Visualizing how your visitors interact with your website is hard. While a user-friendly design can be created to lure visitors into clicking on a specific part of a page – an ad, subscription box or buy button – you really don’t know how your visitors will react until you have enough data.

How do you get this data? Heatmaps. And to generate these heatmaps, you need a heatmap tool.

Heatmap tools allow you to gain valuable insight into the way that visitors interact with your site. These tools answer the following questions:

• Where do visitors click?
• How much are visitors scrolling on the page?
• What actions can I optimize to increase profits?

These tools are meant to give you an inside look into how your visitors interact with your website. Design and content additions can then be formulated to increase or optimize user behavior on the site. There is no more “guesswork” included – just factual data based on user behavior.

So, without further wait, we present:

The Top 10 Heatmap Tools

#1 Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is one of the biggest names in the industry. Naturally, the company had to be on our list because its tool is so widely used.

Is Crazy Egg that good?

It’s easy to use, it comes with a 30 day free trial, and there are 4 payment tiers to match every website’s demands. From a feature standpoint, Crazy Egg offers advanced features on their higher tier.

Let’s take a look at the features offered.

Features & Benefits

• Heatmap Reports
• Scrollmap Reports
• Confetti Reports
• Overlay Reports
• List Reports
• Multiple Domain Usage
• A/B Testing Feature
• Recordings feature

The difference between pricing tiers is as follows:

Basic: The basic tier costs $9/month and tracks: 10,000 visitors a month and 10 active pages.

Standard: Standard is for growing websites and costs $19/month. This tier tracks: 25,000 visitors a month and 20 active pages.

Plus: The most “popular” option costs $49/month. Under Plus, 100,000 visitors are tracked across 50 active pages with hourly reports offered. This tier also comes with:

• Advanced filtering
• Mobile heatmaps
• Priority email support

Pro: The final tier is the Pro tier and costs $99/month. Meant for large websites, 250,000 visitors are tracked across 100 pages. Hourly reports are provided, and advanced features include:

• Advanced filtering
• Mobile heatmaps
• Priority email support
• Multiple users

What I really like about Crazy Egg is the fact that even on the basic tier, you’ll gain access to all of the great tools provided to Pro users. While the advanced filtering is not provided or mobile heatmap support, the basic tier still provides valuable insight to website owners.

Pros

• Scrollmap shows how far users scroll before page abandonment.
• Site-clicks segmented by search terms and referral sources.
• Easy to determine what is hot on your site and make changes.

Cons

• The interface lacks user friendliness.
• Data collection can be sporadic.

Possibly the most powerful tool in the industry for heatmaps, Crazy Egg still has its faults. The interface is lacking in the UX department, which is a real shame. Options often seem hidden, or you’re left scratching your head on where to go next in the dashboard.

Once you surpass the initial learning curve, you’ll find that Crazy Egg can be a little sporadic with data collection.

Click data isn’t always accurate 100% of the time, but this seems to occur with all tools. The transition from one page to another isn’t continuous, so it’s hard to provide analysis on data.

That being said, Crazy Egg is a great tool and one of the best in the industry despite its interface woes.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Crazy Egg is a great tool and one of the best in the industry” user=”adpushup” usehashtags=”no”]

#2 Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange has truly made a name for themselves in the industry, and they offer a great suite of tools that help you visualize visitor behavior.

What makes Lucky Orange different?

It’s all about the features (more on that shortly). Compared to Crazy Egg, for example, Lucky Orange offers a wide range of tools to understand your user’s behavior. A 7-day free trial is offered (no credit card needed), and you’ll be able to test out these features for yourself.

Speaking of features, let’s see why Lucky Orange is different.

Features & Benefits

• Form Analytics
• Real-time Analytics
• Visitor Recordings / Live Sessions
• Heatmaps (click, mouse movement and scrolling)
• Live Visitor Map
• Visitor Polls

Lucky Orange also offers 4 pricing tiers:

Small: Small allows you to track up to 3 sites, 50,000 monthly page views and have 2 chat operators. This tier costs $10/month.

Medium: Medium allows 6 sites to be tracked, 100,000 monthly page views to be logged, and 4 chat operators. Pricing is $20/month.

Large: Large allows 12 sites to be tracked, 250,000 page views, and 8 chat operators. Pricing is $50/month.

X Large: The X Large tier enables 25 sites to be tracked, 1 million page views, and 11 chat operators. This tier costs $100/month.

