social: When looking to boost your social capabilities, Sprout Social lets you share the same message across multiple social media channels. You can also use it to monitor user statements, reply to their messages in real-time, and set up automatic responses.

Mention: Mention is a powerful social media monitoring tool. With its ability to track all mentions of your brand name across the internet in over 40 languages, it keeps a close eye on your social engagement.

Sprinklr: Sprinklr observes everything that your customers are saying on messaging channels, forums, blogs, review sites, and social media platforms, and then generates actionable insights to power your strategy.

Boosting user engagement on your website isn’t something that happens overnight, it requires a willingness to experiment and substantial patience. So, consider it your digital marathon – one that’s worth it and will make you stronger than you’ve ever been before.

Pravya Pravin

Pravya Pravin is a Product Marketer at iZooto. An artist who paints not only with words, but also on canvas. She loves exploring places less traveled and wishes to go on a bike trip to the highest motorable road.

Sources:

https://www.convert.com/blog/growth-marketing/10-actionable-ideas-increase-website-user-engagement/
https://blog.hubspot.com/website/engagement-metrics
https://www.izooto.com/blog/website-engagement-tools-2022
Web engagement

If this has been happening in your online store or any other website for that matter, chances are that you’ve been losing potential prospects and customers. You may also have noticed that you struggle to retain your customers.

Increasing website engagement strategy 4: Use different content types

What is website engagement and why it matters?

“Website engagement” isn’t just a fluffy term having to do with how users feel when they visit your site. It’s also a way to measure how users interact with your site, what actions they take on your site, and whether they ultimately end up converting into a paying customer.

1. Users make quick judgments about your site

2. A slow site loses customers

3. Return customers can make a huge difference

4. Mobile search is huge

In the end, website engagement really affects how long users stay on your site and whether they end up buying your products. You could improve your conversions by 30% or more just by implementing some of the website engagement tips below.

The 14 Website Engagement Metrics Every Marketer Needs to Track

To better understand how your website performs in terms of traffic growth and conversions, we’ve made this plug-and-play dashboard that contains all the essential metrics for understanding how successful you are at optimizing different aspects of your website.

ga-website-engagement-dashboard-template-featured-section

1. Bounce Rate

“The bounce rate tells you how many website visitors opened your page and then went right back to Google. It can be a good indicator of how well your content is answering their questions and its readability,” explained Alice Stevens of Best Company.

“Just like in the real world, first impressions make a big difference on the web,” Maple Holistics’ Nate Masterson told us. “You can expect to see a high bounce rate if your visitors feel spammed by too many calls-to-action or feel bored by lack of quality web page design.”

“It’s all well and good having high traffic to your site, but if the bounce rate is also high, your content isn’t engaging people enough to stick around,” Katherine Rowland of YourParkingSpace added. “Ultimately you want your content to entice people into taking action, and if they aren’t then really what is the point.”

As far as analyzing bounce rate data, Dan Rawley of Twinkl advised looking for pages with the highest bounce rate to tackle first, “Filtering pages by those with the highest bounce rate allows you to easily spot where people aren’t engaging with the site as expected and take action.”

Beth Noll of Gift Observer recommends using 90% bounce rate as a benchmark, noting that overly high bounces “could be due to lack of guidance (call to action buttons) or that the website isn’t relevant to their search query. A high bounce rate could also be down to the site’s appearance and lack of trust (e.g. no HTTPS, slow at loading or lack of social and trust signals).”

Weidert Group’s Kelly Wilhelme told us it’s most useful to look at bounce rate over time to find anomalies and changes, saying, “It’s important to look at the bounce rate for your site over time to make sure it’s not increasing. This could indicate something is broken and have a negative impact on your SEO and organic traffic rank. The last thing you want is for Google to stop sending you traffic because users are not finding what they need.”

And Kris Gunnars of Search Facts shared this pro tip: “I like to change the bounce rate calculation in Google Analytics to an ‘adjusted’ bounce rate. By changing the Google Analytics snippet and adding a ‘setTimeout’ command, you can tell Google to count a visitor as not having bounced if they’re still on your site after 15 seconds.”

2. Pages Per Session (or Page Depth)

“How many pages are visitors viewing in a session? Are the people viewing the most pages from a specific cohort?” asked Alex Vale of Attio. “You can use the metric to reveal your most dedicated audience, and then tailor your output specifically for them.”

“It’s a fantastic way of understanding which pages are guiding users deeper into the website and which aren’t. It can reveal issues with internal linking, conversion rate problems, lack of multimedia on the page, and more,” said William Taylor of MintResume.

Quincy Smith of ESL Authority explained that pages per session is one of the most important metrics they measure. “Pages per session is a big one for us because we use content to drive users into our conversion funnel. The more pages a user views, the greater the chance that they’ll convert in some way.”

3. Average Session Duration

“Average session time is one of the most telling website engagement metrics and holds great value in understanding how effectively your site meets the intent of users,” Kyle Kasharian of 9Sail added. “Higher average session times typically mean that user intent is being met and that users are engaging with your content.”

Sloan explained that “average session duration is great to understand what sources are resonating with your target market. For example, you can see if a recent Facebook campaign is attracting the right customers after just a few days, rather than waiting a few weeks to review the conversions. ”

“If the average session duration is higher than 60 seconds and users aren’t navigating or converting, there’s something wrong with the call-to-action,” explained Ayesha Ambreen of Right Solution. “If the average session duration is less than 30 seconds and people are bouncing off, the UI needs work.”

Deliver Relevant Content

Content is king. There is no better way to put it, but the content is definitely what will keep your users browsing your different pages. Strive to understand what your clients want by using ConvertPath analytics. The tool allows you to create intuitive popups that enhance engagement with your audience. You get to learn more about what your clients might be interested in and how you can deliver.

Your audience can come from different digital platforms. While you might depend only on traffic from your website, it’s important to understand more about multichannel metrics. Your users can come from social media channels and other digital platforms. Therefore, for a better user experience, you want to engage with them in all these channels. ConvertPath allows you to handle all your clients in these channels in a single dashboard.

Reduce Page Load Time

Sources:

https://www.coredna.com/blogs/increase-website-engagement
https://databox.com/website-engagement-metrics
https://convertpath.com/increase-customer-engagement