When it comes to measuring website analytics, there is
little doubt that Google Analytics is the king. While it can be debated whether
or not it is the best or most accurate tool, there is very little debate
regarding its influence. With its name recognition and $0 price tag, Google
Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool on the Internet. (Sparks,
2014).
Google Analytics is great for helping web managers understand
traffic patterns, popular content, referring sites, conversions, demographics, bounce
rates, keywords, paid search statistics, and more. The data is as robust or
simple as the web manager needs it to be. The greatest advantage for Google
Analytics is that it is free and it is integrated with the Google’s powerful
search engine to help provide additional data for paid search results, search
terms, and the like. This is data that not every analytics tool can provide.
The interface is intuitive, but without a fundamental
understanding of what information different statistics actually provide,
digging for data can be intimidating. Where Google Analytics requires a
scientific mind to fully understand, one competitor is perfect for the visual
thinker. MouseFlow gives you the power to you record website visitors and export heatmaps showing
where they click, scroll and focus their attention. Sure MouseFlow offers many
of the same analytics that Google Analytics provides, but the data is displayed
visually and intuitively. The heatmaps and live mouse tracking set it apart in
the analytics world.
Google Analytics is great for providing analytics data, but
one key area it lacks analysis in measuring the effectiveness of user interface
(UX) design. This is where an analytics tool like MouseFlow comes into play. Some
of MouseFlow’s features include: (MakeUseOf, 2010).
- Watch how your visitors are using your website – seconds after they visited.
- See all mouse movements, clicks, scroll events, key strokes and form interaction.
- Discover problematic parts of your website and learn how to enhance the user experience.
- Get a visual overview of the clicks received by your pages.
- Compare heatmaps from different periods to measure the effects of changes made to the website.
- See if non-links are clicked and consider turning them into links.
- Check the real bounce rate of your page.
- No installation files and recording scripts are hosted
- Just add a line of code to your pages and the recording will start.
MouseFlow offers a unique set of features that are
unavailable through Google Analytics. These features can be categorized into
two distinct offering types, Live Mouse Tracking and Instant Heatmaps. While
Google Analytics offers live viewer stats and page flows, MouseFlow offers an
intuitive, visual representation of how users physically interact with elements
on a page. This is what sets the tool apart from the others.
Movements and Clicks
Google Analytics offers a variety of real time analytics
figures as events happen on your website. The reports continuously updated as each
hit is recorded. Some of the data you can see includes: (Google, n.d.).
·How many people are on your site right now,
·User’s geographic locations and the traffic sources
that referred them,
·Which pages or events they're interacting with,
and
·Which goal conversions have occurred.
While these analytics are great, MouseFlow intuitive
recordings of real visitor behavior on your site. Knowing where users click is one thing, but
seeing how they control their mouse on the screen provides a whole new array of
details. You will see what navigation elements or calls to action catch their
eye. You can see what part of the screen they interact with or are drawn to.
Seeing how and where a user clicks provides the qualitative question to the
quantitative answer.
Click Heatmaps
One area that Google analytics is lacking in is a simple way
to show how users flow from one page to the next. Sure, the Users Flow tool diagrams the flow
of users from one page to the next, but the question marketers should be asking
is, “Why do users flow down this path?”
MouseFlow heatmaps help marketers and web managers discover
patterns and gain a better understanding as to why users behave the way the do.
Click heatmaps let you see where on a site that visitors click and don’t click.
This includes everything from links, buttons, page content, and erroneous or
incorrect clicks. By recognizing the hot and cool spots on the click heatmap,
you will be able to determine what navigation elements are important or eye
catching to users versus what navigation elements produce little or no
interest.
Movement Heatmaps
When using analytics to measure UX success, Google Analytics
offers very little. However, MouseFlow movement heatmaps will illustrate what
areas of your design help or hinder the user experience. Through MouseFlow
movement heatmaps, you can see where visitors pay attention on a page and
determine weaker areas where design and content should be redesigned to improve
the user experience. Since
Since studies show that there is an 84%-88% correlation
between eye and mouse movement (Chen Anderson, & Sohn, 2001), movement
heatmaps offer a unique report on what areas of a page are popular. Using MouseFlow’s movement heatmaps, marketers can realize
the full potential of their web content. MouseFlow is all about UX analysis,
and knowing where a users eyes are can help marketers increase conversions by
utilizing hot zones or improving design is cold zones.
The brief video below is a marketing video from MouseFlow.
If you wish to get a better understanding of what MouseFlow is and how it can
be beneficial, take the next 4:30 to watch and learn.
Or if you wish to try MouseFlow for yourself, check out the demo site. This site will record your mouse movement, clicks, scrolls, and more, then play the results back for you. It is really a great opportunity to take a closer look at the tool and see how intuitive it is to understand.
While this post is heavily skewed in favor of MouseFlow analytics over Google Analytics, this is a completely from a UX analysis approach. For full disclosure, Google Analytics is an amazing tool that I use in every website I create. I have use MouseFlow in only one site.
References
Chen, M., Anferson, J, & Sohn, M. (2001). What Can a Mouse Cursor Tell Us More?: Correlation of Eye/Mouse Movements on Web Browsing. CHI '01 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 281-282
Google. (n.d.) About Real Time. Retrieved November 24, 2014 from https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1638635.
MakeUseOf. (2010, April 11). MouseFlow: Analyse Website Visitor Behavior. Retrieved November 23, 2014 from http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/mouseflow-real-time-website-statistics-tool/.
Sparks, C. (2014, March 11). 10 Great Social and Web Analytics Tools. Retrieved November 23, 2014 from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-great-social-web-analytics-tools/90629/.
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