Whether you are focusing your site promotion efforts on search, pay per click or even social media… the most important thing you can do for your business is to better understand WHY and HOW people are using your site.
Many of us probably already have lead generation and mailing list forms on our sites to measure your conversions and ROI. However, if these are the only methods you are using to measure your visitors, site performance and ROI, you are missing out big time.
In this article we are going to highlight the importance of using the following tools on your site to better understand your audience.
- Heatmaps
- Visitor Recordings
- Feedback Polls
While you’ve probably heard of these methods before and may already be implementing one or all of them into your business, stick around for a few minutes so we can show you the true value of each… and how simple they are to setup.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are exactly what they sound like – it’s a map (of your site) that shows where the activity (heat) is!
The amazing thing about heatmaps is that they actually track where people are clicking when they come to your site. Over the course of hundreds of even thousands of people hitting your site, you can really learn a lot about how people are using your site, what they are clicking and why.
To see an example of how click tracking works in the search results, you can refer to one of our previous posts here.
This is important because as seo experts, site designers and marketers, we simply think the sites we create are perfect — that is until real people and traffic come to our site and prove us wrong!
By implementing a heatmap on your site, you can see if people are actually clicking where you want them to click, remove they areas they aren’t clicking on… and simply improving your user engagement and monetization in the process.
Visitor Recordings
Heatmaps are one level of how to better understand your audience, but visitor recordings bring the concept to a whole new level.
Imagine being able to actually see a video of the mouse cursor and how people are using your site. See what they are clicking, how they are scrolling through your site and why they aren’t taking action or being able to find what they are looking for.
All of these concepts are possible through the use of visitor recordings.
Feedback Polls
Heatmaps… visitor recordings… and now feedback polls.
With this trifecta of tools, there is simply no reason why you couldn’t see massive improvements across how your site engages and converts your regular site visitors into new leads and customers.
Heatmaps and visitor recordings do the work behind the scenes, but with a feedback poll you can actually engage with the visitor while they are on your site. At the same time it’s also important to not be too intrusive or to ask too many questions. The best way to offer a quick visitor poll is by offering a short and simple question that pops up on the bottom right hand corner of the browser page.
This simple action can make your visitor feel more welcome, while also providing you a few extra data points to learn about your audience, see what they are looking for and how you can provide them with a better experience.
How to Implement these Tracking Tools into Your Site
We mentioned three powerful and effective tools within this post to help you better track, monitor and engage with your site visitors. To implement any or all of these tools, you can simply perform a Google Search for any of their respective keywords such as “web site heatmap”, “site visitor recordings” or “how to setup a feedback poll on my site”. Each of the results will provide you with different solutions such as paid services and WordPress plugins.
Depending on the concept and size of your site, you will want to compare each of the services out there and find which best fits your business model. Once you find a solution you like, going live with any of these tools is as simple as adding a small tracking pixel code within your site.
In the infographic below, provided by Hotjar.com, you can see visual examples of how each of these click tracking and engagement solutions can improve results on your web site or blog. It’s also important to note that Hotjar also provides each of these three mentioned tools to all of their site users.
