Not all website pages are created equal. And, where conversion rates rule supreme, your newly created landing page better match or outperform the existing pages. But, you’re thinking: what more can I do? I followed all the CRO tips I learned from an article I read last week. I tweaked that landing page until every last word fit just perfectly on every device. I have Google Analytics code in place, and my goals are set up and reporting. What more can I do?
Those were exactly my thoughts when I set up a landing page for a client last month. I was anxious to see the page succeed. That’s when I realized that I need to be proactive rather than reactive to the site visitors’ behaviors. I need to understand their experience on that page. That’s where CrazyEgg comes in.
CrazyEgg is a tool that tracks where page visitors click and how far down a page they scroll. Its interface is straightforward and easy to use. You simply create a “snapshot” of your landing page by entering the URL. Choose the device view you want to track: desktop, tablet, and/or phone. Then, insert the line of code provided to you on that specific landing page. And, just like that, CrazyEgg will start reporting on the traffic patterns on that page.
Here are some of the current report options:
Scrollmap
See how deep your visitors go on your page with this color-coded gradient overlay. The data is aggregated to create a scrollmap that clearly depicts the percentage of visitors that made it to 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of your page’s length.
Now, you can see if people scroll below the fold. You can adjust your content to accommodate their inclinations. If you have a form at the bottom of the page and realize that most people don’t make it past 50%, you might consider moving the form above the fold or adding it to the sidebar.
Heatmap
For me, this is the most helpful of the reports that CrazyEgg provides. In a glance, you get an idea of where people are clicking on the page. Sure, you can get similar information from Google Analytics if you wanted. But, you won’t get the beautifully visualized data all in one place.
The brighter the color, the more frequent the clicks on that element. This report was really helpful when we revamped our own website. We noticed that visitors would land on the Flint Analytics home page and click on the sentence below the main slider: Transforming Your Data Into A Successful Marketing Fire. But, that text was not linked to any other page on the site. This would lead visitors to be frustrated as they expected their action to result in more information about our process of starting marketing fires. So, we hyperlinked the text and sent it to “Our Process” page to make the experience smoother. We would have never gotten this information from Google Analytics.
Clickmap
Although on the outset, this report might seem the same as the heatmap, the clickmap (or confetti) is actually a more detailed look at your visitors’ clicks. It shows a) the exact point of contact between the cursor and the web page and b) the referral website the click is attributed to.
What the clickmap allows you to do is pinpoint areas on your page that are not functioning the way users expect them to. The clickmap may show multiple clicks in the vicinity of a word in the menu bar, but the area around the word is not linked – only the text itself. Realizing that your users are not taking the time to click on the text itself, you can turn the tab into a clickable element, eliminating any unintended friction with the page.
On the left hand side, you’ll notice a list of referral websites. This is the legend for the colors of the clicks. You can segment the clicks of visitors from Facebook from those from PPC. Then, you can examine their patterns of clicking separately. More times than not, they’ll be similar. But, if they do differ, it might be indicative of a need to create a separate landing page to cater to each audience.
There you have it. CrazyEgg puts visitor behavior on a canvas for you to examine and use to improve your page. If you’re taking the time to write content and design the layout of a page, wouldn’t you want to make sure people are taking the actions you want them to? Now, you see why I like this tool so much.
What landing page optimization tools do you use to visualize areas for improvement?
