Most bloggers are obsessed with Google Analytics and tracking their visitors when they first get started. After that, it’s all about the revenue and seeing how much money your blog can make per month.
While bloggers are anxiously eating up as many stats as they can, they might be missing the most important stat of all — which is knowing what users are actually doing while they are on your site. Sure, you can see how many people came to your site and what posts are getting the most comments and social shares… but being able to see how they are reading your content, what distracts them and how to improvement engagement… now that’s killer analytical data.
Heatmaps are Pretty Cool!
The best way to monitor your traffic and seeing what they are doing while they are on your site, is through the use of heatmaps and video recordings. I personally use Hotjar on all of my sites and it provides me with some pretty amazing details.
As many of you already know, I recently switched up the design on BloggingTips.com with a nice new clean design. Once I went live with the new theme, I made sure to setup a new Hotjar heatmap to see how traffic was using the site.
Right away you can see where most people are clicking… which is the main navigation area on top, the logo area and the title link of the first blog post.
I had a newsletter popup loaded on the site, which is why the screen is so dark… otherwise it would look clear like the one I did for ZacJohnson.com.
Now that I’ve grabbed your attention with some fancy heatmaps and what you can do with your own site, I want to first let you know how easy it is to setup. All you need to do is create an account with Hotjar.com, add your site URL and add a line of code to your site. It’s that easy.
To view reports, you log right into the dashboard and can view your site and it’s heatmaps based on the device it’s being viewed through (such as desktop, mobile, tablet).
Notice the section above the heatmap area? This is where you can sort heatmaps based on their viewing device. This is also great for seeing what your site looks like on different platforms.
View Recordings of Visitors While on Your Site
While heatmaps are pretty, what really blows me away is the visitor recording feature that allows you to actually see what people (their mouse) do while they are on your site.
Here’s an example of what you’d see in the video recordings area.
In addition to seeing actual recordings of what people are doing on your site, you can also see detailed reports on each of them before needing to see the video.
For example, in the screenshot below you will see I highlighted the area where it shows visitor length. In most cases, a longer recording will provide you with more detail and engagement. You can also view the device, browser and operating system being used… along with their country as well.
Now that you’ve seen some examples of how heatmaps and visitor recordings work, now let’s talk about why they are so important.
How Heatmaps Make You a Better Blogger
At the end of the day, as bloggers we all want to make more money, get more traffic and keep people on our site. By being able to actually see where you visitors are clicking, you can see where they are existing from your site, what areas are just distractions and how they are using your site.
This is particularly effective when viewing visitor recordings, as you can actually watch the process of someone being on your site and navigating through it with their mouse cursor. This will allow you to see any confusion they might have while navigating through your site, while also seeing what they are ready, for how long and at what point they actually leave your site.
For more on how heatmaps and visitor recordings can help with your site, be sure to check out this 9 point optimization plan.
Hotjar is More than Just Heatmaps and Recordings
While the heatmaps and video recordings are my two favorite features of Hotjar, they actually have a lot more to offer — such as user polls, funnels, forms, surveys and more. In short, you are getting access to a bunch of high level services for one low monthly price and all within one platform.
Whether you are a blogger, site designer, marketing expert, affiliate marketer or anything in between — knowing your audience and being able to monitor and track what they are doing while on your site, is one of the best ways to increase conversions and traffic across the board.
I use Hotjar to monitor traffic across my sites, and you should try them too.
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