How to Record Website Visitors: Tips and Examples

Categories
User Experience (UX)

Welcome to the world of website analytics! ⚡ As a website owner and digital marketer, understanding your audience is key to optimizing your online presence and achieving your goals. But with so many visitors, how do you keep track of who’s visiting and what they’re doing? ? That’s where recording website visitors comes in! This article will share tips and examples of how you can record website visitors to gain valuable insights and drive success. Get ready to take your website analysis to the next level! ⚡

10 Problems Solved by Recording Website Visitors

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As mentioned many times, Plerdy offers a comprehensive approach to solving your site’s under-conversion issues. Since these problems arise as a direct consequence of a lack of visitor satisfaction with your resource, Plerdy’s tools for recording visitors’ reactions can be seen as a way to remove all barriers from the buyer’s journey. What are these obstacles? We list just a few of them:

Here are the top 10 problems solved by recording website visitors:

  1. The need for effectiveness of the call to action: To improve the UX on the website, it is important to have a clear and effective call to action for visitors (on a banner or button). Recording visitor behavior can help you determine if your current call to action (CTA) is effective, and if not, make necessary changes.
  2. Refusal to purchase goods put in the basket: This is an important factor to track and analyze when evaluating the user experience on your website. By recording visitor behavior, you can understand why they choose not to purchase items they have added to their shopping carts. This information can help you make changes to improve usability and increase micro or macro conversions.
  3. Difficulty communicating with the support team: Communication with support teams is a critical component of the usability of a website. Recording visitor behavior and learning the data can help you find any issues with the communication process and make improvements to enhance the user experience.
  4. Delays in responding to interactive activities: Visitors expect fast and responsive interactions on a website, so it is important to monitor and analyze visitor behavior to identify any delays or issues (with a filter or search). Recording and analyzing visitor activity can help you find areas for development and optimize the user experience.
  5. Lack of intuitive design on the entire website or pages: Intuitive design is a key component of the UX of a website. You can investigate how consumers interact with pages on a website where the design could be more intuitive by tracking visitor behavior.
  6. Need for faster adaptation of the visitor to the UI of the website: Adaptation to a website’s interface (UI) is an important factor in the user experience. Recording data on visitor behavior can help you understand how quickly visitors adapt to your website and identify elements that need improvement to enhance their experience.
  7. Blurring of the target audience when positioning the product or landing page: Positioning a product correctly for the target audience is critical for success (otherwise, there is a risk that the visitor will leave the page). By recording visitor behavior, you can gain insight into how well your target audience responds to your landing page positioning and make any necessary changes.
  8. Vague product or money return guarantees: Clear and concise guarantees or trust can play a critical role in the user experience.
  9. Short product description: Providing complete and accurate product descriptions are crucial for a website’s positive user experience.
  10. Lack of comments from visitors: Comments can tell a lot about how visitors use a website. You can determine if visitors actively comment by recording visitor behavior and analyzing the website or online store data.

By keeping track of who visits your website, you can learn a lot about how people use it and make the necessary changes to make the journey smooth and easy for your customers. No more guessing games no more lost sales. With this information at your fingertips, you’ll have the power to turn your website into a well-oiled machine that converts visitors into loyal customers.”

10 Best Practices for Visitors to Records on a Website

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The overwhelming world of website analysis can be tamed with the right tools for recording visitors, including heatmaps. These visual representations offer valuable insights into how website visitors interact with your site, including where they click, scroll, and spend their time. By setting up heatmaps and analyzing them, you can optimize your website for better engagement and conversion.

