July 9, 2008
Track What Your Readers Click
Your traffic stats already tell you a lot about your blog. Like where your visitor comes from, which articles are popular, who’s sending you the traffic. But every square inch of the screen is prime real estate. Do you know where is the best place to put your RSS feed or newsletter subscription? Your Ads?
How about where to put links to your products and services? What do people actually click on? What are people’s eyes drawn to?
Each blog has its unique ‘heat map’ - where people focus their eyes or click on the most - since many of us have unique blog designs. So what may work very well for your friend’s blog may not be so hot on yours. It’s easy and free to find out this information using CrazyEgg.
I find heat maps especially useful when moving things around or changing the blog theme. This way, you know the new design is effective as well as pleasing to the eye. Beyond just clicks, the nice thing about CrazyEgg is it also tells you which visitors from where are likely to click on which links.
Recently, I had two pieces of content featured on Google Docs’ official blog. It made me wonder, how many people who come from there actually signed up for my newsletter? CrazyEgg came to my rescue. Here’s a screen shot of what I found.
The colored dots represents clicks. The lighter orange dots are visitors from Google Docs. The colored dots on the subscription box consist mostly of reds, dark and light orange. Which tells me a good number of my recent subscribers came from Google Docs.
You can use this to track all kinds of advertising or promotions you participate in. There are other alternatives to CrazyEgg if you want to try them out.
ClickHeat - this is actually an open source script you install on your own site. Works a lot like CrazyEgg, maybe not as detailed reporting.
Feng-GUI - this uses artificial intelligence to simulate what users will click at based on a picture of your site. So it is an estimate. There is a Firefox plugin to make using this tool easier. Might be useful when you start a new theme but I’d definitely follow up with a real click tracking tool like CrazyEgg.
clickdensity - much like CrazyEgg but looks like it has A-B testing in the premium product that CrazyEgg doesn’t.
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Hey thanks ladies!
I took a look at their site and this really sounds impressive. I called their 888 number and it almost sounds like a home phone with no identifying information. Have you used them for a while and if so what outcomes and level of customer service have you experienced? I’ve been burned enough online to start asking questions before trying to recover my losses afterwards. Thanks for any feedback and for the tip too! In the meantime…
Believe well!
Adelaide Zindler, B.S., Fp
The E-School Coach
www.FearlessParenting.com
Many Thanks Lynette,
These look like really useful tools. I know it’s usually better to make small changes and test the effect of each one, but sometimes we have to move more quickly (or grow old waiting!).
I’m soon to be launching a couple of new blogs and will use these tools to adjust the design.
Thanks again
Louise
Hey thanks for the tip! I will certainly try out this tool on my new blog. I think the benefits of this are invaluable - especially for a relative newbie to blogging like me!!
Cheers!
Annette
Party Plan Consultant UK
@Adelaide: You are talking about Crazy Egg? I’ve used them for at least a year. I’m only using the basic free account on one or two key blogs and haven’t needed to call their support so can’t really comment on the customer service level. Yet overall, I have been happy with the service itself.
@Louise: I tend to make lots of changes quickly as well. This is useful because I can make tons of changes then tweak based on results.
@Annette: You’re welcome.
wow, what great tools! i never knew they even existed and for free!
thanks for a wonderful post lynette!
lexi
freelance writer
I’ve used Crazy Egg for a while as well. I haven’t tried (or even heard of) the others, so thank Lynette for sharing them for sure.
[...] good number of Google Docs visitors did sign up. I blogged the results over at Alice’s blog along with some alternative services you can use to track what really [...]
Sweet! All signed up. This looks like a real neat little toy
You know… I used CrazyEgg a year or two ago, and just didn’t see the point.
I have been at this internet “thingy” long enough now that it just makes sense to use every tool I can to help me - help my readers.
I am going right now over to crazyegg and “reinstall” it on my blogs.
Thanks for reminding me of this great service!