Analytics Expert Blog

If you have a website, understanding your users is a primary concern to optimize the usability of your online service.

Can you explain precisely the dynamic behavior of your visitors on any of your website pages? Every user has a story and ClickTale™ tells you that story.

ClickTale is now making its product available to everyone by launching the new free Priceless™ Plan, and to celebrate, we are giving away three amazing prizes! The ClickTale Priceless Plan offers everyone the possibility to maximize their website’s potential, obtain insights about how their visitors interact with their webpages, and increase conversion rates – all for free!

Anyone who signs up for the Priceless plan will benefit, free of charge, from:

• 5,000 recorded pageviews per month
• Visitors’ recorded sessions
• Four types of heatmapson all pages – Mouse Move, Mouse Click, Attention & Scroll Reach
• Full Conversion Funnels
• Form analytics’ key statistics to help optimize online forms

About the ClickTale Competition

All you have to do is first sign up for the ClickTale Priceless Plan, use it, share with us the lessons you learn, the insights you obtain and how you plan to implement any changes, and then send us screenshots of your findings.

1.       First prize – all paid-for expense trip to one of ClickTale’s upcoming user summits for one person + a write-up in ClickTale’s social-media pages + 3 hours of free consultation service with one of ClickTale’s Customer Experience Experts + one year free subscription to ClickTale  Core’s Premium plan.

2.       Second prize – 3-month subscription to ClickTale Core’s Premium plan + 2 hours free consultation with one of ClickTale’s Customer Experience Experts + a write-up in ClickTale’s social-media pages.

3.       Third prize – 3-month free subscription to ClickTale Core Premium plan + a write-up in ClickTale’s social-media pages.

Deadline for submission of findings using ClickTale: Friday, December 20, 2013.

Are you ready to optimize your website? Which of the prizes would you like to win most? Please share your thoughts in the comments section or on Twitter or Facebook, where we are always listening.

Want to learn more about how the ClickTale solution can help you optimize your website and increase conversion rates? Click here.

Guest Post: Michal Harel

As the back-to-school frenzy comes to a close, we saw how many eCommerce sites were gearing up to handle this HOT period of the year. Traditionally, the companies that had most to gain from the back‑to-school season were those engaged in selling apparel, books, school stationery, and other large depots. In recent years, however, virtually every eCommerce site wants to have a piece of the pie, and even cars and home appliance retailers have their own ‘back-to-school’ slogan.

How do retailers get ready for back-to-school sales? Here are some common trends we observe among all eCommerce sites.

1. Create more targeted deals that are related to school but which are also good for families; for example, SUV promotions or college loans.
2. Adapt the homepage a few weeks in advance of school starting. You can change its color to fall colors or modify the layout to fit a specific promotion. Also change the page’s keywords to optimize SEO.
3. Put images of children EVERYWHERE – in school, in the park, in cars – EVERYWHERE.
4. Launch email campaigns with special promotions targeting families, moms and dads. Promote products that cater to their needs in the upcoming school year.
5. Personalize, personalize and personalize. Look at referral URLs to search for keywords like ‘school’ or ‘learning’ to personalize your landing pages for visitors coming from these referral URLs. Feature relevant promotions.
6. Make few changes. Try to stay away from user interface and platform changes. On the one hand, you won’t confuse returning customers who get a ‘familiar face’ when they land on your site or want to make a purchase. On the other, you don’t risk having technical errors on new pages that may cause visitors to drop the session.

Visitors compare deals in most eCommerce sites. We can clearly see sessions that are pause and reloaded, which takes several minutes. Others will copy a product’s name and specifications before leaving the site, which is a clear indication that they are window shopping somewhere else.

When competition is fierce and the web is inundated with competitive deals, try to simplify your users’ experience. Make it easier for them to convert, provide all information they need, don’t hide shipping costs or other important information.

In short, make sure your customers have a pleasant journey through your pages so they return for Thanksgiving.

Michal Harel is a Customer Experience Consultant at ClickTale. As such she provides ongoing consulting services to some of Clicktale’s largest      enterprise customers (Fortune 500 companies) to help them optimize digital interactive strategies and tactics,  gain unique insights into and across  various digital channels and help them use this insight to drive better ROI.

