Meet Bill. Like most people who run a website Bill likes to know what is going on with his traffic. He has always considered himself ahead of the curve. Once Bill started getting a little traffic to his site he installed Google Analytics so he could learn more about his users.  What happened to Bill next is what happens to most people when they install Google Analytics: Absolutely nothing.

Bill started getting more traffic to his website but his conversion rates remained stagnant. He was afraid he was missing out on a ton of new business. So the next thing Bill did was install website heatmaps on his site to simplify the analytics process. And wouldn’t you know it? He chose SeeVolution.

Once Bill started to measure his analytics with website heatmaps he was able to visualize his data. He could see the hot and cold spots on his site which allowed him to make educated changes. Here is where most people leave off though. Once they start using website heatmaps they forget all about Google Analytics which in our opinion is the biggest mistake you could make.

After Bill got comfortable with SeeVolution he hopped back over to Google Anlaytics. What he found was that he could better understand Google Analytics after visualizing his data with website heatmaps. He also found that he could use Google Analytics to help him better visualize his site with website heatmaps. The bottom line? Website heatmaps are like training wheels for Google Analytics. Training wheels that you never need to take off.

We all wrestle with this dilemma daily. Here is my advice and what I do with seevolution.com

1. Relax : ). You can’t really go wrong with either effort, but having a fresh, stress free mind often prevents us from making really bad decisions (like complete re-designs for no reason or thousands of dollars spent in ad words)

2. Pick one page – not the whole site, and run some basic heatmaps on that page. See what people are clicking on, where the fold lies, and what people are paying attention to. Here is an example. We recently launched a page displaying our click maps and upon running a scroll overlay on that page I noticed that only 50% of that pages visitors actually saw the sign up button on that page. Adding an additional call to action, via a button or link in the text will take me 5 minutes to deploy. That is time worth spending.

Example:

3. Now that I’ve made one improvement to that page, I will probably spend a little money driving traffic to that page and see if my click through rates on that that page improved at all. I do this with click heatmaps and with some metrics that I pull from Google Analytics.

4. Pick another page and do the same as above. Making small tweaks using intelligent tools is relatively easy and affordable. You don’t need to think of entire site re-designs to drastically improve conversion and usability.

Here are some real-world tweaks that our clients have made using heatmap analytics:

• A lot of sites have a large banner on the homepage, but then use that same template for the rest of their site. Using scroll heatmaps, we’ve uncovered that most times, this design negatively affects the internal web pages conversion rate. Removing the banner or making it more narrow can allow more products and calls to action to sit above the fold.
• Adding links to text early in the copy. What does this mean? Let’s say I sell beef jerky on my website and my intro paragraph on my product page says, “our Turkey Jerky is low in fat…” Having the word Turkey Jerky be a link to that product’s page can make a huge difference. Use click maps to determine how users click on those links.
• Change verbiage and tag lines to be less subjective and more objective. An example: Our products are fun and great – try them  VS Our Products are BPA free and weigh less than 5 oz.

In short, optimizing a web page can be easy is you follow the following principles:

1. Use intelligent analytics tools

2. Optimize one page at a time

3. Start with small easy to change tweaks like the ones listed above

Good luck!

Edo

]]> http://www.seevolution.com/blog/verdict-people-simplified-analytics/feed/ 0 http://www.seevolution.com/blog/verdict-people-simplified-analytics/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AnalyticsNews/~3/4OKMR_9mSvM/ http://www.seevolution.com/blog/4-click-tracking-tricks-work/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:16:22 +0000 Chris http://www.seevolution.com/blog/?p=1944

Click Tracking Gives You Wings

Conversion rates are a thing of beauty. It amazes us how many people don’t know what they are doing when it comes to increasing conversion rates. Really – if they made simple changes they could be getting a lot more leads.

Enter click tracking. Click tracking allows a web master to see where people are clicking the most on their sites in the form lit up, hot and cold spots that overlay on their websites. Being able to visualize where people are clicking on your site gives you a much better understanding of your users.

Why make changes? To increase conversion rates, get more leads, and retire to a tropical island of course. Here are 4 click tracking techniques that you can use on your own website. Hopefully they will help you use your heatmaps more proficiently. Please send us an email or leave a comment if you want to chat analytics. We would love to hear from you.

Click Tracking Trick  #1: Substitutions

If you see an area on your site that is getting more clicks you can (and should) move it up on your webpage. Since click tracking comes in the form of heatmaps this will be pretty easy to spot.

