I’ve been using a clever online service called CrazyEgg to optimise web pages, or more specifically, homepages, which are notoriously difficult to optimise simply because they usually have so many choices for visitors to take.
However, CrazyEgg only takes a few minutes to install, then it starts providing an invaluable insight into what’s happening on your pages.
For example, here’s my old corporate site’s homepage after a short period of testing…
The small round coloured buttons (with pluses in them) show which links are getting the most clicks.
The red and orange buttons got the most clicks, the blue and green buttons got fewer clicks.
So how does it help?
First of all, I now know that the most clicked link was to someone else’s product — an affiliate link to “Glyphius Copywriting Software” shown in the bottom right corner of the page. My blog link got the second most clicks.
However, what I actually want is for most people to click to my blog — that’s the hub of my business now. Everything else is secondary.
Thanks to this data I can now change the page so that the link to my blog gets more clicks than any other.
There’s a lot more to this facility, for example I know exactly where people clicked, (the specific X and Y coordinates on the page), where people came from (i.e. the referring web sites where people clicked before they landed on my site.) And lots more.
What one element on your homepage would increase your sales if you could simply get more people to click it? If you can answer that question, this service could change your business results on the Internet.
How much does it cost?
It’s FREE for what CrazyEgg call ‘low volume sites’… which means that for most small business sites, the free version will cover all your requirements and allow as much testing as you can throw at it.
Here’s the link: www.CrazyEgg.com
Try it on your corporate site, your landing pages, your blog… anywhere you want more sales.
-Ed.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
The Crazy Egg link has been really useful; it has been quite an eye-opener to see what people are clicking on , the search terms they use and how long they spend on the site. Do you have any advice on what percentage of hits should be converted to clicks? Should we be aiming for more than 70%?
August 16th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Hi Ed,
Very useful article, will have to check out Crazy Egg. For anyone who is not aware, Google Analytics which is completely free, provides a content overview tool which gives you information on what links are being clicked per page.
Kind Regards,
Liam