It took us two years, but here it is: the sequel to Conversion Rate Squirrel’s Google Website Optimizer report. The original report went “viral” around the web, and prompted Google to request us to partner with them.
As you know, we only publish something if we think it’ll be really valuable to you.
We’re excited about today’s report: it gives you the tools that tell you exactly why many of your visitors aren’t ordering. No more “guesswork”.
So buckle up, click this link, and enjoy…
Tools that reveal why people abandon your website
…oh, and please don’t forget to come back here and leave your comments.
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Terrific report.
Squirrels, fantastic work.
How you manage to combine complex information in such a simple, informative, way is impressive. There were even a few tips that my clients are not using yet! Thank you.
So much good stuff I don’t know where to even begin!
Your articles are always so interesting and informative and the way you present it makes it easy to understand and comical.
Thanks for this great article. I am trying ClickTale and that’s exaclty what I was looking for. Until now, I was using CrazyEgg but it misses the mouse gesture feature. I will definitely be returning to visit your site.
Great, great post. Incredibly useful resources. One free tool I’d add: Woopra. It’s a fantastic analytics service that lets you track site visitors and their behaviors in real time, tag individual visitors and monitor their actions, and offers more advanced versions of all the features available in Google Analytics — traffic sources (divided by regular websites, search engines and social media sites), time on site, daily visits, etc. Available as a desktop app (which is quite awesome) and a WordPress plugin.
Thanks for the kind words everyone…we’re delighted you enjoyed it!
Also… thanks to Brainpicker…Woopra looks very interesting (is it like Mint? we use that too).
Great post, I’m going to link it on my blog.
It is a really good article, it shows several important points one must realize when building a new site.
On the 14 tools post, I was wondering on step #14 how could i use that with wordpress? i dont really know how to set up 2 different pages using wordpress since its all dynamic etc. curious if there was a way to do that.
Thanks again for the great feedback everyone…it’s so nice to hear you all find it valuable.
David: Check out this excellent blog post. And please let us know how you get on! Also, our good friend Ophir Prusak has just recommended you give this plug-in a try.
I think it’s extremely irresponsible of you to recommend a spyware application like ClickTale. You even allow how it’s ‘creepy’ and put an (!) in the title.
Do you honestly think it’s morally right to propagate this kind of software, which seems designed to outright violate your visitors’ privacy!
For $*%& sake, it includes a keylogger!
For those reading this who would like to block website “tools” like this from snooping on your screen, download and install Snort (www.snort.org).
For those of you reading this, please refrain from installing these kinds of applications on your websites!
Ariel, you’ve raised an interesting point — and this is part of a much larger debate about internet privacy.
Many of the world’s most customer-centric companies hold a staggering amount of information about customer behavior.
Norms change too; we’re now used to the fact that bricks and mortar stores have CCTV security cameras.
Thanks for posting the link to snort.org for anyone that wants to block these applications.
This was a great article. I didn’t know some of these tools existed. This is a HUGE help for anyone looking to improve their site. Thanks for the post.
Hi, this is a terrific report.
I would like your opinion on Clickdensity and Clickheat, and whether you still think CrazyEgg beats them.
I have implemented 4Q and Kampyle on my website, which I think are terrific products, but I am undecided on the clicks/heats services.
I like CrazyEgg because it shows referrers and search words to links. I like Clickdensity because it offers A/B test, it is cheaper and one can just install it everywhere and forget about it. I like Clickheat because its free! But, I shall listen to your expert opinion… Thanks!
Very useful insights into the various existing tools to monitor visitors on one’s site; I would have split it into sections though: web analytics tools, search analytics tools, online reputation tools (serph), online surveys, etc…. but you have my bookmark. Thanks.
Some useful information, thanks. I am checking out Kampyle now. There is also an online usability testing service called usertesting.com. It isn’t free, but it is quite affordable. For details read my blog post here.
Hi,
Thanks for the terrific report…
I have read some bad reviews about “Tell A Friend King”, can you recommend an alternative product? I am also undecided between Clickdensity and CrazyEgg… Would appreciate a comparison from the experts…
Thanks again!
Daniel
Re: Tell A Friend King. Without knowing the details of the bad reviews it’s hard to know what to suggest (they do have a free trial if you want to test them out for yourself). Alternatively, we are looking into this tool with great interest.
Re: CrazyEgg vs Clickdensity vs Clickheat. We’ve not done a comparison, and though we’ve used Clickdensity too, it wasn’t obvious to us how it’s better than CrazyEgg.
We decided to stick with CrazyEgg because of their excellent responses to our questions and feature requests. We’ve not used Clickheat, so can’t really comment. If anyone out there would like to do a review and comparison of these clickmapping tools, and have it published on our blog, then please get in touch.
Fantastic, important and very well done. Thank you.
Great article. Found your blog via Joast. Am very impressed with your offering and will definitely be back for more.
Great post… I was only aware of analytics. This post helped me know I’ve got options.
A quick and dirty option for usability testing that you might have mentioned is UserTesting.com. For under $100 you can get five screencasts of users trying to do things on your website. You hear the users speaking their thoughts and you see their mouse movements and clicks.
Great tools for beating the competition and staying one or twelve steps ahead of everyone. Thanks
Excellent Information!
CrazyEgg is no longer free =(
Thanks for your comment R. Moose. You’re correct…it seems CrazyEgg is no longer free (though it’s still well worth $9/month in our opinion).
