I try to expand my knowledge of non-enterprise web analytics tools through this site. I’ve been using ClickTale and BTBuckets for awhile, Woopra for about a week. ClickTale is an analytics tool for seeing how users interact with pages, BTBuckets is a user segmentation and targeting tool, and Woopra is a real-time analytics tool.
Did I mention they are all free? (Note: with some limitations on free accounts.) I didn’t immediately see the advantage of using real-time analytics unless you were making real-time changes (here’s Woopra’s take on real-time analytics), and I challenged myself to use these tools together to do something cool.
1. ClickTale
In ClickTale I can see scrolling, clicking, and hovering behavior on my blog homepage (but not for other pages). I noticed that although users scroll, attention is focused on the top 1/3 of the page. This reinforces ideas of user reading patterns noted by Jakob Nielsen and CX Partners. I also noticed a higher hover and clickthrough rate on my top-level navigation.
ClickTale scrolling heatmap
2. Woopra
Woopra dashboard
First, I really like Woopra’s dashboard. Features like seeing your top keywords in a word cloud help give a quick overview of user preferences on that day. You can set up alert notifications for different behaviors, referring URLs, and visitor types. Based on ClickTale data, I set up alerts for pages in the navigation. At one point my About page was getting increased traffic compared to other pages.
3. BT Buckets
Previously I set up “buckets” that users were sorted into based on actions, referrers, or characteristics–i.e. user segmentation. Because this was an experiment, I created a test page to do behavioral targeting and generate content tailored to a user segment.
Since a lot of users went from my blog, a landing page, to the about section, I wanted to continue engaging them. BTBuckets has built-in options for what you can change on the page when users from buckets see that page. I chose a shadowbox to appear on the test About page, to greet return visitors with a different message from new visitors…and it worked! (Note: I’m not planning on doing major debugging, so apologies if it stops working for some reason.)
Try the behavioral targeting test page here–you should get a custom message based on if you are a new or returning visitor.
Also try out these tools–they are really great additions to offerings like Google Analytics. I tried doing this for Twitter refers, but that didn’t work for some reason. Next time I would also speed up the process so changes were installed in a shorter timeframe. Overall I just want to make people think about how to combine free tools like these.
BTBuckets buckets
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sarahd23 on Twitter
Fascinating. Would have loved to see video of how you used these and how they worked for you, comparing the various interfaces, especially ClickTale. That sounds fascinating.
I found it also interesting that you could only use ClickTale on your home page, but with the others you found out that other pages are your more popular landing pages. I often ask people what is the most popular page on their site and they say the front page, but when they look at the stats, it’s actually much lower. But people put the most work and money into their site’s front page!
Knowing how to drive traffic through your site and increase stickiness is really important, and it looks like you are getting this with at least two of the three programs.
What else did you learn through this process? What changes are you going to make beyond just landing pages? Would love to know.
Hi Lorelle,
Thanks for the insightful comments! I’m not a big video-watcher so I never think to record video for the blog, but its definitely something I should try in future.
With ClickTale I think the limits on what you get to view for scrolling or playback are based on pageviews. Because of the traffic my site gets, the free plan only covers the most popular page. So yes, I followed the data (in GA and ClickTale) to know which landing page to focus on. That’s true what you say about people assuming the home page is most popular!
In terms of other things I learned, I learned to be careful about the BTBuckets settings. In BTBuckets you define who goes into a bucket, how much time a user has to complete the action to go into a bucket, and how long you keep them in that bucket. It can get really complicated to define the buckets correctly, so that you don’t wrongly exclude/include users from segments.
I haven’t thought about future changes yet, since I’m not motivated by business goals or anything. I would like to figure out how to target people from certain sites, so I could interact with social media refers differently from search refers, or try out different content changes more quickly. Also not on a test page.
That seems to be the real value in being able to give the right people the right content at the right time by using ClickTale, Woopra, and BTBuckets together.
Thanks for providing such a great tool like Woopra!