10 Best Practices for Analyzing Website Visitors and Setting Up Heatmaps:

  1. Key Pages for Recording: Identify the most visited pages on your website, such as the home page, service pages, and product category pages, and set up heatmaps to track these pages.
  2. Understanding Recorded User Behavior: Use heatmaps to gain insights into how visitors interact with your website, such as where they click, how far they scroll, and how long they stay on each page.
  3. Sufficient Data: Ensure enough data is collected by selecting an appropriate time range when analyzing heatmaps.
  4. User Engagement Statistics: Monitor statistics to identify sessions without clicks or single-page sessions, which may indicate poor website traffic quality.
  5. Page-Level Heatmaps: Study heatmaps for individual pages to understand visitor behavior and interactions with specific elements.
  6. Mouse Movements and Scroll Depth: Analyze cursor movements and scroll reports to gain a deeper understanding of visitor behavior, show anomalies, and make decisions on how to improve your content structure based on the data.
  7. Click Intensity: Observe the size of hot spots on heatmaps to understand the number of clicks each element receives.
  8. Sequence of Clicks: Look at the detailed information provided by hovering over hot spots to understand the sequence of clicks and visitor behavior.
  9. Screen Size: Remember that visitors with larger screens may move their mouse more and not scroll as much, so consider this when analyzing mouse movements and scroll depth reports.
  10. Informed Decisions: Use the information from heatmaps and related reports to make informed decisions about optimizing your website and improving the visitor experience. By following these best practices, you can gain valuable insights into visitor behavior and take action to enhance their experience on your website.

Heatmaps tell you a lot about how people use your website and can help you make smart decisions about improving it and the user experience.

The key questions in these lists of records website visitors.

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Internationally renowned UX design authorities Matt Isherwood, Rolf Molich, and Jakob Nielsen have come up with lists of rules that professional testers follow when analyzing the UX of website and landing page design.

  • Clarity of the current state of a system or website The design should provide the visitor with the ability at any time to understand where he is, what actions brought him to this place, and what the result of his next steps will be. An example of the implementation of this principle: the icon “You are here now” on the maps of stores or other public places.
  • The system must correspond to the real world To navigate the site, words that are understandable to an untrained visitor should be used and not the professional jargon of programmers or experts in any other field. For instance, sections in an online store are named the same as in a regular supermarket and not as they are called in the code.
  • User control over the consequences of his actions and the freedom to cancel them A visitor can commit some action by mistake or due to a misunderstanding of the cause-and-effect relationship. He should be able to completely undo his actions and roll back to the starting point without consequences. For example, if you accidentally add the same item to the cart twice, the e-store interface should explicitly warn you about this and not deduct a double price from your account without your consent.
  • Following familiar patterns If on the nine sites out of 10 registration forms, the buttons for subscribing to newsletters and the shopping cart are located in similar places and act on a similar principle, this can be considered a certain standard recorded in a visitor’s subconsciousness. If the tenth site’s designers decide to be original and place the same elements specially, forcing the visitor to spend time and effort searching for them, most likely, this website will merely lose the client. Jakob Nielsen formulated this principle as follows: “visitors spend most of their time not on your site, but other resources. Therefore, when they come to you, they want everything to work the same way it came from.”
  • Prevent errors What do you prefer: to read a beautifully designed message that you made a mistake and instructions on how to fix it? Or, maybe, you’d like to know that even if you make a mistake through ignorance or inattention, the system will recognize the error in time, fix it and perform the operation you need? I think the answer is obvious. Imagine a dividing line on a highway. Definitely, you shouldn’t cross it. However, a low concrete barrier, just in case, prevents you from entering the oncoming lane.
  • Not to remember, but to recognize There is no need to turn your website navigation into a “Find the item” quest. You shouldn’t run a test for the amount of mental RAM for a visitor who fills out a form on your page. Everything a visitor to your website needs to surf successfully should be in front of his eyes or within direct reach. The main menu should be placed at the distance of the mouse movement to the edge of the screen. To hide it behind a dozen clicks on the “back” the arrow on the way to the main page — is a crime against usability.
  • Customization for each client A basic set of required elements must be present on any site. All these buttons, banners, arrows, and shapes should be understandable even for the person who turned on the computer for the first time today, and your website is the first thing he saw. However, the experienced visitor needs to be able to customize the website for himself. Additional menus recorded as turned by default in his profile will be a good reward for an experienced internet surfer. A convenient route for a tourist is laid out on Google map. But locals can take a shortcut through the courtyards.
  • Sniper Design: one shoot — one hit The heuristic evaluation of UX design assumes that each of its elements carries not only an aesthetic but also a functional load. A jam of pretty bells and sparkling whistles scatters attention and takes the visitor away from the main purpose of visiting the site. Have you seen ancient swords in museums? Their austere beauty lies in their embodied functionality. While richly ornamented samples of ceremonial weapons sometimes make it difficult to pick them up reliably.
  • The error message should be as clear as possible and contain practical guide on how to fix it After making a mistake and causing a crash, you would rather see a clear explanation of exactly what you did wrong and a summary of how to restore the status quo. Road signs indicate the need for a turn or warn of danger, and do not refer to a paragraph or a certain record from the traffic rules instead.
  • Help and additional documentation Ideal for any website — the design such intuitive and visitor-friendly that there is no need for any additional explanations. However, if the certificate is necessary, it should be presented in the most accessible language, understandable to a person without special training.

