To outpace your competitors, you first need to know where you stand in the online market with your product or service. Not just once, but continuously so you can nimbly respond to the most important developments. That's why WUA developed the Digital Market Tracker which tracks every player, KPI and trend around the customer journey of your product.
In this blog, CEO Henk Kroezen and Head of Product Yannick Ludwig introduce the Digital Market Tracker and explain how you can use this service to become and remain a leader in your market. WUA helps top brands with two different main goals, Henk explains. "One is strategic: where do we stand in the market? Where are we doing well and where can we improve? Which competitors are hurting us and from whom do we win most often? That's for the management level. Additionally, there's the tactical, operational level where people work on a backlog, focusing on the most important improvements that make real impact. Previously, we connected these two levels in one comprehensive service. Early last year, we asked ten of our clients: how do you see our service? How can we improve our added value?" The feedback from these in-depth interviews was positive but also practical, Yannick outlines. "Our research was quite extensive, which sometimes made it difficult to determine a course: there was so much to work with!" The decision followed to split the service into two products: the Digital Market Tracker which gives you a quarterly market view of the customer journey per product. And the Website Experience Deep Dive, an annual deep dive into your own website and those of the four most important competitors, from which all kinds of insights and substantiated improvement points emerge that efficiently prioritize the backlog.
A continuous benchmark on customer experience
"One of the major online challenges for many companies is the diversity of data sources. They measure many different things that you can't always compare well with each other", Yannick notes. "That makes it difficult to focus. Additionally, there's often a lack of visibility into what competitors are doing. It's logical to look at your own customer experience, conversions and figures. But the big picture is still missing – 8% growth sounds good, until you learn that your competitors are growing 16%." The Digital Market Tracker is a continuous benchmark on Customer Experience (CX) with comprehensive reporting every quarter. This gives companies a holistic view of how the customer experience weighs against that of competitors. This way, management knows exactly what's happening, what needs to be improved and how implemented improvements lead to concrete results.
"When you as an organization see customer experience as the differentiating factor in the market, you want to be able to steer on this", Henk states. The Digital Market Tracker ensures that management, stakeholders and marketers continuously know where the organization stands and where action and therefore budget and focus is needed. 
"Every quarter you see how the market moves, learn why you win or lose from a specific competitor and can work on your improvement points in a targeted way. The CX is truly guaranteed and monitored this way. And also: you all speak the same language internally because you work from the same figures."
Not a sprint, but a marathon
Online success doesn't depend on a single campaign but on a continuous focus on providing a customer experience that's the best in the market. Especially in markets with much competition, you'll need to stay sharp as an entire organization, Henk says. The continuous nature of the Digital Market Tracker gives you a consistent market view.
"Previously, we did one to two CX benchmarks per year", Yannick outlines. "We had to coordinate those well with clients, so that no online campaigns or seasonal changes influenced the results. Now we measure the customer journeys continuously throughout the year with a four times larger sample size and report on them four times per year. This gives you a remarkably sharp view of the performance in the market – that of your own website and that of your competitors."
Well received in the market
The first clients started with the Digital Market Tracker in November 2023. The market response is particularly enthusiastic: "Some clients even want a benchmark report more often, monthly!" Henk tells us laughing. "This approach provides continuity, for clients who keep their finger on the pulse, and also for WUA itself. That deepens the collaboration and relationship with our clients enormously."
"The importance of CX must live within your company though", Yannick states. "If you're the only one looking at the data or using it as accountability reporting, that's nice, but you miss the optimal value. The Digital Market Tracker gives you the bigger picture. Not just how the website is performing, but also where you can invest smartly to subsequently improve your market position. You get the customer perspective benchmarked with your competitors in the form of action-oriented insights that you can use to achieve results – at least, if you act on them." In April, the first quarterly reports for Q1 will follow. From Q2, the changes over time will become visible. An important focus point is what you compare with, Yannick mentions. "Do you compare with the previous quarter, the same quarter last year or the average of the entire year? That will differ per topic."
The advent of AI
AI is also being used more and more at WUA. "For reporting, we've been using machine learning and AI for some years now for clustering and categorizing data", Henk explains. "Within the Experience Deep Dive, we use this to efficiently map the drivers and barriers so you get practical answers. So: why doesn't a respondent choose a particular website? What would need to change so that the respondent does make that choice?" The rise of Large Language Models like ChatGPT opens new doors. "An LLM makes data accessible through language. And our Experience Deep Dive contains particularly much data", Yannick tells us. "We're now testing how we can unlock that data via our own AI model in a way that makes working with it easier."
Henk adds: "AI isn't the goal of course, it's about getting insight into improvement points faster and working with them efficiently." Henk gives the same pragmatic approach for the application of AI in the market: "With the Digital Market Tracker we see all things that influence the CX, including the use of AI for example. Ultimately, it's about the CX as the customer experiences it with you and your competitors."
