Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/boost-traffic-conversions-website-wisdom/
This post was sponsored by Ptengine. Thank you for supporting the sponsors who make SitePoint possible!
A novel isn’t about the words; it’s about the story conveyed by the text. Similarly, website statistics provide substantial visitor data, but it’s more important to understand the user activities that lead to those figures.
For most of us, providing statistical usage reports is simply a matter of adding a Google Analytics script to every page. Site owners are presented with an overwhelming quantity of information and can quickly identify whether traffic is increasing or decreasing. But the data won’t tell them why.
It’s difficult to determine how visitors are interacting with the website, for example:
- Are people using that widget?
- Are users distracted by the color scheme?
- Are the images and videos helpful or annoying?
- How far do people read down the page?
- Is that call-to-action button being used?
The more you know, the more you want to know…
Google Analytics will provide an insight but it’s complex. Clients are often bamboozled by terms such as sessions, bounces, funnels and conversions and they need expert help. That expert requires a combination of technical development, statistical analysis and psychological profiling skills. Presuming they can find such a person, it’s a full-time job which costs more time and money than all but the largest corporations can afford.
Visitor Interaction Metrics
Fortunately, there are cost-effective solutions for digital marketers, UI designers and developers of online businesses of all sizes. Ptengine provides interaction metrics which reveal the stories behind the raw data. Features include:
Simple Implementation
There’s no need to add code for custom events, downloads, conversions or sales — a single script activates all the features.
User-Friendly Reports
Simple reports offer one-click filtering, page grouping, campaign analytics and a breakdown of devices, browsers, geographical locations, conversions and events. Today’s traffic can be compared with the average to determine whether campaigns are effective or not.
Time-on-Page Metrics
Ptengine accurately determines how long the user remains on a page regardless of whether they click through to another page.
Click Tracking
Click tracking is more sophisticated than basic link tracking. Users may click items which are not links such as tabs, widgets, form elements, etc. Importantly, they may click an item thinking it’s a link…
Multi-Device Heatmaps
Finally, the killer feature. Heatmaps indicate where visitors focus their attention, scroll and click on each page.
Unlike other heatmap solutions, Ptengine:
- Provides attention maps which highlight the certain areas that gain more visitor attentions by hotter color belts, and scroll arrival maps which highlight the proportion of users who scroll to a point in the page:
- Is device-aware and caters for Responsive Web Designs. For example, you may be able to determine that mobile users are scrolling to content which is ignored by desktop users and modify your design accordingly.
- Allows pages to be filtered and compared which makes it ideal for A/B testing.
Ptengine offers a free plan with all the features included. Every free plan starts with a full feature package for 30 days and commercial plans are available based on your page views and the features you require.