Signs and announcements at airports and train stations are as clear as possible. But if you need more information, you can get it from the help desk in an understandable form.

Plerdy Tools for Record Website Visitors

The tools that fully provide the ability to analyze any website based on the above principles are fully represented on the Plerdy platform.

All Plerdy CRO & SEO tools focus on achieving tangible results in the shortest possible time. Their use allows us to guarantee the following key indicators:

  • Website funnel optimization and conversion growth
  • The increased average revenue per visitor
  • Lower cart abandonment rate
  • Decreased bounce rate
  • Lower churn rate and increased customer lifetime value
  • Increased customer retention rate

At the same time, the use of these tools guarantees an increase in the conversion of your website and allows you to save your marketers, analysts, SEO, and UX design specialists from 10 to 30 hours per month, delivering them from unnecessary manual recordings.

The main approaches that Plerdy uses are Heatmap and Session Replay.

Heatmap A tool from the Plerdy arsenal allows you to track a visitor’s movement around the website from the first click to the exit.

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Heatmaps record where the visitor lingered, which spot or element he ignored, where he tried to click on a picture or a word, but it turned out to be unclickable. And the most important thing is that heatmaps give a clear idea of ​​when and where the visitor left the site.

The analysis of such records shows how to correct the UX interface and guide the visitor from the first click on your header to the final checkout.

Using heatmaps to optimize your website allows you to achieve the necessary results in the shortest time:

  • 99% data accuracy
  • Clicks on dynamic elements
  • Quick UX analysis
  • Recording data from Single Page Application Measurement (SPAs)
  • The records of real-time website tracking
  • 10%+ growth of micro and macro conversions

Session Replay tool that allows you to see the website through the visitor’s eyes. Session Replay records all visitor actions, clearly recording the time spent at every point on the site, every visitor’s mouse click, movement, scrolling, etc. Analysts and SEO specialists can repeatedly review the records and see what attracts the visitor and causes rejection. This approach is a direct path to converting a visitor into a customer.

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Session Replay provides in recorded form deep and detailed visitor segmentation. In particular, the analyst receives information:

  • by the type of device from which the visitor logs to the site
  • by visitor geolocation
  • by typical behavior.

Session Replay independently divides visitors into groups according to specified criteria, records their activity, and analyzes each group separately.

A comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of a website by recording visitor actions allows you to get the following benefits:

  • Quick configuration
  • Multiple filters
  • More accurate data
  • Ability to record all pages
  • Recording data from SPA sites
  • Guest access to specific videos

The tools that make up the comprehensive Plerdy platform make website conversion grow in several ways simultaneously. In addition, increasing the efficiency of sales through landing pages, in general, such an approach significantly affects the development of the business, its structure, and priorities.

A Quick Overview of 10 Tools for Recording Visitors on Websites

Are you tired of guessing what your website visitors are doing and feeling? With so many tools available, choosing the right one for your business can be overwhelming. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of 10 popular visitor recording tools with their key features and a brief description.

