We are always trying to improve our sites. A big key to success online is understanding what your customers want, how they are using your site, and where they are clicking. Anytime we make a big change to WhyDoWork, I invite my family members to give the new page a spin; I watch where the click, I hear any frustrations, and I see how they use the site. Wouldn’t it be great to do this automatically?
A service offered by Clicktale does just that. You can watch recorded sessions of your visitors that show mouse movement, left and right clicks, and navigation around your site. With pricing plans ranging from free to ~ $790/mo., there’s plans for those experimenting (like me) all the way up to the power web analyst. I wish they had something in between the free offering and the next level (which is $99/mo.) but no dice. With the free plan, you’ll get 100 recorded page views a week. Put the JavaScript tracking code on your homepage and you’ll start recording sessions in only a few minutes.
How I Used it To Increase Page Views
For sites like ours that run advertising, typically an increase in page views = an increase in earnings. Anything we do that increases page views on the site pays huge dividends in return. I’ve been using it for a weeks, and watching every video it captures. One issue I noticed in a particularly ‘hot’ zone of our page was that users were frantically clicking, but not being directed to a new page. The issue was with our article rotator, where a click just brings you to the description of that article:
More than a few users were clicking the navigation section (that goes to the next article) thinking they would visit the article. Because the whole text area was click-able (but we didn’t show that) they were confused about where to click and went on to something else on the page. By making a small change and adding a more… link, I was able to correct this issue, and current recordings show users clicking through to the articles without issue:
Voila! An extra page view for every visitor that was confused about where to click.
That’s just one example of how I’ve used it to improve the site. Give it a try and share your tips with us! 
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Loading ...
This is a really cool tool to check and track user behaviour on your web pages. What a great service! Now you can make changes and actually see how it affects user behaviour. You can expect to see more like this in future.
It is a really cool tool and I’ve used it with great success in the past as well. I have to agree with you though that the $99 pricing is a bit high.
Wow, that service is revolutionary for sure! I might have to give the Free Version a try on my personal blog.
Till then,
Jean
what a great idea. I can see how this could be so useful when optimizing your click through on site. Thanks for the info.
Yes! What a great service! Now anyone can make changes and actually see how it affects user behaviour. You can expect to see more like this in future.
Yes this sounds like a very helpful service. I’m sure most sites could learn a thing or two by watching how their visitors interact with their website. Too many designers assume that their website visitors will use the navigation exactly how they intended.
This seems like a good idea, but do people actually look where their mouse is pointed? Seems like experimental technology for me.
@Car insurance rates guy, I would say for the most part yes, because the mouse is where you want to go.I know there are alot of people that use the mouse as a marker of where they are reading.
Till then,
Jean
I installed this code on my website. I was very impressed with what I could learn. From this I discovered that people with popup blockers were not redirecting to my affiliates. Also I discovered where on the page someone might be looking for more information. Thanks for telling us about this website.
I caught up with ClickTale when it was beta, and it has certainly made a significant impact in the world of analytics, conversions and landing pages optimizations.
One thing that bothers me is the potential privacy issues. The script can log keystrokes, and the tracking information could be retained.
Being able to track conversion paths to a goal is very important, and gaining partial data over time allows you to find out how users clicked around on your site. Conversion paths in the real world are no longer linear and thus having a script like Clicktale will open your eyes to things that you may have missed.
Thanks for this insightful post, it’s landing page optimization at it’s best!
This is the first I have heard of this script. Thank you for sharing this information. I am excited to trying it on some of my sites as well as a client of mine. The more we know how the visitors use our sites the better we can optimize them and make the sites better for the visitors.
Cheers
Is technology great or what lol? Any advantage you can get in your online marketing campaign to increase your sales. Is well worth it to me!! I may give this a shot and see what it does for my website! Great blog… Thanks!
This looks really interesting, a lot like the Google ‘heatmap’ which you can find online.
Used tires, can you point me to a study or anything that states that people use their cursor as a market when they read? I’d like to get some kind of evidence in before I decide to use the product. I can’t seem to find anything definitive on it.
Fantastic website, must come back here , very interesting content, bookmarked your blog
regards fuserarvh
Awesome live updates
Statpress also offers you a way to see the latest pages accessed by visitors.
Clicktale looks like a good tool. I will set it up on my site and try it out. It is very important to understand your visitors and their mindset.
Thanks for introducing it to us.
I agree. It’s all a learning curve, particularly when your busy running your own business. It is important to stay on top of the wave.
This is awesome, one should always track the user behavior to learn more about the site. Do you know “click here” for a link gives the maximum click through for any link? Crazy Egg by Neil Patel is another tool try.