A few weeks ago I was doing some reading about some different Web Analytics tools. I came across a tool called ClickTale. This tool really seemed to stand out with some cool features.

The tool was Free so I decided to give it a try. They allow you to track 100 different sessions in a week at no cost. When you are viewing the data it captured it is like you are watching a movie of the users screen.

One Feature that really caught my attention was being able to see how the user interacted with the site. It tracked where the visitor moved the mouse how far they scrolled down the page and where they clicked. 

It seems like such a simple amount of data but it can be used to help improve your website in so many ways. You can use that data and understand what content is being consumed where clicks are being preformed, how much of the content was viewed, and get a true understanding of page view time.

Let’s just look at some of these features and see how you can use it to improve your website.

Page View Time:

When People look at analytics one of the things they start to monitor is Avg. Time on Site. I think this is a great metric to monitor but I don’t think most analytics users understand how that data is tracked. It could be very easy to misinterpret the data. To be honest with standard analytics tools you have to take the data with a grain of salt.

With a standard analytics tool, when a visitor comes to your site a time stamp is stored in a log files or it fires off a java-script tag. The method would depend on your analytics tool. When the user navigates to the next page another time stamp is placed.  So it just takes the times between the two pages to calculate the time on site.

The problem comes in when the user leaves the site. Another time stamp is not applied when they leave. So if a visitor only views one page you will have no idea how long they where on the site.

 Here is another example; lets say a user lands on your home page. They view the page for 25 seconds and click on another page. Now let’s say they view the page for 5 minutes and then leave the site. A standard web analytics tool would show there visit time on the site as being only 25 seconds, when in reality they where there for 5 minutes and 25 seconds. It’s a little hard to make some accurate assumptions when looking at this data.

This is one area where ClickTale out performs its competitors. It uses a complete different method of tracking. If the visitor only visits one page and leaves you still have time on site. I think this is a huge plus if you are using the metric in your reports.

Tracking Clicks:

With ClickTale you can see where a user clicks as well as what type of click they performed (Right, Left, wheel). You can start to ask yourself did they click on an image to thinking it was a link or an action button. You can start to ask yourself would it improve the visitors experience if that was a link to other content.

If you have an application on your site like a design your own application, are visitors stumbling through the tool. Are they clicking on something thinking it is a drop down menu or clicking on something is a submit button? By getting a better understanding of how the user interacted with the site you can make changes to help increase the users experience and in the end increase conversion.

Tracking Mouse Movement:

When you are able to see how the mouse moves you can start get a better understanding of how the visitor is interacting with the site and what they are trying to accomplish.

If you are running Google Adds on your site you can use this data a look at how far the visitor is scrolling down on your page. If your ads are at the bottom and 90% of your visitors are only look at the first half of the page well you have a problem.  You can use this to your advantage and get some of the affiliate adds in the most viewed areas.

ClickTale shows a lot of promise and potential. It has helped me identify some broken links as well as some areas to improve on in the site.  It made me realize that users don’t always use tools and your site the way you thought. It helps identify areas that your site could be used for that you didn’t realize.

If you haven’t already, please check out ClickTale. Make sure you look at the demo Movie!

Please give us some feedback, let us know your thoughts about "A Great Web Analytics Tool - ClickTale - Driving Actionable Insight With The Data"! 

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