Ninja Tools for Conversion Rate Optimization (via Tim Ash)

You may look at your landing page and think you’ve rolled out the red carpet for your visitors, but in actuality visitors often see an insurmountable wall to climb to reach conversion. What we (the marketers responsible for pages) see and what they (the page visitors) see can be very different. But Conversion Ninjas know they are too close to their landing pages see where the problems lie. That’s why conversion ninjas use smart tools to diagnose problems. In yesterday’s ion webinar, Tim Ash, the Chief Conversion Ninja  himself, shared his five favorite tools for spotting trouble areas.

• Crazy Egg - an inexpensive, in-page web analytics tool which features: mouse heatmaps, live data gathering, and easy implementation with one line of javascript per web page. Crazy Egg allows you to see if people are clicking on non-clickable images and also allows you to see click patterns based on screen resolution and traffic source. As Tim said, you’ll be surprised by what people are actually clicking on (hint: it’s often not where you think).

• ClickTale - another inexpensive, in-page web analytics tool that allows you to record and playback user sessions. Being able to watch user sessions in playback mode allows you to gather advanced analytics such as hesitation and hover timing. You’ll also see how far the average user scrolls, and what fields cause the most delay/confusion.

• UserTesting.com - online usability testing software that allows you to set up a task to be performed, and then monitors pre-screen subjects (taught to speak out loud) as they navigate through your web page. With this tool you will observe actual problems that unfamiliar users have with your page.

• Cross Browser Testing - allows you to test different operating systems, browsers and applications in combination to identify any page issues. 

• Attention Wizard - a visual attention tool created by Tim’s company, SiteTuners.com that simulates human attention patterns and generates a heatmap. This tool will show you how to balance your page before you go live by showing you which visual elements are likely to distract from your goals.

And of course, no list of conversion tools would be complete without a hat tip to LiveBall, ion’s landing page management platform.  LiveBall enables enterprise marketing teams to optimize landing pages for scary-good conversions. With LiveBall you can easily create sophisticated landing experiences, run real-time split testing and get actionable data to help you make smart decisions for increased conversions.

Many thanks to Tim for some great landing page tips yesterday!

Comments

[Michaleen]

Great tools - thanks for sharing.

Do you know of any great tools for updating leads based on # of conversions? IE. A user filled out a form ... then they downloaded a doc .... etc?

[Anna Talerico]

I am not sure about updating leads based on # of actions - I would think the marketing automation platforms would allow you to do that type of tracking and updating.

LiveBall allows you to score users based on their landing page engagement (Just as an example -- if they fill out a form they are an "c", then if they download a white paper, they are a C+, and if they click a "how to buy" link they become an A-. Etc.

[Jennifer Williams]

Good to read informative article!! We usually listen the speeches but we not follow them, because they good to listen but not to be apply in our life.
Thanks & Regards
Jennifer Williams
http://www.datarecoverysoftware.com/

[Ben]

These are great tools, i personally use clicktale which has the best of the bunch in my opinion. Its heatmaps are second to none.

[Anna Talerico]

Good to hear Ben - thanks for the comment, always best to hear straight from someone using it.