All tiers allow for unlimited site recording and heatmap data. If you’re a user of Google Analytics, you might not care about the analytical data provided, but the visitor recording, live sessions and heatmaps are what we’re most interested in.

Pros

• Offers a full suite of optimization tools all at one price.
• Beautiful dashboard that is easy to use.
• Screen recording allows for true visitor behavior viewing.
• Accurate data and easy setup.

Cons

• Too much data provides data “overload” with little actionable insights.

Sometimes, too much data is a bad thing – when you don’t know what to do with it. This pertains to the form analytics and the lack of filtering options included in the heatmaps. What I do want to state is that there is an abundance of valuable information provided by the live sessions and the heatmaps.

Heatmaps will track a user’s mouse patterns, clicks and scrolling behavior.

If you’re still looking for a deeper insight into the user’s behavior, you can use a live session to really visualize how users are interacting with your site. The included chat (a little off topic) also allows you to interact with site visitors and answer their questions in real-time. This adds another layer of trust among visitors, and is very beneficial despite not being heatmap-related.

Saying that Lucky Orange is the most ambitious company on this list may be an understatement. The company has worked diligently to enhance their product offering, and for just $10 a month, you can’t ask for much more.

[easy-tweet tweet=”Saying that Lucky Orange is the most ambitious company on this list may be an understatement” user=”adpushup” usehashtags=”no”]

#3 ClickTale

ClickTale is one of those heatmap tools that you simply must add to a list like this, but it isn’t meant for every website. ClickTale requires users to contact a sales representative.

Signing up to try ClickTale requires you to have:

• 500,000 page views a month
• A dedicated staff person to talk to the sales team
• Have intentions of using the service if you see results

Again, this is a heatmap tool that is meant for the “exclusive” club, but it is very powerful and one of the best known in the industry.

Features & Benefits

• Session Playback
• Heatmap Panel
• Conversion Funnels
• Form Analytics
• Site Efficiency Tools

ClickTale also offers what is known as “ClickTale Touch,” which is meant for mobile users. The tools that ClickTale offers are best for websites that sell a products or services. The conversion funnel is a prime example of this.

Using the conversion funnel feature, you’ll be able to see how your visitors traverse from one page of your site to another, revealing where customers are lost and converted.

In terms of their heatmap, ClickTale does offer one of the better heatmap solutions on the market. ClickTale’s heatmap tracks:

• Mouse movement
• Clicks
• Attention (which parts of a page get the most attention)
• Scrolling behavior

ClickTale is a powerful solution.

Pros

• A wide-range of tools and features.
• Fluid dashboard with easy-to-use design.
• In-depth heatmap data.

Cons

• No standard pricing structure.
• Form analytics aren’t precise.

There was a time (2 years ago) that ClickTale didn’t have such obscure pricing. Free trials were offered and packages were broken down into two categories: personal and business. The company has changed a lot since then. Their offering has gotten much better, but the lack of a clear pricing structure will turn many webmasters and marketers away from the service.

The other issue I had with this service deals with form analyzation. When using a form, ClickTale would track drop down menus improperly by counting the scrolling through the menu options as a new interaction. This is a minor issue, but it may have been fixed since the last time I tried it.

Again, ClickTale is not for everyone, but it is one of the best heatmap tools on the market.

If you’re trying to find data that will lead to more sales and can meet the requirements of ClickTale, they are definitely a company to consider. The conversion funnel data alone will allow you to boost profits if tweaked properly.

[easy-tweet tweet=”The conversion funnel data alone will allow you to boost profits if tweaked properly.” user=”adpushup” usehashtags=”no”]

Highly Respected Alternatives

There’s a lot of other great tools that you can try as well. If you’ve tried all of the tools above or simply want to try something new, the following alternatives deserve recognition:

• #4 Inspectlet
• #5 SessionCam
• #6 me
• #7 Mouseflow
• #8 HotJar

Wrapping It Up

All of these heatmap tools fill a void. While each had their own drawbacks, the most affordable, robust solution is definitely Lucky Orange. ClickTale is also very robust, but the pricing model is more enterprisey.

Crazy Egg has an overall better heatmap offering than Lucky Orange, but it does lack the additional features offered. Sometimes, doing less (Crazy Egg) is better, and that is why the company is trusted by Costco, Dell and several other big-name brands.

What heatmap tools do you use or did we miss? Let us know in the comment box below.

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