Crazy Egg – A Visual Map Of Your Website Visitors
By Vanessa Salvia, 7/25/07
Crazy Egg
is a nifty new product that lets you set up website pages to test, then
maps every time and where a customer clicks on the pages you are
monitoring. Crazy Egg requires that one line of JavaScript be added to
the code of each test page, which MightyMerchant can take care of for
you.
This new tool gives you a unique view of your customer clicks, showing
you exactly where they click. Your free account will track up to 5,000
clicks per month on up to four pages. The Basic account allows for up
to 10,000 clicks and 10 pages for $9 a month. Crazy Egg displays these
clicks in three ways: (screenshots from CrazyEgg.com)
Heatmap Mode displays the clicks using a heatmap display. The
brightest areas show where more visitors clicked. This visualization
makes understanding what visitors are doing feel a bit more intuitive
than looking at a bunch of pie charts and graphs.
Overlay Mode shows a colored circle with a plus-sign that appears next to each clickable item on your page. The color of the button indicates the relative number of clicks: red is high, green is medium, blue is low. Clicking on the plus sign expands it so you can view the number of clicks and the percentage this represents of the total clicks on the page. When you click "more," you can drill down to see the actual source of traffic to your page that clicked on a particular link.
List Mode shows in table form the number of clicks for each clickable item on your page in descending order. This can be exported to a spreadsheet program in CSV format for further analysis.
Their Confetti view lets you interact with a Flash version of your clicks. Confetti shows each visitor’s click as a colored dot. You can see the results as a bar chart or click on individual dots to find out more information about a particular user. For instance, Confetti can show you how users from different referrals behave. Dots can be colored and filtered based on Top 15 Referrers, Search Terms, Operating System, Browser, and other factors.
Accurate Page Testing
With Crazy Egg, you can test different page layouts to see which performs better. You could test advertisement or coupon placement to see which one generates more clicks. Or switch out images to see which ones generate more interest.Sign up is free, and there is no charge to test four pages and 5,000 clicks per month. With the paid packages you also get some advanced features that might be worth it, including the ability to share results with clients or colleagues. One key feature is that paid subscribers are able to view areas where visitors are clicking that were never intended to be clickable links. This might help you identify what visitors expect to happen, so your pages can be modified, and it’s one important bit of info you can’t get with Google Analytics.
Google Analytics also has a site overlay feature, but the information you gain from this feature can sometimes be misleading. For instance, Google Analytics will show two clicks on a link when someone double clicks to open a link instead of using a single click—one visitor counted as two. CrazyEgg tracks clicks on a per-coordinate basis while Google Analytics tracks them on a per-URL basis. So Google Analytics treats a “download” button and the textual “download a free trial” link as the same place, meaning that their stats are glommed together when displayed. Since Crazy Egg displays them as two separate entities, you can instantly see if the “download” button is an awesome success while the text link is a flop.
Limitations
There are some limitations. For example, you can see clicks in form fields and submit buttons, but not how many people actually submitted the form. Nor does it track Flash or Ajax applications, at least as of yet.Crazy Egg can’t and shouldn’t take the place of a more in-depth analytical package like Google Analytics, but it does offer an additional, and unique, view of your website visitors.
About MightyMerchant
MightyMerchant specializes in developing e-commerce and database
driven, content-rich websites for small business customers across the
US. The company as listed as one of Practical eCommerce Magazine’s “Top
100 Notable Shopping Carts” in September/October 2007. Hundreds of site
owners use MightyMerchant to manage their online stores. For more
information visit www.mightymerchant.com, and for ecommerce knowledge and tools visit the MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog.
