5 Ways to Improve Analytics of your Website
Having information on site’s performance is critical for understanding your customer interactions online. Enormous amount of data is generated, when customers access data from different devices. However, is that data going to be granular enough to produce actionable information?
Most analytics solutions have data on page views or maybe a form submission but, that’s usually not enough to identify issues and produce actionable information on usability, content engagement, or navigation.
Here are 5 solutions that could help:
1. Form Progression/Abandonment Tracking
Forms can be critical for a site’s performance and in a lot of cases, they can be choke points for customers because of information the forms ask for. Knowing which field a customer abandons gives you the data to help an actionable decision, optimize the form instead of guessing which fields are the issue.
How it’s done?
Form Fields have a number events that can be tracked such as when the field was selected or when the customer leaves. Listening for those events using JavaScript Tag Management Solution like Adobe Dynamic Tag Manager, Google Tag Manager, or Tealium, allows you to capture these events with your analytics solution.
How hard is it?
It is a simple process. Most forms can be tracked in a few hours using a Tag Management Solution, JQuery, or JavaScript.
Softcrylic has also produced a solution which can dynamically track every form field on a site and can integrate with Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and most other analytics solutions. Our teams have implemented this type of tracking across most major analytics platforms.
2. Scroll Depth Tracking
Wouldn’t it be nice to know if a customer reached the bottom of your page, reached an ad, or at least got half way? It’s possible and can give you data to help actionable decisions on content length, structure, ad placement and more.
How it’s done?
There are a number of different ways you can customize Scroll Depth Tracking but, they all follow the same principle. For each page a browser visits, we can determine the size of the entire page, the size of the visible area, the “viewport”, and the position of the viewport.
A little math will help you determine where the customer is on the page and even allow to focus on different parts of the user’s screen like the middle 50% of the viewport. We then select the points of a page that we want to track such as a percentage of a page viewed, or specific elements that the user see’s on a page such as an ad or info graphic.
How hard is it?
There are a number of open source plugins and? guidelines. But, it takes someone comfortable with JavaScript to implement the tracking. In most cases, it can be implemented in a few hours and Most plugins allow you to track either percentage of the page viewed or a specific component.
Softcrylic also has a proprietary solution specialized for content. For example, our blog post would be split up into 3 major sections we would track.
- Content Body (Green)
- Case Study Ad (Yellow)
- Contact Form (Blue)
The data collect would allow us to see how much of a blog post was viewed, if a customer reached the case study, and if they reached the form.
3. Heat Maps
Heat Maps are a great tool to quickly summarize where users click, hover, or move their mouse to. It is a great tool to help optimize the user experience and the content on a website.
How it’s done?
There are a number of different vendors that provide SaaS tools (like Crazyegg) that generate heat maps using tags deployed through your website via code changes or through a TMS like Ensighten. They also provide the tools to display Heat Maps based on user segments.
There are some customization’s that are necessary to produce accurate heat maps. Since Heat maps are produced by users’ actions (mouse movement, clicks hovers), they include all actions including hovering menus, carousels, or modals. Some tools allow you to exclude these types of actions or display them separately.
How hard is it?
Very little or Zero learning curve is required for the implementation of these tools. Most TMS systems have tag templates already installed. However, if customization’s are needed, it will require someone familiar with the tool and with client-side development skill set.
4. Internal Link Tracking
Internal Link Tracking can provide critical insight into what links are driving the most interaction or conversions. For example, if you have multiple calls-to-action driving to the same lead form, the most you would be able to derive from any analytics solution is the previous page. Internal Link tracking would allow you to determine which CTA drove the most conversions on the lead form.
How it’s done?
Most analytics tools have some version of internal link tracking. Some are manual and require code, others are “automatic” (automatic <> perfect). Google Analytics has “Enhanced Link Attribution” which, uses the nearest “id” on an HTML element. However, unless every element has a unique ID, it is not true “link tracking”.
Customization is usually the way to go. You don’t need to tag everything with an internal link tracking value but, tagging the links that drive to conversion or engagement is a great place to start. Also, tagging can be completed progressively as you begin to understand more about your users.
How hard is it?
It depends on the level of customization. As with most things in life, the better results usually come from diligent work. Google Analytics “Enhanced Link Attribution” is relatively easy to implement and is a simple change to the Google Analytics base tag.
However, a custom implementation in Adobe is going to take planning and changes to every link that needs to be tracked, sometimes involving IT or other site resources. But with the right planning, you can develop a strategy that can be easily deployed with minimal changes.
5. Error Tracking
Error tracking provides insight to what users encounter on your site. This can be anything from a 404 error because a URL was incorrect to a lead form or key functionality on a site. Errors cause users to not only abandon your site but also, creates a negative impact on customer satisfaction.
How it’s done?
Most error tracking implementations cover multiple scenarios. The most common are tracking error pages such as 404 & 500 errors, form submissions or validation like a lead form or finding, to reservations and flows such as a checkout or setting an appointment.
Most companies have ways to track errors on a website via server logs or a separate back-end system. So, why do we need to track errors in analytics? Tracking errors in analytics allows you to quantify the impact of an error or identify issues in the user’s experience and hence, it is quintessential.
How hard is it?
Again, it depends on the level of customization. Planning an implementation is critical to a good implementation with actionable reporting. By partnering with your technical resources, you will be able to identify and pass the data to your analytics or TMS.
However, error tracking can be very straightforward to set up. Most website errors are easily identified and scraped using your TMS or custom JavaScript. But, this should only be used if you cannot get the errors passed from the website’s code.
Thus implementation of a more comprehensive error tracking strategy enhances the performance of your site and boosts return from marketing investments by identifying problems quickly, understand the scale, and enabling your teams to resolve errors with actionable information instead of assumptions.
