About a week ago I signed up for CrazyEgg, a service that tracks where users are clicking on your site. It’s $9/mo for the cheapest plan and I figured I’d give it a try.

This, for example, is a heatmap generated by CrazyEgg showing the key areas where users are clicking on Precedens’ homepage:

Observations:

• Lots of people click on the large green “Sign Up Now” button. (A clear call to action on the homepage is a big, big win for any web app.)
• Lots of people click on the “Examples” link to learn more about the service.  I haven’t spent much time optimizing the Examples page, but it’s probably something I should do given its important role in converting users.
• Lots of people click on the “Pricing” link, which makes sense. Interestingly, until several days ago there was no Pricing section at all; the price was only mention in the FAQs. However, I noticed that a lot of people were signing up and hitting the free account event limit, indicating that they weren’t aware of the restrictions so I decided to give the price its own, prominent section of the homepage. I predicted there would be a noticeable drop in the conversion rate, but after several days, it’s remained at about 13% (new users / new visitors from Google Analytics). I’m thinking that’s a really good thing, because if people are not dissuaded by the presence of a price (ahh!), it indicates that they’re at least willing to consider paying for the service.
• Not a lot of people click on the “Buzz” link, but that’s OK. I might want to A/B test a few more testimonials on the homepage to see how it affects the conversion rate. (PS: I recently added this gem to the top of that page: “The fact that Preceden offers “layers” and “milestones” puts your product miles ahead of other timeline apps that I’ve seen” which is from an email I received).

I might not continue paying the $9/mo, but it’s well worth the $9 to get that initial analysis.