Behavioral Analytics

What are behavioral analytics?

Behavioral analytics are metrics that tell us what our customers did (viewed, clicked, etc.) in our product or on our site. Anything that lets you see what your customers did while using your product or service counts. Tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, and Heap are a few of the popular options.

What questions do behavioral analytics answer better than customer interviews?

Questions about frequency. Humans are not very good at summarizing our own behavior. When asked "How often do you use this?" our brains generate a fast answer, and we accept it as truth. In one Netflix interview, a participant estimated she watched two hours per week—then described watching one to two 40-minute shows at a time and up to three or four on weekends. Her estimate didn't match her actual behavior. That's why reviewing behavioral analytics is a much better way to answer "how often" and "how many" questions than asking them in an interview.

How do behavioral analytics fit into continuous discovery?

Behavioral analytics are an amazing window into our customers' behavior. That window can tell us what our customers are doing, but it can't tell us why. Analytics are missing a lot of context. What is the customer trying to accomplish? Do their actions represent a success path, or are they simply wandering?

That's why behavioral analytics complement customer interviews rather than replace them. Opportunities that surface in your analytics are usually missing context, so use them as inspiration—when your analytics point to interesting behavior, interview some of the customers exhibiting that behavior and collect the full story. Analytics are also a readily available data source for assumption testing: if you have access to behavioral analytics, you can often start running data mining tests right away.

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Last Updated: September 1, 2026