Users have needs. They are on your website because of something. It could be either for education or to obtain solutions to their problems. The goal of a business website is reached when it guides users to find the purpose for which they are on the site. And this can only be done by understanding the current user’s journey.

This article is the fourth of our conversion rate series, and it’s about knowing your site audience and figuring out the obstacles in their ways while browsing your website. In the first, we introduced conversion rate and conversion funnel. And in the second, we discussed conversion rate audits.

Now, we will continue where we stopped in the third article, in which we discussed quantitative research, which involves using analytic tools to view the conversion rate of the pages in your sales funnel. Today, I’ll take you a bit deeper by introducing you to the qualitative aspect of the research.

Quantitative research may show your funnel’s conversion number from one page to the other, but it can’t offer you reasons for the decrease. To understand this part of the problem, you need to learn the qualitative aspect of the research. Now, let’s discover the obstacles frustrating your users on your website journey.

Tools for Quantitative Research

Analytics will present your website performance in terms of digits and percentages. It does this by evaluating the quantity of incoming and outgoing traffic your web pages receive. But it can’t tell why one page is getting more traffic than the other pages, nor can it tell why a particular page is a reason for the most exit.

You need to add more tools to your arsenal for all these answers. You need qualitative analysis tools to identify things your users struggle with on your website. These tools include:

  • Heatmap

Heatmaps are data visualization tools that show an event’s volume density in colors and graphical representations. It takes expertise to understand data presented in rows and columns, bars, and charts, but anyone can comprehend and interpret heatmaps analysis.

In website development and split testing, heatmap tools are used to see which parts of a web page get the most clicks. These tools help website designers figure out the attractive buttons, call-to-actions, and other page elements leading visitors down the conversion funnel. Also, they use them to weed out elements confusing site visitors.

These tools usually represent clicks with green dots. The parts that get the most clicks are represented with red dots showing that they have been clicked many times. Like other analytic tools, there are many heatmap software on the internet. The best ones include HWO, Contentsquare, Fullstory, Hotjar, and Crazy Egg. Choosing the same tool for your heatmaps and split testing is best. You should check the first blog of the series to learn about Split/AB testing.

Also, choose a tool that provides an element list heatmap. This remarkable tool shows the performances of the hidden elements on your pages. Perhaps you have a drop-down list of size options on your ecommerce store and want to know if people are using this feature. It’s a list heatmap because it presents the report as a list.

  • Scrollmap

Not everyone who lands on the page reads the content to the bottom. Some take their exit after scrolling down 25% of the page and ignore every other thing at the bottom. Scrollmap is the tool for discovering if your page content arrangement is engaging.

Scrollmaps are also heatmaps, so they display reports using colors to represent hot and cold areas on the page. The red color usually stands for the most desirable area on the page, which means that part most people touched before leaving your site.

The color goes from red to yellow to green and finally blue, representing the page’s coldest region. There could be a change in convention. Always follow the one used by the chosen tool.

This tool will help you know where you’re losing your audiences on your pages. And what part to put your buttons and conversion points to get the most clicks? Crazy Egg and VWO offer Scrollmap tools.

  • Visitor recordings

Even with sitemaps, you may still not discover the problem encountered by your users in their journey. You are the website owner and know how to navigate the site better than them. So you may find it difficult to enter their shoes and see their frustrations. However, this can be overcome by using visitor recording tools.

The visitor recording or session recording tools help to monitor and record how users interact with your web pages and their elements. After a while, you can watch the video to see visitors’ browsing patterns on your website. Then, you can follow the pattern to discover where the problem lies.

It could be that they were discouraged by a bug or broken button. Most users will leave after experiencing any of these errors, and it’s only in a rare case you will receive a message concerning the issue. But with visitor recording tools, you don’t have to make guesses and wait till a user complains. The video will reveal their frustration with your user experience.

Qualitative analysis tool providers such as Hotjar, VWO, Contentsquare, and Fullstory provide session recording tools for website owners and businesses.

  • Form analytic

Forms are an integral part of conversion funnels. Your audience will need to register for a free trial account or submit their email to subscribe to your communities. As it may help boost your conversion rate, it can also be a huge turn-off for your visitors if not done correctly. For this reason, you need a form analytic tool to see how web visitors respond to your forms.

Form analytic tools tell the average duration your visitors spend filling out your forms. You could even see the average time spent on each field and discover the part causing them to abandon your website. Most qualitative analysis platforms also offer form analytic reports. You could also go for standalone form analytical software like Formisimo and Leadformly.

  • Website surveys

Tools can help to reveal some errors or frustrations in your user experience. However, the right people who can give the best review of your user experience are your audience. And you can make them do this through on-page surveys. All you need to do is to ask the right question.

You can ask them to describe their first experience on your site or things they would like to change on your website. The surveys should not be long, just a field demanding an answer to a simple question.

Conclusion

Implementing these tools on your website will help you discover many things about your website and user experience. Sitemaps for seeing clicks. Session recordings for capturing and monitoring users’ journeys on your site, form analytics for figuring out the ambiguities on your forms, and surveys for collecting first-hand website reviews from your audience.

All these data, including those quantitative analytics collected in the previous article exercise, will assist in making useful hypotheses about your website in the next article. Make sure you read the next one and follow us to the end.