Web Analytics Landscape
There are many options for collecting and reviewing data regarding website traffic. Marketers and web developers use web analytics in an attempt to understand how users are interacting with their sites. The point is to collect actionable data and work towards improvements in user experience and conversion. Brands track this data through third party vendors that collect data, normally through JavaScript, and convert the data into manageable reports. Many companies have begun to offer web analytics services, but Google has continued to be the most prominent player in the industry.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is Google's free web analytics tool. GA offers extensive data reports regarding website traffic. "Simply put, Google Analytics puts several lines of tracking code into the code of your website. The code records various activities of your users when they visit your website, along with the attributes (such as age, gender, interests) of those users. It then sends all that information to the GA (Google Analytics) server once the user exits your website" (Su, 2017). GA allows you to track user acquisition and user behavior data all for the purpose of optimizing the website and also evaluating the effectiveness of your other marketing efforts (Su, 2017).
Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful, free tool that is currently the most widely used web analytics tool, so why would you use anything else?
Complementary Programs
A complementary program could be used in addition to GA to provide slightly different information and provide marketers will a fuller picture of when, how and why users are interacting with their site.
Complementary programs could provide slightly different website analytics or important insights about the brand's social media presence. Tools like HootSuite can be used in conjunction with Google Analytics to understand how users are interacting with the brand's social media pages and also how those pages are, or are not, driving traffic to the brand's website.
While GA is incredibly powerful, there is no way for one software to offer an entirely comprehensive understanding of a brand's digital presence, using an additional software can offer a better overall understanding and broader perspective of your users online interactions with your brand.
Crazy Egg Analytics
Crazy Egg Analytics is one software tool that can be used, in addition to GA, to get a better understanding of the user experience on your site. Crazy Egg, like Google Analytics, tracks data from a web page, but it collects some different information. "Crazy Egg is an online analytics application that provides you eye-tracking tools. It generates heatmaps based on where people clicked on your website. Thus, it gives you an idea on where to focus" (Web, n.d.).
Crazy Egg can tell you more about how exactly users are engaging with your website through heat maps, scroll maps and confetti reports.
Heat maps can provide some additional information about where users are clicking most often. This reveals which parts of your website users are engaging with most often. "Crazy Egg’s click heatmaps present a static image of the webpage being tracked and overlay a visual graph of all the clicks made by all the users tracked by the software" (Crazy, n.d.). The heat map shows data from actual user clicks.
Comparison
When compared with GA, Crazy Egg is a less powerful analytics tool. However, the two tools complement one another. Google Analytics does not provide the same kind of nuance user engagement data as Crazy Egg. Likewise, Crazy Egg does not produce the same kind of detailed data reports.
Google Analytics does offer A/B experiment testing, but does not currently offer heat, scroll or confetti mapping. However, you can similarly evaluate which areas of your website are engaging the most users by reviewing the most clicked links. Google won't generate a heat map for you, but you can still access some of that information.
Conversely, GA can provide information about site speed, conversion funnels and advanced segments, which Crazy Egg cannot. Additionally, there are many more reports available through GA that are not available through Crazy Egg.
Crazy Egg serves as a great supplemental software for GA, but does not actually compete with the amount of data and reports available through Google Analytics.
Also notably, Crazy Egg requires a paid subscription and GA is free.
Do you need it?
Ultimately, no you probably do not need to pay for a subscription to Crazy Egg. However, if you are looking for a more dynamic picture of how users are interacting with your site, then it may be a great tool to use in addition to Google Analytics. Using multiple analytics tools can only serve to improve the accuracy of your information and broaden the perspective. "Using different products to complement your main web analytics tool is great for getting different perspectives on things. After all, the more weapons in your armoury, the better equipped you can be to optimise your website" (Crazy, n.d.). When optimizing user experience and improving conversion rates are the top priorities it is important to understand as much about your users and how they interact with your site.
References
There are many options for collecting and reviewing data regarding website traffic. Marketers and web developers use web analytics in an attempt to understand how users are interacting with their sites. The point is to collect actionable data and work towards improvements in user experience and conversion. Brands track this data through third party vendors that collect data, normally through JavaScript, and convert the data into manageable reports. Many companies have begun to offer web analytics services, but Google has continued to be the most prominent player in the industry.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is Google's free web analytics tool. GA offers extensive data reports regarding website traffic. "Simply put, Google Analytics puts several lines of tracking code into the code of your website. The code records various activities of your users when they visit your website, along with the attributes (such as age, gender, interests) of those users. It then sends all that information to the GA (Google Analytics) server once the user exits your website" (Su, 2017). GA allows you to track user acquisition and user behavior data all for the purpose of optimizing the website and also evaluating the effectiveness of your other marketing efforts (Su, 2017).
Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful, free tool that is currently the most widely used web analytics tool, so why would you use anything else?
Complementary Programs
A complementary program could be used in addition to GA to provide slightly different information and provide marketers will a fuller picture of when, how and why users are interacting with their site.