  • Contentsquare: A platform that goes beyond traditional analytics to provide a deep understanding of the customer experience (CX) and transform your business.
  • Glassbox: An organization that empowers businesses to create frictionless digital journeys for their customers.
  • Hotjar: A tool that provides product experience insights to show how users behave and what they feel strongly about.
  • Smartlook: An analytics solution that answers the “whys” behind user actions.
  • Mouseflow: A behavior analytics tool used by digital marketing, UX, product, startups, and enterprise clients.
  • FullStory: A trusted digital experience intelligence platform that combines rich product analytics and robust session detail.
  • Plerdy: CRO&SEO tools to achieve maximum conversion level and analyze important statistics.
  • Lucky Orange: A tool that helps understand why website visitors isn’t converting into sales or leads.
  • Quantum Metric: An AI-powered platform that delivers business insights and empowers data-driven decision-making.
  • SessionCam: This tool provides session replay, conversion rate optimization, and heatmap analysis based on visitor recording.

These are just a few of the many visitor recording tools available in the market. You can compare their G2 scores, user satisfaction, and other key metrics to choose the one that fits your business needs best. Happy hunting!

Record Website Visitors Help Business

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In the context of priorities, the choice of certain filters for recording visitor actions on the website and fine-tuning the recording process itself is determined by the tasks that the analyst sets for himself.

The starting point for such a task is the data obtained using Google Analytics or similar services. These numbers show the percentage of conversions, the number of refusals from registrations or purchases, etc. However, for an accurate and scientifically sound interpretation of these results, a carefully configured record of the entire period of the visitor’s stay on the website is necessary. Moreover, these conclusions are the only way for the successful practical application of the findings.

The recording of the visitor’s actions are supposed to solve the two main tasks. They sound almost the same, but for real, they work in two different directions.

  1. Improving the leading indicators of the website.
  2. Optimization of the essential pages of the website.

In the first case, we mainly discuss a comprehensive analysis of visitors’ interaction with UX design elements on your site. It concerns the content, ease of filling out forms, their general design, the time required for registration, and ease of correction of errors. We study the elements that pushed the visitor to leave your website to reduce bounce rate prematurely.

In this case, the analysis of the records allows a series of behavioral experiments to be carried out, correcting the detected errors. The ultimate measure of success is expanding your conversion funnel.

The second approach involves an in-depth study of the interaction of such pages on your website as:

  • Homepage
  • Product page
  • Checkout page
  • Landing page

General resource page. The resource page can contain reviews of the products presented on your site, expert recommendations, operating instructions, drivers, blogs, etc.

The main goal of this in-depth study of the website by recording visitor actions is to study the ease of navigation, the readability of texts, the smoothness of transitions, the general relevance and availability of information.

Recording Website Visitors importance

The uniqueness of such a tool as recording visitor sessions is that you can see the visitor’s actions and feel his mood. Looking through the entry several times, you can see a lot:

  • where he obviously scrolls the page in annoyance in search of the necessary button or section;
  • where he stops to read the schedule carefully;
  • where he enters information into the form fields several times, bumping into the same error.

Thus, you can collect “disappointment statistics” and, conversely, mark successful design, content, and psychological approaches.

Re-watching the records and exploring the nuances of the visitor behavior while sending products to the cart, you can understand why exactly he is doing this. Perhaps, in this manner, he is simply sorting out future purchases. Maybe this is a convenient way for him to compare the price, Or, quite possibly, he intends to buy it right away, but the rejection occurs at the checkout level.

Summing up

Finding the right software to record website visitors is crucial for businesses to optimize their websites and improve the user experience. Capturing user behavior data can provide valuable insights into how visitors interact with the site and identify pain points. Many options are available, free and paid, with varying features and pricing plans. When starting your search, it’s important to consider your specific needs and watch out for any onboarding fees or limitations. A comparison of different packages can help you determine the best option for your business.

Additionally, considering both quantitative and qualitative data, such as heatmaps and video recordings, can provide a more comprehensive understanding of visitor behavior. With the right software, you might find great potential to enable effective improvements to your website. Take advantage of this opportunity, try Plerdy for free today and see how it can take your website to the next level.

Andrew Chornyy - 001
Article by:
CEO Andrew Chornyy

CEO Plerdy — expert in SEO&CRO with over 14 years of experience.

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