Michal has over 10 years of experience working with enterprise customers. Prior to joining Clicktale, Michal worked as an Account Executive for IBM  Canada (based in Toronto) working on large outsourcing deals, managing global delivery projects and groups, mainly in the Financial sector.Prior to  that, Michal practiced law for a few years, when she worked for Bank Leumi Le Israel and for the Israeli Securities Authority.

Michal Holds an LL.B and BBA from the Interdisciplinary Center In Herzliya, LL.M from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from Rotman School of Management- University of Toronto.

A few words about Honka:

Honka is the leading manufacturer of energy efficient custom built homes, solid timber houses, single residential houses, eco-friendly houses and leisure homes. Founded in Finland, their website is now in nine languages. 

The Challenge

A major marketing channel for Honka is distributing their catalogue to prospective customers and building up their customer base. One of the main goals of the website is driving visitors to sign up to receive the catalogue in the mail. They therefore decided to use ClickTale to help convert more of their visitors to sign up. To reach this goal they analyzed and improved two key elements:

1. The link from the homepage leading to the ”free catalog form page”
2.  The “free catalog form page” (layout, form and content).

The Home Page

The Attention and Scroll Reach Heatmaps showed that the position of the link driving visitors to the catalogue sign-up was good (89% of visitors saw it), but only 0.3% of visitors actually clicked on it. To address this issue, they added a new banner (which leads to the form page) right under the visitor’s Flash banner in order to make sure the banner is seen and clicked.
 

The Catalogue Sign Up Page

Using ClickTale’s Form Analytics, they discovered that the conversion rate of the form was only 5.16%. More than 67% of the visitors left the page without interacting and 27% gave up after interacting with it. The data highlighted that the form was too complex, with visitors struggling to find the key information or benefits to convince them to complete the form. Some of the fields were not absolutely necessary and were causing visitors to drop off such as asking for their budget. Additionally, the Scroll-Reach Heatmap showed that the form was so long that many visitors never scrolled down to the end. In other words, it was far too long!

Honka revamped the whole page and form layout. The main changes were:

• Reduced the fields to the minimum (and reduced page length at the same time)
• Improved the submit button (contrast color, size and anchor text, thumbnails)
• Added some pictures next to the form in order to influence the “desire”
• Removed some distractions on the page (e.g. menu, bottom links)
• Added reassurance elements.

The Results

It is always a great day around the ClickTale offices when we receive recognition for what we do; and making it onto  the inaugural Tealium Digital 100, a new index that reflects the most deployed digital marketing solutions on enterprise websites, is one of those days.

Early last week, we were pleasantly surprised when Tealium announced that we were included in their inaugural launch of the Digital 100, which shows the most deployed digital marketing solutions for enterprise websites. The index reflects what digital marketers are actually using to drive results versus what they say they are using, and can be used by marketers as a starting point for understanding top vendors in the digital-marketing landscape. Tealium collected this information by looking at the vendor tags that are deployed by their 300+ clients, representing thousands of websites worldwide.

Analytics, which is key to measuring and optimizing digital performance, ranked as the second most populous category with 17 vendors. This includes traditional analytics solutions such as Google Analytics and Adobe SiteCatalyst, as well as new vendors for revenue attribution, in-page analytics, and customer experience measurement. Optimization/personalization vendors represented a substantial portion of the Tealium Digital 100 landscape with 12 vendors in the category. This shows enterprises are getting more sophisticated in supplying online visitors with personalized content and products, as well as testing different offers against each other.

“This data shows the dominant role that advertising technologies continue to play in generating online results. We see a highly diverse market, comprised of both traditional ad networks, as well as newer technologies such as retargeting solutions and demand-side platforms,” said Erik Bratt, Vice President of Marketing for Tealium. “The large number of online advertising vendors is a testament to the continuous innovation being made in this healthy category.”

It’s very gratifying when our work is acknowledged by industry analysts, publications and thought leaders. Our sincerest thanks to Tealium for including us in their Digital 100.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section or on Twitter, or Facebook where we are always listening.

Want to learn more about how the ClickTale system can help you optimize your website and increase conversion rates? Click here.

