When you’re running a business, data is power. Knowing the key metrics of your business enables you to make informed decisions on how to grow it and manage any problems.

The performance of your website and videos is key to the success of any online business, so here are 5 tools that are simple to implement and use, to help you track what your website visitors are doing.

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the starting point for tracking what people are doing on your website and how they got there, plus it’s free!

When you set up a Google Analytics account, just copy the HTML code they give you into your website and you’re all set.

The dashboard will show you how many people visit your site each day, where they’re from, how they got to your site, which pages they visit, how many pages they viewed on average and how long they spent on your site. It’s worth spending some time familiarising yourself with the dashboard as some of the options aren’t easy to locate.

You can even set targets for key metrics such as number of pages visited and visit duration, so that you can then concentrate on improving those targets.

2. Google Search Console

Previously known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console is a more user-friendly version that helps you understand how your website is being found in Google searches (so you no longer have to be a ‘Webmaster’ to figure out how to use it!). It’s also free to use.

In Search Console, you can see the different keywords that send traffic to your website, how you are appearing and ranking for those keywords, and how your search traffic differs between desktop and mobile and for different geographical regions.

It will also tell you which pages have errors or issues, such as not being mobile-friendly, or if Google is unable to crawl the page for any reason.

If you update a page, you can use the URL Inspection Tool (previously known as Fetch as Google) to recrawl your site to give you updated results.

3. Hotjar

Hotjar is a tool with free and paid options (free for low traffic sites) that creates visual reports such as heat-maps and also recordings of each visitor’s activity on your page.

A heat map indicates which areas of your webpages are viewed the most, so you can spot if you are displaying important information on an area of your site that is hardly seen.

Activity recordings show both the movement of the cursor while your site is being used, plus when each user clicked the mouse buttons. This will help you see if your site isn’t as user-friendly as it could be, so that you can improve the experience.

One important feature is a pop-up mini survey that asks each user whether there is anything that can be improved on the page. Even if only a small percentage of users respond, it will give you important feedback to address the key issues on your site.

Hotjar has both free and chargeable plans, based on the number of views per day.

4. CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg is an alternative to Hotjar, featuring heatmaps, scrollmaps and other visual reports, but doesn’t make recordings of live visitor activity.

One additional benefit it does have over Hotjar is the ability to A/B test elements of your website, such as the position of a video on your homepage. You can test different titles, calls to action and even different colour buttons to see which one is more effective over time.

CrazyEgg are currently offering a 30-day free trial.

5. Wistia

Wistia is a video hosting platform, like YouTube or Vimeo, but one big advantage it has over those platforms is the ability to report how viewers are responding to your videos.

You can view graphs showing at what points in your video people stop watching, or rewind, so that you can edit them to make them more effective.

It also allows you to add Calls to Action in the video, such as clicking the video window to go to another page on your site, or it can display an email field in the video window to help grow your email list. You could ask people to enter their email address to watch the rest of the video, or to be sent a free report.

The great news is that Wistia is free for up to 3 videos, which is perfect if you only want a couple of Explainer Videos on your website. If you regularly produce promotional or training videos, their chargeable plans start at $99 a month, but these tools can make the additional expense worthwhile.

Do any of these tools look ideal for your business? Please leave a comment below and let us know which you are going to use.

If you’re thinking about using animated Explainer Videos in your business, please click here to contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how we can help you grow your business with animation.

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