Every ecommerce store owner wants (or should) to make thier site customer friendly and improve conversion rates. Usually these two go hand in hand with measuring & testing of your site needed to find improvements. Most people know about Google Analytics but what else is out there to help you optimize your site? Here are five tools, two from Google and three from other companies, that will help you figure out what can be improved with your online store.
4Q iPerceptions
4Q by iPerceptions is a free survey tool to find out why visitors are leaving your site or not completing the actions you want them to on your website. The drawback is that you only get 5 questions per survey and they are all predefined; no room for custom questions. On the upside you really don’t want much more than 5 questions on a survey because people are less likely to complete the survey the more questions there are and you have the ability to customize some answers. Here is a video on how to setup by Avinash Kaushik:
<object width=“425” height=“344”><param name=“movie” value=“https://www.youtube.com/v/o2LJliORQPQ&hl=en&fs=1”>
<embed src=“https://www.youtube.com/v/o2LJliORQPQ&hl=en&fs=1” type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=“true” width=“425” height=“344”></embed></object>
ClickTale
ClickTale is an analytics tool similiar to Google Analytics but there are some significant differences. First the data is in real time which is great for getting immediate feedback for the current day on a change you just implemented. The really impressive part of ClickTale is that it actually records the visitor’s action so you can watch where they moused over, scrolled and clicked. The free version of ClickTale only allows 100 recordings per week but you can purchase more if needed. Another plus is you get to set what percentage of your visitors you want to record. Setup is just as easy as Google Analytics; you copy & past code into your header and footer then off to the races.
Google Website Optimizer
Google Website Optimizer is a way to A/B test your site and is integrated with Google Analytics to a certain extent. You can also use website optimizer with non google analytic sites so if you use other analytics software you are fine. You are able to create A/B tests or multivariate tests and it is best to go with A/B tests until you have them mastered. A/B tests are much easier to evaluate the multivariate tests and take less traffic for statistically relevant data. When you setup an A/B test you need three pages – the original page, an alternate page and a conversion page. Keep in mind a conversion does not have to be a purchase; it could be free account creation, newsletter signup, rss subscription, form completion or any other valuable action on your site.
Webmaster Tools
If you have a website and are not using Google Webmaster Tools then you should. The two main reasons is that it can help you in your quest to show up in the google organic search listings which is basically free traffic. It is also a great way to find your 404 pages (according to Google of course). A few other neat reports are the keyword tools which let you discover what keywords your website shows up for and provides nifty sitemap tools. Microsoft also has webmaster tools and analytics software so if you have mastered Google, want to expand to Microsoft or just need a second opinion then you can signup for both.
