Simple Tools To Use To Optimize Your Website
Website optimization has never been more important than it is now. A clunky, resource-inefficient site can be a death-knell for startups and established businesses alike in more ways than one; customers who feel like your site is slow and uncomfortable to use will turn away. Thankfully, there are some top-notch resources available for driven businesspeople looking to ensure their web presence is dominant. In this piece, we’ll explore two of the most powerful tools to master.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics might just be the all-time champion of free, online business tools. Offering business leaders the ability to access unbelievably valuable data about their websites’ general performance, Google Analytics is designed to be valuable to smaller businesses while being scalable as businesses grow and thrive.
Google Analytics leverages the power of Google’s search engine to create a simple-but-detailed toolset that lets you see everything you need in one place. With a few simple clicks, you can immediately determine what pages on your site visitors are spending the most time, how visitors are getting to your site, and what types of devices they’re accessing your site with.
The types of devices your visitors are using to browse your site are vital to know, especially when it comes to mobile, and with Google Analytics, you can get a very accurate snapshot of the number of users on mobile versus desktop, the percentages of users on iOS vs. Android, and the differences in browsing behaviors between each device and OS type. Those unique browsing habits can reveal optimization and design strengths – or issues – present in your site.
The sheer variety of data types made available through Google Analytics can highlight unique challenges your users are encountering on your site that might otherwise never come to light while also letting you hone your business’ other efforts online. For example, imagine that you’re seeing a surge of iPhone users after you set up a coupon campaign. Google Analytics can let you keep tabs on how well your coupons are driving business while still letting you find, say, an issue where iPhone users are getting stuck on your homepage for much longer than users on Android. Picking up on key pieces of information like this can give you the edge you need to ensure your site is precisely tuned and optimized.
We wrote a quick guide on the reports to look at at help you dive in.
HotJar
Where Google Analytics brings a stunning breadth of data, HotJar brings focused precision and unprecedented detail. Google Analytics is the foundation that acts as the stable ground upon which HotJar can help your business truly flourish. HotJar’s true strength lies in its ability to provide deep data that paints an accurate picture of how your users actually use your site; HotJar, to put it simply, lets you see how real people interact with every piece of your site.
One of HotJar’s most impressive features is the “heatmap.” This tool provides a visual representation of where your users click, move, hover, scroll their mouse cursors and touch features. The heatmap can be customized by browsing platform, too, meaning that if you’re trying to get a good picture of the mobile experience of your site, you’ll be able to get a unique map for tablets or smartphones without worrying about mixed data from non-mobile devices.
What’s more, is that using HotJar, you can get anonymized recordings of your user’s behavior on your site, which can ultimately be tied to whether they ended up making a purchase, downloading a trial version of your software, or requesting further information. If you have fillable forms on your site, you can even have HotJar measure interaction with individual fields within your forms, discovering which spots interested customers avoid or get hung up on.
Between Analytics and HotJar, you have the tools you need to make your site truly great. Optimization is the name of the game in 2019. Everyone can have a website these days after all, but not everyone can have one that runs smooth as silk. Optimization is key to beating out the competition, and Google Analytics, HotJar, and a little bit of careful observation are the surefire path to optimization for your company’s site. While no single tool is a magic bullet, combining the broad nature of Google Analytics with the hyperfocus and details of HotJar will allow you to carefully tune the design of your site to match your brand and your customers’ needs.