We’re big fans of analytics mostly due to this famous quote:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
A really smart guy said that. He also said:
“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”
Who was this wise guy? Albert Einstein, of course.
So how can we be smart, learn the game, and then play better than everyone else? Analytics and measurement. And my new favorite tools for your company website are Heat Maps. They provide very similar information that Google Analytics does, but in a much more visual way. Google Analytics will tell you who is coming to your site, what pages they click on and how long they stay. Great information to learn what your customers are looking at, and just as importantly, ignoring!
Heat maps take this learning to an even deeper level. The maps show you what folks are doing while actually on your site! They create visual representations of where and what your visitors are clicking on and where their eyes are tracking (by tracking the path of their mouse). The heat map software we use even records every visitor’s actual time on the site. So, for example, it will show me a video of their visit while on their browser (say Internet Explorer), how my site rendered on their operating system (Windows 7 or 8 or Mac or whatever) and exactly what they did and saw. That is great information because we can then see if our sites are rendering properly on multiple systems and browsers that we may not have tested on because there are just so many out there!
So here is an example of a “clicks” heat map of one of our clients, El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood (http://www.elportaltheatre.com).
Click Report
You can see that most folks coming to the site are clicking on the posters across the top of the site that represent their upcoming shows. They are also scanning the navigation menu that includes a drop-down menu that lists all the upcoming shows at their theatre beyond just those that have posters. We can also see that folks usually interact with the top portion of the site and don’t do too much scrolling. This is called “staying above the fold” – an old advertising adage that harkens back to the time of newspapers and how only pictures above the fold would be seen in the old street vending machines that had windows to feature the newspapers. Staying above the fold is typical of most website visitors and verifies how important that top portion of your website is. However, when folks do scroll down on the website, we can see they are clicking on the actual upcoming dates of the most current shows. That verifies that the upcoming dates information is important to keep and their visitors want that info.
Eye Tracking Report
The eye tracking report verifies the same information as the click report but also shows that folks are interested in El Portal’s social media buttons and the sign up for their newsletter button. Not surprisingly, most folks are not necessarily reading all that welcome text. We may decide to pare that down some.
Lastly, here is the report of the actual recorded visits.
Recorded Visits Report
All we have to do is hit the play button to view actual visits to their site. It’s always easier to just show you what it looks like, so we went ahead and recorded one you can play below:
I hope these reports and video demonstrate how you can start measuring and tracking your website visitors’ behaviors and how you can then improve your game by providing them with better information and improved user experiences on your site. You don’t have to guess anymore about what your customers want or what they are doing on your site – just use this software to spy on them and find out! Contact us if you are interested in the software. It is available through us for $39 monthly. Use it as long as you like (just for one month to test your site, and then again later for additional tracking after you’ve made changes to improve your site).
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