Click Tracking Trick #2: Emphasize

If you see a spot on your site that is extra hot try and emphasize it. So if the hottest spot on your site is a few inches down on the page try moving it up. If you do this you will probably end up getting more clicks.

Click Tracking Trick #3: Add links

Click tracking allows you to measure how often people are clicking on areas of your site without links. For example, if you have a big graphic on your site and you find that it is pretty hot, try installing a link behind it if you haven’t already done so.

Click Tracking Trick #4: Play With It

We know that your schedule is crazy and time always seems be of the essence. Click tracking will allow you to quickly measure whether or not changes that you are making on your site will work.We hope this helps. As you begin to awesomize your site with click tracking we’re sure that you will learn many other click tracking tricks along the way. Until then, we bid you a happy click.

The Heatmap Simplifies

The heatmap is the best thing to happen to website marketing since sliced bread. With a web heatmap you no longer need to analyze complex data because honestly, who has the time? Or more importantly, who knows how to make the measurements? A heatmap is what people without statistical or engineering degrees use to gain a better understanding of their traffic. Here are 9 reasons why you should install a website heatmap on your website right now.

1. A Heatmap Will Help You Increase Conversion Rates

This is the number one reason why people install a heatmap on their websites. With a heatmap you can see where people are clicking on your site – even in real time if you’d like. This is important because it enables you to see where to put your moneymaking buttons. The picture above is perfect example. Odds are that both Google Analytics and the heatmap picture are telling you the same thing. Only you have to look at the heatmap picture for maybe two seconds to understand where the hotspot is on your website.

2. A Heatmap Will Make You Look Really Smart

If you ever want to show your website with a heatmap to your friends or family they will make you look really smart. If you ever want to show your website with heatmaps to potential investors, advisors, or advertisers you might even get new business. All smartness aside, a heatmap will help you to explain your website, traffic and growth with a more thorough understanding of your traffic and users.

3. A Heatmap Will Save You Time

Knowing your users is extremely important but it takes a lot of time to learn and understand them. When a heatmap visualizes how your site traffic moves you get a feel for your user that you could otherwise never get with traditional analytics. Once you get used to running a heatmap on your site you will be able to free up time for other important strategies for your website. As they say; time is money.

4. There Is More Than One Kind of Heatmap

One challenge with heatmap technology awareness is that most people think of the software as one tool when in reality it is four. The traditional heamtap and the one the most people think of when they think about heatmaps is the click heatmap. There is also scroll, mouse move, and live click. Each of these heatmap variations has different types of uses and each can be used in conjunction with one and other.

5. You’re Probably Already Using A Heatmap

If you don’t yet have heatmaps installed on your website and are a little hesitant about jumping on the heatmap bandwagon, fear not. There are many instances in your life when you have used a heatmap. You want examples?

Have you ever used Google Maps on a smartphone to check the traffic? Notice how the traffic is color-coded? Green for smooth traffic and red means a traffic jam. That color-coding could be considered a traffic heatmap.  Or how about the local news? The weatherman’s forecast is perhaps the original heatmap. Even from a young age we were taught that red means hot and blue means cold.

The point is that we are already used to reading and understanding heatmap technology. As the title of this post goes, you should be install a website heatmap on your site immediately if you don’t already have one installed. It will do wonders.

6. You Don’t Have To Leave Your Site To Use A Heatmap

The last thing you want is another username and password to remember. Previously the heatmap was no exception to the rule. Before the best company in the world came along you used to have to access your site’s heatmap the same way you access everything else; by going to the site or service you subscribe to and logging in.

Now all that logging in nonsense is a thing of the past. SeeVolution’s heatmap comes in the form of a toolbar that sits on top of your website. Once you install it you login in once, and then never have to worry about it again. “Really cool” is what we hear most when people describe it.

7. A Heatmap Allows You To Experiment With Little Effort

At heart we are still small children who like to experiment. Let’s be honest though, this isn’t the sandbox anymore. The whole purpose of experimentation is to track what works and what doesn’t. A heatmap is the perfect tool for quickly measuring whether or not changes are working on your website. The name of the game is conversion rates. When you make a change to your website you want to see whether or not your conversion rates are increasing. If they are, great, keep the change.

8. A Heatmap Can Tell You Where People’s Eyeballs Are Moving

That’s right folks. This is not some gimmick or parlor trick. With the mouse movement heatmap you can actually see where people’s eyes are focused within your website. How? Because studies show that your eye balls follow your mouse. Each time someone comes to your site their entire mouse movement is session is captured. If you combine every session you get a pretty detailed analysis of where people are looking on your site.