Complementary programs could provide slightly different website analytics or important insights about the brand's social media presence. Tools like HootSuite can be used in conjunction with Google Analytics to understand how users are interacting with the brand's social media pages and also how those pages are, or are not, driving traffic to the brand's website.
While GA is incredibly powerful, there is no way for one software to offer an entirely comprehensive understanding of a brand's digital presence, using an additional software can offer a better overall understanding and broader perspective of your users online interactions with your brand.
Crazy Egg Analytics
Crazy Egg Analytics is one software tool that can be used, in addition to GA, to get a better understanding of the user experience on your site. Crazy Egg, like Google Analytics, tracks data from a web page, but it collects some different information. "Crazy Egg is an online analytics application that provides you eye-tracking tools. It generates heatmaps based on where people clicked on your website. Thus, it gives you an idea on where to focus" (Web, n.d.).
Crazy Egg can tell you more about how exactly users are engaging with your website through heat maps, scroll maps and confetti reports.
Heat maps can provide some additional information about where users are clicking most often. This reveals which parts of your website users are engaging with most often. "Crazy Egg’s click heatmaps present a static image of the webpage being tracked and overlay a visual graph of all the clicks made by all the users tracked by the software" (Crazy, n.d.). The heat map shows data from actual user clicks.
Figure 1.
The parts of the page that are glowing are the areas of the page that have been clicked most often.
Similarly, the scroll map shows how long users spend viewing each section of the webpage, also displayed by various colors.
The confetti reports show you clicks based on where the user came from. "The confetti report shows some
similarities with the heat map. The confetti overlay is a map visualising the
most popular sections according to clicks, but this report dives even deeper, a
lot deeper. Every single click
holds a ton of information, categorised by browser, country, used
devices, referrals, … Dots or clicks belonging to the same category have the
same color" (Olyslager, n.d.). This report contains a lot of valuable user demographic and reference information as well as user engagement.
Crazy Egg also allows marketers to perform website A/B testing to test different website designs, layouts and copy. This is valuable as it allows the marketer to better understand what is resonating with the users.
Comparison
When compared with GA, Crazy Egg is a less powerful analytics tool. However, the two tools complement one another. Google Analytics does not provide the same kind of nuance user engagement data as Crazy Egg. Likewise, Crazy Egg does not produce the same kind of detailed data reports.
Google Analytics does offer A/B experiment testing, but does not currently offer heat, scroll or confetti mapping. However, you can similarly evaluate which areas of your website are engaging the most users by reviewing the most clicked links. Google won't generate a heat map for you, but you can still access some of that information.
Conversely, GA can provide information about site speed, conversion funnels and advanced segments, which Crazy Egg cannot. Additionally, there are many more reports available through GA that are not available through Crazy Egg.
Crazy Egg serves as a great supplemental software for GA, but does not actually compete with the amount of data and reports available through Google Analytics.
Also notably, Crazy Egg requires a paid subscription and GA is free.
Do you need it?
Ultimately, no you probably do not need to pay for a subscription to Crazy Egg. However, if you are looking for a more dynamic picture of how users are interacting with your site, then it may be a great tool to use in addition to Google Analytics. Using multiple analytics tools can only serve to improve the accuracy of your information and broaden the perspective. "Using different products to complement your main web analytics tool is great for getting different perspectives on things. After all, the more weapons in your armoury, the better equipped you can be to optimise your website" (Crazy, n.d.). When optimizing user experience and improving conversion rates are the top priorities it is important to understand as much about your users and how they interact with your site.
References
“Crazy Egg: That Other Tool You Should Be
Using to Understand and Optimise Your Website.” Loves Data. Loves Data, n.d..
https://www.lovesdata.com/blog/2015/crazy-egg.
Figure 1. Retrieved from https://www.paulolyslager.com/crazy-egg-review-of-heat-map-tool/
Olyslager, Paul. “Crazy Egg - A Review of a
Heat Map Tool " Paul Olyslager.” Paul Olyslager. Accessed November 18,
2019. https://www.paulolyslager.com/crazy-egg-review-of-heat-map-tool/.
Su, Bill. “What Is Google Analytics, and
Why Is It Important to My Business?” Medium. Analytics for Humans, May 16,
2017. https://medium.com/analytics-for-humans/what-is-google-analytics-and-why-is-it-important-to-my-business-8c083a9f81be.
“Web Analytics - Crazy Egg.” Tutorialspoint. Accessed
November 18, 2019. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/web_analytics/crazy_egg.htm.
So interesting! As I did this assignment, I was totally focused on GA competitors. In the end I found it difficult to choose, simply because GA is so powerful. Your perspective about add-on's and complimentary tools gave me something to think about! Good detail throughout. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi! I really like heat mapping and Crazy Egg looks like a pretty version of that. I researched one called HotJar that has a similar product. I really believe that heatmapping takes marketers a step further into understanding the consumer journey.
ReplyDelete