Conversion optimisation of your website: get cracking with Hotjar
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) on websites is not a novelty. In physical stores (shop window, counter, shelves ...), sales staff also showcase their products in various ways in order to boost sales. This principle also applies to a website. In other words: attracting visitors to your website is no guarantee that they will effectively buy, order, chat ... Sometimes, the flow of your website is hampered and you have no idea what those obstacles are. In such cases, an in-depth analysis of surfing behavior on your site can definitely prove useful.
When this happens, we at Duke & Grace like to deploy Hotjar: a powerful, visual analysis tool that is perfectly complementary with Google Analytics.
What is Hotjar?
Hotjar is a complete 'conversion optimisation tool' that provides a better insight into the behavior of your website visitors. For instance, you will find out more about why visitors don’t convert and how they navigate on your site. By identifying the reasons behind specific (search) behavior, you can subsequently fine-tune the flow of your website or even re-evaluate it completely.
So how does it work? The first thing you do after registering is installing your code: the key to the use of Hotjar. You need this tracking code to collect data. Hotjar then offers a number of useful techniques with which to measure, analyse and map out visitor behavior on your website.
Concrete tools for analysis and feedback
Heat mapping
One of those tools is heat mapping, literally a thermal image. It is a visual rendering (adjustable per web page) of how visitors scroll, click and navigate on your website. For instance, are too few visitors clicking an important call-to-action or button? Then you could move or highlight it to increase its visibility.
Example: On the landing page of our very own Online Marketing Newsletter, we discovered that many people clicked on the boxes with monthly topics, probably because they thought there was a link behind it. Only, there wasn’t. Now, we know we have to adjust the design to increase conversion.
In addition, Hotjar also displays heat maps of scrolling behavior. For instance, the heat map below shows that very few visitors scroll down (the green field).
There can be a number of reasons for this. Perhaps, the page isn’t interesting enough? Or maybe some people are turned off by a series of brand logos? Or perhaps it looks like the page stops at the 'fold', i.e. the virtual end of the page?
Visitor recordings
If we really want to dig deep, then we can use Hotjar to check visitor recordings. These recordings show full sessions on a per visitor basis: how individual visitors navigate through the site, what they click or skip, in which order they visit everything ... Every recording you store can be filtered based on the number of visited pages, specific visited pages, the browser and the operating system, the country, and the device used by the visitors. This facilitates the analysis of a specific target group. While such an analysis takes time, it yields important results. It gives you an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your website and identifies your problems in terms of usability.
Example: For GymnaUniphy, we wanted to know what content visitors looked for on their website. In other words, which topics did they read and see as truly relevant. For this, our online marketer watched and analysed a series of individual screen recordings. This way, he could tell precisely where we could add useful CTAs.
Example: For the web page 'Educational master’s degree programme' of Ghent University, we set up a short survey in the form of a pop-up that appeared spontaneously whenever a visitor left the page. In a brief survey, they were asked if they were able to find all info and/or to share any suggestions or remarks. We were then able to use that feedback to further optimise the web page.
Example: For the customer service web page of life insurance provider NN, we organised a poll to identify the potential problem areas. The outcome? We discovered that visitors with questions preferred to call or send an email instead of having to go through a whole drop-down menu. Good to know!
Feel free to call on multiple disciplines
So to find out why website visitors fail to convert, it is best to call on CRO. Did you know that a CRO approach is most effective when combining multiple disciplines such as UX, online marketing, design, copywriting, and developers? Based on your conclusions in Google Analytics and Hotjar, you can subsequently make the appropriate changes and adjustments.
Suppose for a minute that Google Analytics tells you that many visitors end up on your contact page, but only a limited number of visitors actually fill out the contact form ... In that case, you could set up a poll via Hotjar and ask your visitors exactly what they’re looking for or what their expectations are. Feel free to check the heat map in Hotjar, because this may tell you it would be better to move the ‘Send’ button. You can then formulate several hypotheses and A/B test them via Google Optimize. Do your assumptions have a positive impact? Then, your developers or copywriters can get involved and make the necessary changes. Problem solved!
Gertjan Deprez
Online Marketing Consultant at Duke & Grace
Need assistance? Duke & Grace likes to pull out all the stops to optimise your conversion. That’s why we always select the best tool for the right goal. We start from data that we analyse thoroughly to produce concrete and productive results. Google Analytics is inescapable in this regard, but Hotjar makes your conversion even more efficient. That’s how we map out visitor behavior on your website. Want to take things one step further? Then it’s good to know you can also count on our various UX, online marketing, design, and copywriting experts.