Usability Testing: 5 Heat Map Tracking Tools to Watch What Your Visitors Do
Supplement your analytics with some cool visuals from online heatmap tracking tools
When I was at my Google Analytics training in Montreal this past December, there was only one thing our Google Analytics coach thought could really be improved in terms of the website analytics package. This is the site-overlay feature.
The difference between Google Analytics and other heat map software is that most click tracking software is based on coordinates. Google Analytics tracks clicks on a per-URL basis.
What this means is that you might have a “download this report” link within a button on the page, and you might also have it in the first paragraph. Google Analytics groups the results together in its report, rather than seeing them as two different entry points. Besides that, heat maps are just cool. And they’re great to present to non-technical people.
So you might be wondering where you can get one of these handy-dandy heat map tracking tools? Well, thanks to the ever-growing collection of tools on the web, there are several free and paid options.
5 Heat Map Tracking Tools
CrazyEgg – I personally love CrazyEgg. It’s $9 a month at minimum, but it offers several different visual types of click tracking, from heat maps, confetti view (offering search terms, top 15 referrers, operating system, browser, etc.), overlay and lists.
They allow you to create reports, share your data, block clicks from your own computer, and be alerted via email or RSS. I’d say $9 a month is a small price to pay for the service, and all you would need to do is use this service and decrease your bounce rates anywhere in your funnel by 1-5% to make the money back.
ClickDensity – Unlike CrazyEgg, ClickDensity does offer a free trial. They’re being very transparent on their site, by offering users a demo of their product that is based on their own site. This product is meant to “complement your analytics package”. Unlike CrazyEgg, ClickDensity does take some modification to your pages for it to report correctly, but they do offer A/B split testing. My only worry is that they haven’t updated their blog since September.
ClickHeat – If you really want to dive into click tracking, you might consider installing this free piece of heat map software on your own server.
ClickMap Wordpress Plugin – If you’re running on Wordpress, this new plugin was released last month. This basic tool is mostly just the heat map, letting you know over time, where users click most on your site.
ClickTale – If you want to get really fancy, you can subscribe to ClickTale and get actual movies of your visitors’ browsing sessions. The benefit to this is that you can see where your visitors scrolled, whether they hesitated, hovered, etc. Most helpful though, you can see which fields in your forms users tend to abandon. Add an audio recorder, and this could be a great tool for in-house usability tests. A limited free account is available, but the next package up is $99 a month.
Have you tried any of these tools? Tried other ones? Share your experiences in the comments.
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February 10th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Just as a note, Google Analytics has Click Map Tracking on the newest version of their Analytics script (ga.js). It does not track clicks on non-links, but the majority of people who would be using click map tracking do not care as much about the non-link clicks as they care about the link clicks. It is 100% free, and should be included as an alternative to the paid options you have mentioned above as it serves a much broader audience with bigger advantages.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Hi Michael,
As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, these are simply complimentary additions to what Google Analytics offers. Definitely not a replacement
- Amanda
February 11th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
You should take a look at http://mixpanel.com for more indepth analytics.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:10 am
[...] Amanda MacArthur added an interesting post today on Mequoda Daily » Blog Archive » 5 Heat Map Tracking Tools to Watch …Here’s a small readingLearn the seven strategies that all successful special-interest online publishers have in common by downloading our FREE Seven Online Publishing Secrets white paper. 5 Heat Map Tracking Tools … They allow you to create reports, share your data, block clicks from your own computer, and be alerted via email or RSS. I’d say $9 a month is a small price to pay for the service, and all you would need to do is use this service and decrease your bounce rates anywhere in your … [...]
February 12th, 2009 at 3:33 am
[...] Amanda MacArthur placed an interesting blog post on Mequoda Daily » Blog Archive » 5 Heat Map Tracking Tools to Watch …Here’s a brief overviewLearn the seven strategies that all successful special-interest online publishers have in common by downloading our FREE Seven Online Publishing Secrets white paper. 5 Heat Map Tracking Tools … They allow you to create reports, share your data, block clicks from your own computer, and be alerted via email or RSS. I’d say $9 a month is a small price to pay for the service, and all you would need to do is use this service and decrease your bounce rates anywhere in your … [...]
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
I have a few sites I go to, but the quality is always the best here!