Do you know who your website visitors are? Is your website attracting the right people? Are these people generating business for you? If you own a local small business, the answer to these questions is probably worth knowing.
Questions local business owners should be asking about their website visitors:
- Who are my website visitors? Are they young or old; rich or poor; male or female? Are they buyers or information seekers?
- How long do they spend on my website? Do they stay on the page they entered on or peruse the site? Do they enter on the home page or somewhere else?
- Do they get the answers they were looking for? Or find the product. Are they there for information, to compare and contrast products or services, or to buy something?
- Why/when do they leave? What page did they leave on? The Contact page? A product page?
- What are they thinking?
If you can’t answer these questions you may be missing out on vital data which could save your business money, help to increase sales and drastically improve your website results. Getting useful traffic information is easier than you think. You could start answering these questions and more almost right away.
Here are six of the best tools to help you get you the who, why, when and how of your website :
Statcounter
Statcounter is a popular alternative to Google AdSense. It is very accessible, easy to use and provides an extensive amount of valuable data without over complication. Statcounter’s guided installation is second to none and covers dozens of popular platforms such as: Blogger, Shopify, Drupal, WordPress and more. In fact, it takes mere seconds to get set up. Once installed this tool allows you to understand what country/state or city your users visited from, what path they took around your site, when and on what page they left your site. It may look a little outdated, but anyone of any capability can find their way around the site. This makes Statcounter a great choice for newbees and the tech-challenged business owner.
Crazy Egg
Dynamic heatmaps allow you to see where users clicked on your website, even if it wasn’t a link. This is like looking over your visitors’ shoulder as they navigate around your site. You can see what pages your visitors gravitate to and engage with and those they do not. You have the information needed to improve overall website performance. Do you wonder how much of your website visitors view? Crazy Egg shows you how far visitors scroll down each page, identifying areas that get the least attention so you can give priority to the best converting elements of your site. Crazy Egg is a paid service with several different price points. They do offer a 30 day free look. That’s more than enough time to determine if this platform is right for you.
Userslytic
Crowdsourced feedback from the people that matter. Userlytics goes far beyond standard analytics tools by finding out exactly what your audience thinks. Listen to their feedback in their own words as you watch them browse your website. From just $49 you will get your own in depth video review from your target demographic, because there’s no point testing people that won’t buy your product. Choose to query one, two, five or 100 respondents, it’s up to you. Set up custom scenarios, tasks and questions to get the feedback you need to improve your website. Refer back to any recordings as many times as you like.
Google Analytics
The most widely used analytics tool. Google Analytics has been the standard for online user analytics for some time now. It is often the first port of call for businesses trying to understand their site visitors. Some business owners find Analytics hard to comprehend. For them, Statcounter is less advanced and much easier to interpret. As it is, Google Analytics has everything you could ever want to know and then some:
- eCommerce Conversions
- Custom goals (Did a user complete a certain action)
- Age, Gender, Interests
How much you take from Google Analytics is up to you. The average user takes advantage of only a small fraction of Analytics capabilities. With some effort, Analytics can provide a treasure-trove of data.
Clicky
Clicky provides powerful, real time user tracking. It’s is one of the most robust web analytics tools that are almost as powerful as Google Analytics. It has a few extra goodies to boot. One of the main appeals Clicky has over Analytics is that each visitor can be analyzed individually, showing each action they take on the site. Clicky features include:
- Heat maps
- Split Testing
- A/B Testing
- Keyword tracking
- Real time data
- Twitter tracking
Use as much of Clicky as you like. There is no need to confuse yourself with bundles of confusing data.
ClickTale
With Clicktale you can watch video sessions of users browsing your website. Like Crazy Egg, ClickTale creates data rich heatmaps to interpret your users browsing habits. However, ClickTale goes one step further than the former by recording whole user sessions to understand their interactions across your entire website from start to finish. Find out what paths users take around your website and what the most profitable paths are to use. Get information on what paths get in the way and which ones bring each visitor closer to a sale. If you operate an ecommerce store, ClickTale can provide actionable data that really increases your bottom line. Knowing you visitors is an important part of your business.
Helping visitors find your website and engage with it is our business. Find out how we can help you attract new business with a new website tailored to your needs. We design, build and host websites for local small businesses.
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