As web-analytics professionals, we all crave top notch, fresh content to expand our knowledge and stay up to date with what’s been going on in our industry. But our days are filled being pulled in many different directions, which can make it really challenging to keep up with all the new and top content on the web.

In order to be in the know and to advance your career, keep on top of best practices, cool tips and free website swag, you should acquaint yourself with these seven personalities if you’re not already following them already. Learn the terminology these well-established and up-and-coming digital and web analysts are using and what trends they are talking about; these are the words and phrases you’ll need to know and drop into web analytics conversations on a regular basis.

• Avinash Kaushik @avinash – The original guru of web analytics, Avinash is now the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google.
• Jim Sterne @jimsterne – Founder of the eMetrics Summit and the Digital Analytics Association (DAA), Jim has been at the forefront of Internet marketing since the beginning.
• Rudi Shumpert @RudiShumpert – The  man to follow for the latest on tag-management systems.
• Justin Cutroni @justincutroni – The  new Google Analytics Advocate responsible for helping organizations to integrate data analysis into their decision making processes.
• Adam Greco @adamgreco – A  long-standing member of the web-analytics community, Adam has been involved in shaping the industry to ensure that web-analytics data can be used to actively help businesses.
• Gary Angel @garyangel – Gary is described by Semphonics as a groundbreaking pioneer.
• Michele Kiss @MicheleJKiss – Michele has great articles on her old blog and is building up a new blog at Web Analytics Demystified, where she has recently become a partner.

Why should you follow them? Because they are in the know! Whether you’re a rookie in web analytics or have already built a reputation for yourself, following these professionals will help you build an excellent knowledge base of what’s going on in the digital-analytics sphere. Stay on top of conferences, innovations, lectures; be updated whenever a new blog post or article is published; get comfortable with the vocabulary of web analytics; and communicate more closely with some of today’s top personalities in the digital-analysis world. After all, in this fast-paced industry, if you remain standing in the same place, you’re actually falling behind.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section or on Twitter, or Facebook where we are always listening.

Want to learn more about how the ClickTale system can help you optimize your website and increase conversion rates? Click here.

Do you want to understand how ClickTale Core integrates into your online optimization cycle? Walk with us through this webinar to see how you can increase your digital marketing power using ClickTale Core in conjunction with the leading tools and platforms in web analytics, A/B testing and voice of customer.

In this webinar you will see real examples of leading companies using ClickTale Core to gain further insights and knowledge about visitors’ behavior. It covers three case studies:

1. RSA – Web Analytics Integration
2. Brady Corp – A/B Testing Integration
3. Hotels London – Customer Voice Integration

Don’t miss our next webinar. Register for ClickTale’s free live training sessions by clicking here!

Please share your thoughts in the comments section or on Twitter, or Facebook where we are always listening.

Want to learn more about how the ClickTale system can help you optimize your website and increase conversion rates? Click here.

Improved website design leads to better results. More people are inclined to use a well-presented site, the customer experience improves, sales rise and ultimately − revenues increase. But what goes into creating a great site?

Click here to download the eBook

A look at top five news sites reveals some simple usability practices and design guidelines that can be easily applied to a wide range of websites. The success of a site relates to a combination of factors including its appearance, functionality and content. By identifying the successful approaches to site design utilized by top news sites and integrating some of these same attributes into your own site, you can improve your site’s readability, popularity and conversion rates, contributing to its overall success.

We’ve put this “Usability Best Practices” eBook together in order for you to learn some of the most successful usability techniques and methodologies that you can adopt to improve the engagement and performance of your website. This comparative research surveys top websites to distil the common attributes that allow them to consistently get more traffic and higher engagement.

Here are the top 5 insights that you will gain by downloading the eBook:

1. Strategic use of visuals and images
2. Powerful and sophisticated calls to action
3. Effective website hierarchy and navigation
4. Smart use of brand identity
5. Helpful ways to immerse visitors in content

Download the eBook and share your thoughts in the comments section below or on Twitter, or Facebook where we are always listening.

Want to learn more about how the ClickTale system can help you optimize your website and increase conversion rates? Click here.

