3 Tools To Help You Understand Your Website Better

At QW Consulting, we believe in basing any and all changes to a client's website on actual data – as opposed to gut instinct. Basing decisions on data means tracking data that can actually be used to make decisions.

Thankfully, there are many different analytics programs available to help guide decisions related to website changes. These programs all share various types of data with you about your website. However, given how many of these types of analytics programs are available, it is sometimes difficult to know which ones to use.

Here are three web analytics tools QW Consuling relies on that you may not know about. All three of these tools are designed to help you understand how a page and website is performing.

At QW Consulting, we use these tools to help us understand how a client's website is being used by people visiting the website and, in particular, potential customers. With that data in hand, we can improve the client's website and, more importantly, improve how many conversions (leads, sales, etc.) the client is getting from the website.

Google Website Optimizer
Google Website Optimizer is a free tool that allows you to test variations to a particular page of your website. For example, you might use this tool to determine the best place to put your “Add to Cart” button to increase the number of online sales.

At QW Consulting, we have used this to test new features, test button placement and test image placement. In short, it takes the guess work out of website design because you know, for sure, that a certain change did increase the leads generated or the sales made through your website.

Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a low cost tool that gives you a visual report of where people are clicking and where people are scrolling on your website. This is very useful to know if people looking at your website are seeing what you want them to see.

In the case of one client we were working with, after looking at the client's website in the click report we realized only about 50% of the traffic was seeing the “continue” button in the shopping cart and even fewer people were clicking on that button. This led us to change the placement of the “continue” button which immediately resulted in more clicks (and more sales for the client).

ClickTale.com
Like Crazy Egg, Click Tale shows you where people are clicking and where people are scrolling on the page. Click Tale's reports go a little more in depth and show you this data in slightly different ways.

The advantage to Click Tale is that, unlike Crazy Egg, Click Tale also shows you where your website's audience is focusing (or putting their attention) as well as showing where people on your website are moving their mouse. Mouse movement is strongly correlated to eye movement so with Click Tale you can start gaining insight into how people are really seeing your website and reading your website's content. Click Tale is more expensive, but definitely worth the investment for companies whose websites account for a large percentage of their business.

If you need help installing or setting up any of these reports, or need help improving the pages of your website, contact QW Consulting for a free website review.