Why is this important? When and if you install a heatmap on your website you will find that the traditional click heatmap and the mouse movement reports match up pretty seamlessly. However, you will find some irregularities. It is these irregularities that you will want to investigate and perhaps make changes to on your website in order to increase conversion rates. Ahh, the power of the heatmap.

9. The Heatmap Is Still A Baby

Not even five years old, heatmap technology is relatively new so it would benefit you to be an early adapter and install them on your site right now. Unlike most technologists, the guys in the heatmap business are all about simplification. Just look at the picture on top of post. Google Analytics are confusing and the heatmap is simple.  As new technology comes out related to heatmaps it will be all about simplifying the process and making it easier to use.

SeeVolution Keeps On Winning

Recently, our friends at Web Hosting Search which is one of the leading web hosting, design anddevelopment guides online is featuring Seevolution as one of the bestwebsite monitoring resources for 2012.

With the number of recognitions growing under our belt, we assure to be always ahead of the game just to provide our clients with the best services
to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their websites.

Both holidays share a simliar theme: humility. Easter via fasting (durring Lent) – which removes physical pleasure to achieve higher spiritual awareness and repentance; and passover by removing leavened bread from ones diet. Bread represents arrogance, and matzah represents simplicity and humility.

In creating and launching SeeVolution, our aim was to provide website owners, designers and product managers with tangible takeaways on how to improve ones websites. Heatmaps are core to this principal. They show a website’s essence: what people actually care about and provide instant visual examples on what can be stripped, removed or improved.

This coming Easter and Passover, let’s use the tools around us to access our core and strip our lives with unnecessary fat – websites included : ).

Have a happy and healthy holiday weekend!

Edo

CEO
SeeVolution

Make sure your graphs are going in the right direction.

We’ve stated in past posts that the difference between success and failure often times comes down to being able to squeeze every last drop of performance out of your campaigns. This means knowing how to read your analytics and then adjusting accordingly. One analytic that we are all familiar with is the Click Through Rate (CTR). Your CTR is the first indication of whether you have a winner or a dud of a campaign on your hands. Here are a couple of tips to getting all you can out of you Display Ads.

Picking the Right Placement

To start, there is a chance you could improve your CTR by 50% by just moving your ad above the fold. Heat Map Analytics studies have shown that as much as half of the visitors of a website don’t scroll past the fold. So, if you aren’t experiencing the CTR you would like, first look at where it’s found on the page.

Unique Value Proposition

Some of us get caught up in hitting deadlines and the satisfaction of just being able to check a task off on our to-do list. When it comes to the creative aspect of an advertisement, you need to really analyze what about this advertisement is going to grab the user’s attention and prompt them to click. Don’t be satisfied with just listings the services you offer under your company’s logo.  Really think about how you can separate yourself from the crowd and offer something that your clients won’t get anywhere else.

Time and Day

Time and Day are very important to your banner ad CTR's

This is a metric that not enough advertisers take advantage of. But it can’t be argued that an ad served at midnight on a Saturday is going to have the same CTR as one served at noon on Monday. Look at your advertising performance metrics for any consistent spikes on a week to week basis. You’ll start to see patterns and then be able to launch your ads around those patterns to maximize CTR.

(photos by writetoreply & earls37a)

How Search-Mojo Has Whittled Down SEO Into A Simple To Follow 4 Step Process from Chris Carlton on Vimeo.

Making Valentine's Day Reservations Easier Since 1998

Google decided to release some data regarding searches related to Valentine’s Day this year. If anything the data just backs up that most of us are procrastinators and do everything last minute. It also confirms what we wrote in a previous article regarding the percentage of searches done from mobile devices.

According to Google’s Analytics, 62% of the national searches for restaurant chains were done so on a mobile device. Google only counted restaurant chains since it could disambiguate them, as opposed to smaller mom and pop shops. For example, if there is a search for “papaya”, Google doesn’t know if you are looking for nutrition facts or a nearby restaurant. But one can assume the 62% extends to all searches.

The last minute searches for flower shops jumped 227% on Valentine’s Day. There was also a 517% increase in mobile clicks to get directions to a nearby flower shop. It seems some people procrastinated more than others with one spike in those searches happening at 8:30am and another spike at the lunch hour.

The standard V-Day Gift

There was a rise in tablet searches the weekend before Valentine’s Day, which makes sense since the data has always shown that tablet usage always raises in the evening and on weekends.
Just more data backing up the fact that mobile search is where most online marketing efforts will eventually end up.

(images via warrentedarrest & fah rajvithee)