We’ve not tested it yet, but some of the comments above recommend ClickHeat – which does pretty much the same job.
Wow! This is the best post about these kind of tools! I’ve implemented many of them in our systems!
Great article… I only knew about analytics. This post helped me discover many more options. Very useful information.
I use AWStats which comes with cpanel. I Don’t know if it’s better then Google analytics or not. What do you think?
Hi Sumit, thanks for your comment.
AWStats is a great start, but you really should give Google Analytics a try…it’s free, easy(ish) to set-up – and has more options for segmentation, which will provide you with great insights.
If you want to learn more about web analytics, we highly recommend Avinash’s blog (and book).
You guys are just totally absolutely freakin awesome.
I’m surprised you didn’t add a service like AddThis or similar services. Is there any reason why you recommend Tell-A-Friend-King more than a service like AddThis, AddToAny, etc?
Hi Pranav…thanks for your question.
The reason we like using refer-a-friend services (like Tell-A-Friend King) is because by reading through your refer-a-friend emails (Privacy Policy permitting), you’ll see how your customers sell your service to their friends. This is really valuable for understanding why people like your website.
Fabulous article…can’t wait to test some if not all of the ideas.
Guys, you should add this one to your list as well Loop11.com. It lets you do online, un moderated user testing.
Thanks for your comment Michael…I’ve registered for their beta program, and sent an email over too. As soon as we’ve given it a try, we’ll write about it.
All I can say is “Wow”!
You guys have made my life so much easier with all of the incredibly valuable content you provide. I’ve RSSed you to my #1 spot within my reader and clipped multiple articles within Evernote for future reference.
Now, it’s time to get my feet wet with the information you provided.
Thank you!
Thanks for your kind words Patrick…we’re delighted you find our resources valuable. Don’t forget to come back and let us know how things go!
I was wondering: how come your recommend the Google internal search/customized search as a free tool? As far as I know, they charge businesses. Did I miss something?
Hi Katarina, thanks for your comment. You’re correct Google Site Search isn’t free, but in the description we also mention and link to Google’s Free Custom Search Engine. Sorry for the confusion.
Great List, but you forgot Loop11. This is a brilliant tool for online user testing.
Hi James, thanks for your comment. We’ve also heard good things about Loop11 and signed-up to their beta program a while ago. Unfortunately, we’ve not had much time to play around with it, and as a result are still a little unsure about it’s advantages over the tools above. If you have time we’d love to hear your views on this, via the blog comments here, or by email.
We have launched a new site that offers a lightweight web traffic analyser for those who want to see their traffic in real-time. You can check it out at Site-Pulse.com!
Thanks for stopping by letting us know about your service Ryan (are we correct in assuming it’s a bit like Mint?). Could you give us (and our readers) a very brief overview of the main benefits of your tool, and it’s advantages over those in our report?
Those are some really great tips! I especially like the on site survey tool of 4Q. May I also suggest a survey tool that allows more than 100 answers and over 10 questions – still free: SurveyPirate.com. Earning money on selling access to respondents in specific target groups we never charge for usage of the tool.
Just having a look at Chalkmark which combines heatmaps with task based user-testing. Looks quite promising…
respect. you guys truly EARN that newsletter subscription, most companies ask for the opt in and bombard you with pitches and random B.S. but with the quality of content you guys put out I can only wish you’d email me more often!
Really great article, thanks a lot.
However, you’re missing one important tool: mouseflow.com. Same category as ClickTale, but a lot cheaper.
Amazing report. We at dream11.com will definitely be implementing some of this stuff. Thanks!
Amazing list! A tool to make HTML prototypes to test different purposes using A/B tests: Justinmind Prototyper.
Very useful tools! I have bookmarked it in my blog!
Thanks a lot!
Wow it is simply amazing! Putting these all together is the thing. Actually I would like to thank you guys for sharing such wonderful tips and very helpful indeed.
We have used Click Tale with limited results, nothing beats a real person to get feedback on usability and giving us those doh! moments.Crazyegg has been great for us showing places that we didn’t think end users would click and have turned that into a link. Google site search has uncovered some gems too
The other challenge is the amount of javascript we want to have loading on a page, with the announcement of page load times possibly effecting search engine rankings, we are becoming very conscious of this. I see you are using Kample, just curious on the amount of feedback you are getting, and how useful it has been?
UserTesting.com is pretty sweet – I’ve used it a few times and you get a little more value for your money than ClickTale (IMHO).
D
Fabulous list! I’m a resource queen and you had a number of tools I hadn’t heard of before!
By the way, I stumbled across your site while searching for less expensive alternatives to Clicktale. Would love to know if you’ve seen any that are worthwhile!
Wow, 2 years later and people are still coming to this page and finding these resources useful. I guess that’s what timeless content means, congrats!
As for me, I’ve tested a fair share of these tools, but I’ve just added a few more on my “to-test” list
This website is fantastic!!! I learned so much about my own website and definitely have plenty of things to do to improve my own site.
Thanks for all the information.
I just started my new website and will start using all these greats tools, which for sure will improve my profit
Looking forward to more tips in your newsletter.
I am very comfortable with getting pages positioned in the top 10, but being at the top does not guarantee sales. Conversion does. This site is very, very helpful. These are great resources you offer on this site and the good thing is this information will be relevant no matter how many times Google changes its algorithm.
I look forward to telling you about my results after implementing your suggestions.
this is gem…what a way to explore…never knew about this things till date! Thank you so much for sharing