One thing that is fun about User Experience is the large variety of tools that are available. Start-Ups having focused on Prototyping and Wireframes tools but there’s so much more.
I’ve decided to do a series where I focus on some of my favourite tools. Today I wanted to look at a couple analytic tools that I use in my day to day work process.
Analytics
Google Analytics
One of the first tools I like to use when doing User Research is Google Analytics. There’s a ton of information that to leverage. I am able to pull anything from demographics to user flows. Whenever I am working on a project that requires updates, I love to see what people are doing on the site.
Lucky Orange
I first learned about Lucky Orange when I was watching a podcast that focused on digital strategy. I didn’t expect to learn about any new tools so I always felt like I stumbled into gold.
Lucky Orange is great for the following reasons:
- Captures further user data for analysis
- Allows for conversation with site users
- Heat maps
- Form Reporting
- Captures video of users interacting with the site
The best aspect of Lucky Orange is reviewing video of users interacting with the website. I’ve been able to tell what areas of a site are failing and start figuring out how to improve the experience.
Crazy Egg
I’ve been a fan of Crazy Egg for a long time. They provide detailed heat maps which look at how people interact with the site. I’ve used Crazy Egg to determine which images lack information to why CTA’s don’t work.
It’s a powerful tool which is why I am such a fan. Using Crazy Egg, you get some of the following analysis:
- Click Heat Maps – Get a solid visual of where people are clicking and how frequently.
- Scroll Heat Maps – I love this feature. Figure how far people are willing to scroll on your site. We learned that important information couldn’t get found by users. Using the Scroll Heat Maps, we discovered the information sat outside common scroll patterns. By running an A/B test, we were able to verify this was the problem and correct it.
- Confetti Click Maps – Users will visit your site from different locations. The Confetti Click Maps break down clicks to a variety of different filters. You can track what Facebook referrals interactive compared to Google or Direct traffic. Filtering ranges from traffic, to hardware and software, to location.
- Click Maps – Slightly different than Click Heat Maps. The Click Maps break down the interactions with specific numbers. Using this tool that we realized a single image was experiencing 5x the interactions than other elements on the page. This had us look at the problem. We determined the image lacked crucial information and users were clicking for more details.
Crazy Egg is on my favourite tools because they don’t try to provide too much. They know what they’re good at and they excel at it.
My only complaint about Crazy Egg is that they bill annually. Annual Billing isn’t a problem for organizations but for contractors it can be frustrating.
Wrapping Up
Although I’ve played around with other analytics tools, these three are my clear favourites. I use them at every opportunity and recommend them whenever I get the chance.
If you have any tools that you love, feel free to include them in the comments.