Digital Journal. Conversion research. (part11)& addon — Google Analytics Health Check.
By: Elvir Munjakovic
Tags: Marketing Strategies, Cxl Institute, Cxl Minidegree, Growth Hacking

Mouse tracking and what is that all about? Ring model.

As the name implies — track mouse movements and clicks on a website. It can be used for various purposes, but those most common are:

-where people click and where they don’t (click maps),

-how far down they scroll on any given page (scroll maps) where people click

There are also heat maps — but there is no correlation where people click and look. No useful correlation between eye movements and mouse movements — apart from the obvious looking at where you are about to click.

One needs to gather a large enough sample size for each page the heat maps are generated for. Aim should be data of 2000, or even 5000 visitors per page analyzed and not lower than 300 (otherwise the margin of error is too big).

Most tools offer you three options:

§ Attention heat maps (generated by algorithm based on mouse cursor movements),

§ click maps that show the aggregated click activity on the page

§ scroll maps (how far down people scroll)

Let me explain each: click maps are useful to see click distribution and if CTA gets more clicks than the rest of the page.

Attention heat maps are interesting, but…always generated by an algorithm — so this is somebody’s interpretation. Take the results with a grain of salt. For most tools attention heat map and click heat map look similar.

Scroll maps — it’s a fact that the longer the page, the fewer people reach the end.

User recordings are vital for conversion optimizers — you can see actual users interact with your site. They fill in missing links for insight, help you understand how actual users use your forms, check out, and the issues they face. Allocate yourself a day (or at least half a day) to watch these videos where people proceed through the site, its well worth it to understand usage patterns and problems they run into.

Pro tip: The best tools let you segment the data by browser, visitor type, behavior, errors. Use this to understand the differences between different segments — mobile vs desktop users, new vs returning, etc.

There are tools on the market that generate “instant” heat maps based on some algorithms. These are machines predicting stuff, and the information is NOT based on your actual users.

The “instant” part of these tools is attractive but always bear in mind that websites are contextual, and your buyers are not machines.

Tools that can be used:

Hotjar (all around winner for SMEs)

SessionCam (enterprise)

Clicktale (great, but expensive)

Inspectlet (I liked it at first, but then started to doubt the accuracy of their data)

CrazyEgg (not really good value for money compared to other tools, lacks user session videos)

Mouseflow

Ghostrec

Ring Model

is a quick and effective way to identify where your biggest leaks are.

The model is developed by Craig Sullivan and it looks at the ‘layers’ or ‘levels’ reached. It focuses on depth of engagement, not pages viewed.

Ring Model

It’s similar to a funnel as it helps you see the key loss steps. In true nature, the model helps one to see where the flow is stuck. Or where traffic is not “converting” into the next level. It helps you see layers of a webpage that needs the most help.

The author suggested to use a standard Google Analytics report for constructing it: Behavior -> Site Content -> All pages.

Then do it with this is two-fold:

Map out traffic flow per layer of the site (and see where the flow is stuck) Verify whether the goal funnel has been configured properly

Here’s the flow:

1. Start with a manual walkthrough of the site to map out the URL structure.

2. Count the unique pageviews per layer.

3. Check the numbers against what you see in Conversions -> Goals -> Funnel Visualization.