Web Podcast - Episode 21: Track your users experience

Read the transcription of this podcast:

Hey guys episode 21 today and I’m talking about heat mapping and tracking your webpages with your customers obviously using them.

So what I’m talking about is, putting a bit of code on your website from a site like Hotjar for example. Then tracking what the users are doing throughout the site to analyse and see what we’re doing wrong and what we’re doing right as well.

There’s three key parts that Hotjar and other heat mapping software offers. The main parts I like to use are, heat maps, funnels and recordings. There’s probably different ways of naming them, but I’ll go through each of them so you understand what each of them is.

Heat maps: When someone lands on a landing page or your home page, a heat map is basically what it says it is. The more someone clicks on a link or the more customers click a specific link, the more red will emphasise that part of the page. When you look at the heat map you’ll see all of your links throughout the web page and you’ll see a gradient of green to red as toi how much that button is clicked. You’ll probably find, that if you have a landing page with one button, right in the middle, big and centre. That will probably be burning hot. A lot of people will be clicking on it. Whereas if you have a lot of links on your page, along the top, along the bottom, in the middle. You’ll probably find there's a few links that get a reasonable amount of clicks and the rest of them get less clicks.

What's the purpose of it? What you want to do with a heat map is analyse and see where people are clicking and then go okay, is this where I want them to click? This is my offer, the next page ideally I want them to click on is get a quote, so let’s put this page in and see what people are clicking on. If they’re not clicking on get a quote and they are clicking on a few testimonials, then you know that most people are wanting to read more about you before they’re going to get a quote from you. Then you can adjust your page to better suit that. Maybe you’ll get rid of the get a quote button and you’ll just have a view our testimonials, then on the testimonials page you’ll put a big button, front and centre, after the first couple of testimonials that says “ready to get a quote? Click here”.
So you can analyse with heat maps, where people are clicking and make sure they click on the right place. You might have a button that you add to your website and you think people are going to use it, but your heat mapping shows there’s nothing on it at all. You can then say “okay, it’s not standing out enough” or the wordings not enticing enough to get them to click on it.
So heat mappings a good way to see where people are clicking.

Number two is funnels, funnels are quite, I haven’t used them as much as I should. They're really good for a shopping site, or a site where you have a process. So if you have a landing page, then an offer, then a sign up, and bill payment, then an upsell.
Funnels are good for that, you can go into your checkout process and document each step in the system and what Hotjar and other tracking systems do, is they say “Okay, you had 50 people come onto this page, 40 of them went onto the next page and 10 of them dropped off”. You can then see what page in your funnel or sales process is the biggest killer of new orders.

You may also see the payment page is a killer of orders. Perhaps they’re getting there and they feel the sites unsafe so they don’t put their credit card on there and they leave the site. You’ll pick that up in your funnel process.
There could be a glitch in the website and you may find that 95% of people are leaving where you put your shipping details in, which you think that’s bizarre because it’s just shipping details, people shouldn’t leave because of that.
So, it’s good to do a funnel and analyse what people are doing in the process.
Funnels are also good for if you have a landing page and you’re selling something through them. Because you can see what part of the process people are getting up to. So you will have the landing page, you’ll have the offer, then the order page which is going to be peoples details and credit card number. Then once they’ve placed the order you should have an upsell page which they can one click upgrade the order.
So you can just see and analyse is my upsell working, is my initial landing page working or are people just leaving before even clicking the order button.

The third feature is recordings, it’s just like a screen recording. It records the users screen as they’re on the website. As the website owner you can track and see what people are interacting with on the site. Little things like how long does it take them to find a button, or how quickly are they finding what they need. I sit there and analyse people and it’s amazing to see how differently people use websites to how I use them.
I’m quick and I go through and I'm where I want to go in a few seconds. Some people take time, and it’s good to see their mouse because generally, what I find, is that where their mouse is where their eyes are. You can tell it looks like they’re reading this part and they scroll down there, and they hover over a button, they left it, they scrolled right to the bottom. It’s good to analyse and see where people are going.
One of the better parts about it is you can see what sort of issues they’re having as well. Mainly in terms of, can they find things they need to find.

Or if they're looking through product pages, can they find the products they need to find?

Or when they’re through the check out, how long is it taking them to fill out their details? Is it easy enough to navigate.

Recordings are a cool way to really see, I believe it’s the best out of all of them. The best one to see what people are doing when they’re using your site.

The funnel tracking and the heat mapping is a little more analytical, but the recordings is a little more visual. You can sit there, watch them, and analyse and write notes down.

If you use a combination of the three of them, I think it’s very good. It’s definitely going to help the success of your website because you’re really focusing on the key areas and optimising it. Once you’ve optimised your sales process or just the signup process, or whatever it might be. The website itself, even if it’s just a static website, the more you analyse it and improve it, the more enquiries, the more sales, the more business you’re going to get from it.
People don’t want to use a crappy site, and the more you make it suit the masses the more you’re going to get from it.

That’s Hotjar guys, check that out. You can also use Google and find other software as well, but generally all of them have a cost associated with them but you can use them for free, give them a go.

Thats customer tracking, it’s a little bit more different, probably more leftfield. You’ve probably heard of it already. But, if you haven’t, try it out because it’s real fun. Better optimise your site from there.

Cool, so that’s Matt from RAZOR Web Design Wire Podcast, join me here next time.

Cheers.