5 Awesome Website Optimization Tools

Oddly enough, when I’ve talked to website owners about increasing traffic to their websites, optimization of landing pages rarely is a topic of great concern. For the standard website owner, getting more traffic to the site is usually the very first thing they think about and want. They figure more traffic equals more sales which means eventually swimming around in a pool full of money like Scrooge McDuck.

While I agree that more traffic is generally a good thing, how can you be sure people are doing what you want them to do when they get to your site? Of course, Google Analytics gives you a wide variety of in-depth data to get lost in, but it really only paints a top level picture of your user behavior.

Lucky for us, there are a multitude of tools out there that allow you to test out multiple ideas on multiple landing pages to analyze the impact these changes have on conversion data. For all you know, changing that blue “Order Now!” button to a green button might increase your conversion rate by 10,000% (results are not typical and may vary by individual.)

Here are 5 awesome tools to get you started on doing some amazing testing for your website.

HOTJAR

One of our favorite tools at Marcel Digital (maybe because we're a Founding Member of the software) is Hotjar. Hotjar takes the numerical data that analytics platforms like Google Analytics provides, and gives you a full scope visual presentation of exactly how users are engagement your website. For instance, with Hotjar you can take advantage of click mapping...

You can take advantage of scroll heatmapping...

Want to see it all in action? Hotjar has user videos as well...

You can also see how much of a form users filled out before deciding not to submit...

But say you want to directly engage your users as they are on your website. You can also do user surveys!

Pretty cool, huh? All of these reports are very clean and easy to read, giving you a direct look at how exactly users are interacting with your content and conversion points. Using these tools are not only useful in informing an ongoing Conversion Rate Optimization campaign, but are also great in helping inform a potential website redesign!

Hotjar offers numerous plans, ranging from personal to agency level accounts, depending on how many pageviews you wish to analyze. Learn more about Hotjar plans here.

GOOGLE OPTIMIZE

Google offers a testing platform through Google Analytics Solutions called Google Optimize, allowing website owners to test different variations of their website to deliver personalized experiences for customer segments.

With Optimize, setup is quick and easy! Simply implement Optimize across your website and you'll be able to start running tests in a snap! Optimize allows set up two different landing pages on your website and tell Google Analytics which pages to look at to compare metrics. With this tool, you have to have access to your website and must create the variations of landing pages on your own. It requires knowledge of creating landing pages (whether hard-coded or through the use of a CMS) and requires the implementation of an experiment code on your landing page.

From there, just set the targeting so that the right experience is presented to the right customers at the right time!

Integration with Google Analytics means you'll start getting insights and data right away for, best of all, free.

CLICKTALE

This tool started off as a great way to see how users interact with specific pages on your site through the use of heatmapping. Clicktale uses a snippet of code on your website landing pages to show:

• How visitors move their mouse on your website
• Where visitors click most often
• How far down the page they generally scroll
• Visitor attention to specific parts of your pages

Much like Hotjar, the nice thing about Clicktale is how visual the comparisons are. You can get a very quick glimpse in to areas on your landing pages that are completely lacking attention. You can even compare two pages’ heatmaps to see how they compare to one another

Use this tool in conjunction with an A/B or multivariate tester to see visually how or why your customers may have converted better on one page over another.

Additionally, Clicktale also allows you to creepily view specific user recordings so you can watch exactly how users used your website. This can be a great way to identify points of confusion or to kill hours of your time watching random strangers browse your site. Either way.

They do have a free plan, but larger sites will have to upgrade to one of their premium packages to view all data. They go by pageviews, so the more pageviews you have the more you’ll have to pay. It’s just business.

CRAZY EGG

Crazy Egg is the “original heatmapping technology.” They are a competitor of Clicktale and also provide heatmapping analysis of your web pages. It can be a great way to pinpoint hotspots on your website and see where your visitors are getting lost (similar to Clicktale as well.)

This tool is actually more affordable than Clicktale due to its lack of extensive features, but if you are strictly looking for heatmapping to compliment your testing, this is the tool for you.

VISUAL WEBSITE OPTIMIZER

Visual Website Optimizer is a very powerful A/B testing (and more!) tool that offers a large suite of services for integration in to your testing.

VWO offers almost everything you need under one application:

• A/B testing
• Multivariate testing
• Split URL testing
• Heatmapping
• Usability testing
• Easy to use landing page editor
• Generous reporting

While you could probably get most of this information by using a less expensive heatmapping tool in conjunction with a free service like Google Content Experiments, their focus on education and teaching customers about testing is a great way to get in-depth soup to nuts website testing going immediately.

There are numerous tools out there that can help you optimize the usability and conversion rate of your website. It's important, however, to research all of the tools (and more) above to see what they offer and what your team needs. Pricing for these tools can be expensive and sometimes they require a bit more technical and analytic know how than meets the eye. If you ever have questions or aren't sure where to start, feel free to contact us - we'd be happy to walk you through it!