Sarah
Interesting reviews, i’m more interested in the comments though, I own a host of online gaming portals, its key for me to know where to target new and existing players.
I signed up to the free version of ClickTale it helped me understand small extras about my players historys. i guess my situation is slightly different as i can view player trends and stats on my database. The one thing i cant see (and is really crucial to any business) is the customer journey through all the back links. Its an interesting point you make Lorelle and you are right in the fact that inner pages can be higher viewed than the home pages. this is based as you would know around content and SEO but ultimatley as a web site you will try all you can to navigate potential users to the home page which is why i guess we spend all that money re-designing and optimising home pages every few months!
I now use the ClickTail Bronze plan, the gold seems a little pricey to me and the silver is maybe too much data for me! i am now able to view stats and page information that i have been dying to see for years now. They say nothing is free in this life and to some degree this is true, the free plan gives you an outlook but for less than $100 i can now re design and optimise my site better thanks to ClickTail and the knock on effects are that i can now see the direct results of this in my Net profit figures each month (knowing what has driven the additonal revenue)
So im summary you are right! and yes the free product is good as a starting point but for small money you can really know so much and its most certainly a price worth paying.
Just wanted to clarify something.
ClickTale free only lets you see your two most popular pages. Their paid plans (which start at $99) lets you see all your pages with no restrictions.
They’re also got a 40% off deal at the moment, just signed up for a silver account!!
Steven:
Can you ever have too much data?
I think that ClickTale does seem worth the money, but as with any web analytics product, unless you are gaining actionable insights and utilizing the data to create a data-driven design process, I would say think carefully about paying for a tool. Some people pay thousands for enterprise tools and don’t really know what they’re doing or how to strategically use the data to improve their site. My personal preference would be to make sure you’re getting it right on Google Analytics or something before you make the plunge and pay, but that’s just me.
It sounds like you’re getting a lot out of the paid plan at ClickTale though! I think in terms of finding what landing pages to target, it would also be useful to segment that in terms of which landing pages get the most new visitors vs. returning visitors. Then you could see what is the “first impression” for most people.
joCob: obviously I haven’t paid close enough attention to my ClickTale account! I thought I only could see the most popular page, but 40% off sounds like a good deal as well.
Sarah-
Thanks for sharing your results here. As with anything, things can change over time. I would be interested to see how your use of the three tools evolves over time (perhaps a follow up post?).
I have been using Clicktale for a while, I think it is most valuable for those who have very specific things they are looking for, or where Google Analytics falls short. The amount of data can be overwhelming.
Never heard of BT Buckets, looks interesting.
Looking forward to more stuff from you
Regards,
Travis
Hi Travis!
A follow up post may be in order I think. I felt like I only scratched the surface with what you could do with these tools. Though I’m not really motivated to purchase ClickTale so my usage of it is limited.
I see ClickTale more as doing large-scale usability testing, but without being able to directly observe someone and ask them why they’re doing what they’re doing. The Google Analytics site overlay feature is notoriously (http://www.zencartoptimization.com/2007/12/04/google-analytics-site-overlay-trick/) inaccurate, so you are right in noting that it should be used to supplement GA, not replace it.
You should try BT Buckets and see what you think!
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Yes, the Google click map tool leaves much to be desired. As a search engine marketer, I do rely on Google Analytics for some things but the click map certainly isn’t one of them!
I think you should do a follow up article. Like Travis, never heard of BT Buckets either – will check it out.
Here is an article from Website Magazine that reviews several usablity tools http://bit.ly/32mqlQ (I am affiliated with usertesting.com but this article covers other tools as well)
Amanda
Hi Amanda,
I think I definitely will do a follow up article. Any things in particular you think I should explore?
I’d heard of some of those usability tools, so thanks for that link! When I see things like that I would rather try it out on someone else’s site so that I’d have more motivation to change things. I don’t have as much time with this site to redesign as I’d like!
Sarah