We want to be able to take as much of the guess work out of marketing as possible in order to ensure we’re spending our money as wisely as possible.  We’ve put together this webinar for you in order to learn how to cut your marketing budget by identifying which elements of your campaigns give you the best ROI.

In this webinar, we’ll be going over 4 main aspects of how to track and optimize your marketing campaigns .

1. Marketing Channel & Traffic Source
   Let’s focus on 2 channel segments – Marketing  Channel. What channel did your clients come in from?  Did they come in from PPC, SEO, Email marketing, Referral, social networks.
   Traffic source – Not a specific marketing channel,e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo. We used a segmented view funnel so we can see side by side conversion.
2. Landing Page Optimization
   We identified problem areas. This specific marketing channel isn’t performing the way we like, so instead of leaving it entirely, we want to understand how to improve this weak area. How do we maximize the interaction here? The first area to focus on is the landing page.  Improving your landing page performance not only boosts your SEO ranking, but in terms of  paid traffic and PPC you see it increases your Adwords quality score which lowers your cost per click on both display and PPC campaigns. The key here is to understand the visitor intentions. When you know why your visitors is looking for your site and what they want to do you can then tailor your landing page exactly towards what they are looking for. A/B test your landing page so you’re not guessing what works and what doesn’t work.
3. Keyword Optimization
   Understanding the intention behind a search term is the key behind high-converting marketing campaigns.  A lot of times we’ll  break up marketing campaigns based solely on linguistics and semantics. When we really should be looking at what the visitor was looking to accomplish when they put in a search keyword? What’s their intended activity? Once you understand that, you’ll be able to tailor the experience, the advertisement and the landing page directly back to the visitor and it will increase conversions . This will also help you budget wisely so that  in terms of paid marketing campaigns understanding how visitors from a specific keyword react helps you understand what keywords are worth placing a higher bid on.
4. Integrations
   You have to look at the full picture in order to take as much of the guess work out of marketing as possible. You need to make sure that data does not stand alone. You’re not just getting one picture from one side, you should look for the full picture of visitor interactions, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Understand why one factor converts better than another.

Don’t miss our next webinar. Register  for ClickTale’s free live training sessions by clicking here!

Please share your thoughts in the comments section or on Twitter, or Facebook where we are always listening.

Want to learn more about how the ClickTale system can help you optimize your website and increase conversion rates? Click here.

You can shed a lot of sweat and tears redesigning each page of your website, however if the last page of your funnel, the form(s), is not optimized with the same precision and personal touch as the pages before it, your time and money are as good as wasted.

Click here to download the eBook

After analyzing the forms of 830 of the web’s top performing websites, ClickTale has developed and summarized 21 of the most helpful tips in this easy-to-navigate Giant Book of Form Optimization. Learn all the key tips you need to personalize your web form redesigns according to both the industry and type of form you are optimizing, enabling your visitors to reach their goals, while simultaneously achieving your own.

This eBook is divided by the five usability components of web form analysis, including:

1)      The CTA (call to action)

2)      The Supporting Elements

3)      The Page Design

4)      The Form Field

5)      The Convenience Factor

Download the eBook if you want to optimize your forms for maximum conversions.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or on Twitter, or Facebook where we are always listening.

Want to learn more about how the ClickTale system can help you optimize your website and increase conversion rates? Click here.

You can shed a lot of sweat and tears redesigning each page of your website, however if the last page of your funnel, the form(s), is not optimized with the same precision and personal touch as the pages before it, your time and money are as good as wasted.

Click here to download the eBook

After analyzing the forms of 830 of the web’s top performing websites, ClickTale has developed and summarized 21 of the most helpful tips in this easy-to-navigate Giant Book of Form Optimization. Learn all the key tips you need to personalize your web form redesigns according to both the industry and type of form you are optimizing, enabling your visitors to reach their goals, while simultaneously achieving your own.

This eBook is divided by the five usability components of web form analysis, including:

1)      The CTA (call to action)

2)      The Supporting Elements

3)      The Page Design

4)      The Form Field

5)      The Convenience Factor

Download the eBook if you want to optimize your forms for maximum conversions.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or on Twitter, or Facebook where we are always listening.

Want to learn more about how the ClickTale system can help you optimize your website and increase conversion rates? Click here.