Fullstory Founder and CEO Scott Voigt recently appeared on the CRO.CAFE, a podcast featuring interviews with an array of industry leaders on topics like conversion rate optimization (CRO), experimentation, user research, and digital marketing.
In a wide-ranging conversation with hosts Yvonne Teufel, and Michael Witzenleiter, Scott spoke about the founding of Fullstory, the importance of data privacy, and his morning coffee preferences.
4 highlights from the episode
“There has to be a better way”: the importance of flexible analytics
The conversation began with the “typical dilemma” around CRO, according to the hosts: how do you figure out what to optimize in the first place?
Scott offered a retail scenario to describe how, before a solution like Fullstory, the process was a matter of trial and error. “I know intuitively that clicking ‘add to cart’ is an important moment in the user's journey, so I’d start by having an engineer write a little bit of code to capture that data. After that, maybe I’d realize that the ‘select a size option’ was important, so I’d have to go back through the instrumentation process,” said Scott.
By allowing brands to capture all possible data points—minus any sensitive information—Fullstory delivers radical flexibility and the ability to surface previously unknown opportunities to improve the digital experience.
“I think flexible analytics systems are crucial, because you really never know what metrics you’re going to need later on,” said Scott.
Scott and Fullstory’s co-founders initially came together to build a different product—a SaaS application for marketers—but noticed a major pain point that led them to pivot and launch Fullstory.
“In trying to understand how our customers interacted with our application, having to know what was important ahead of time drove us crazy,” said Scott. “We thought, ‘there has to be a better way to collect all of this data in a private way and structure it so we can get that retroactive insight.’”
Choosing a flexible digital experience platform that can scale with your organization will save you time and money in the long run.
The move to mobile
The conversation touched on the continuation of a long-standing trend: the expansion of mobile usage and the need to invest in both the desktop and mobile experiences.
Scott highlighted Mammut, a Swiss mountaineering brand that Fullstory helped to achieve a better mobile experience. “We were able to help Mammut quickly identify some mobile workflow issues—fixing a minor problem in the filter menu led to an 8% conversion improvement in their native mobile experience.”
He also discussed the specific metrics and signals Fullstory uses to demystify the mobile experience, including pinch-to-zoom, rage tapping (the touchscreen version of Rage Clicking), and more.
“When you take your web experience and you simply size it down, you can get some jittery experiences if you're not careful,” said Scott. “If you’re making effective design improvements, you should theoretically see less pinching and zooming over time.”
AI and the future of CRO analytics
Scott believes that AI and machine learning have huge potential to unlock new insights about the digital experience—and do those insights much faster.
“Right now, most companies start with a hypothesis about why something might not be converting and a human has to point and click their way through testing a whole range of possible issues one by one. Is it a problem or the layout? Or a latency issue? Was an item out of stock? Or not available in the right color?”
According to Scott, machine learning is going to help pull the friction out of the digital experience. “I believe eventually you’re going to log in and have a list—sorted by dollars—of issues impacting your experience, and perhaps eventually even some suggestions as to what the fixes could be.”
Fullstory, for instance, already harnesses the power of machine learning in products such as Conversions.
Privacy in the age of big data
“We are living in an era where privacy is as important as it's ever been, and it’s crucial to be able to trust in the vendor you’re using for analytics,” said Scott. “Which is why we push so hard on privacy.”
Scott suggested customers ask any potential analytics partner basic privacy questions such as:
Can you make sure that sensitive data never gets into the vendor space?
Do you have tools to make sure that you are constantly monitoring for any sort of slippage of data?
And if slippage occurs, can you cord it off and delete it?
Learn more about Fullstory’s Private-by-Default capabilities.
Listen to the full episode here on Spotify or search for it on your preferred listening platform.
