Usability

ClickTale Releases New Interface

January 9, 2009 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

ClickTale, a company which specializes in website usability and my favorite, Form Analytics, recently released a new interface for their product. The new ClickTale UI offers a unified framework which enables quick navigation between different projects and easy access to reports and visitor recordings. You can read the ClickTale Blog for the entire update and below are some screenshots of the new UI.

Notice the unified framework for all our reports; see for example the Form Analytics UI which helps you optimize your online forms.

Enjoy an updated interface to Heatmaps which show where visitors pay attention and which areas of the page they skip.

Filed Under: Usability, Web Analytics

[x+1] Announces New Version of Site+1 – Custom Experiences on Real Time Data

December 10, 2008 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Earlier this week [x+1] announced its new version of Site+1, a full-service internet solution that allows companies to maximize the return on their website investments by automatically personalizing online content on a continuous basis. In this difficult economy, it allows websites to deliver more for less. The new capabilities of Site+1, currently in beta, will be released in Q1 2009. These enhancements, combined with the recently released new version of [x+1]’s core technology, the Predictive Optimization Engine ® (POE), make Site+1 the most comprehensive solution for web personalization.

“In these tough economic times, companies can not afford to waste money on inefficient and ineffective distribution of their website’s product, service and brand messaging,” said John Nardone, CEO of [x+1]. “These significant enhancements to Site+1 will ensure that website visitors see customized, specific, targeted content to maximize the effectiveness of a brand’s e-marketing initiatives.”

The new features of Site+1 include:

New Site+1 open data platform – this allows the integration of data from third party data providers for more precise targeting. Clients can choose to include industry appropriate data such as income level, education, average home value and auto ownership, among many others. Participating vendors data can be easily pulled into the Site+1 platform. The result: better marketing effectiveness based on the broader availability of prospect information.
New website creative testing – Site+1 will include a tool to perform A/B and multivariate tests of alternate versions of web pages to determine which combination of layout, graphics, content, and other variables generates the best visitor response. The result: greater click and conversion rates.
Value-based optimization – this allows companies to focus efforts to deliver higher-value conversions. For instance, a company may have 10 different products, with different profitability or expected lifetime values. With Site+1’s value-based optimization, the company can more precisely target offers for the higher-value products to those more likely to purchase them through data and statistical modeling by POE. The result: a greater return for the same number of conversions.
An enhanced rules engine – [x+1] can now more quickly and flexibly define custom rules (complex “if-then” statements that govern how content will be distributed) to more precisely personalize online content on the fly. For example, a marketer can define a rule so that an offer is seen only by high income consumers with high-bandwidth connections in the New York area between 12 noon and 3 p.m. The result: more precisely targeted and more effective messages.
A new content distribution engine – the addition of dedicated regional [x+1] data centers has increased the capacity for sub-second web page delivery, to keep up with the growth of [x+1]’s client base. The result: instantaneous delivery of content, messages and ads.

Filed Under: behavioral targeting, Usability

Tealeaf Introduces Mobile Analytics Solution with Mobile Session Replay

November 18, 2008 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Helping companies monetize e-commerce via Web-capable mobile devices, Tealeaf®, today announced Tealeaf CX Mobile Experience Manager. With the addition of Tealeaf CX Mobile Experience Manager, Tealeaf delivers the industry’s first mobile session replay. The visibility mobile session replay affords is especially critical given the variability of mobile devices, and allows companies to understand mobile customer engagement, discover ongoing behavior patterns, and compare success and failure of mobile users alongside the experiences of traditional desktop users.

Tealeaf also announced several additional updates to the Tealeaf CX solutions, including enhanced Robot (bot) traffic reporting – to improve organic search rankings and affiliate marketing efforts – and new user community-driven event and analysis templates. These templates are packaged to provide Tealeaf’s customers and partners with best practices that further accelerate the time to value of Tealeaf.

Tealeaf CX Mobile Experience Manager

As more consumers rely on mobility, meeting expectations for mobile customer experience will be key to success in this new business channel. However, supporting Web transactions via mobile devices is very different than via desktops, and is dependent upon a company’s ability to effectively deliver content to varied devices and mobile browsers. Mobile Experience Manager offers companies full visibility and actionable insight into their customers’ mobile experiences:

Mobile Session Replay – Visibility Critical to Understanding Mobile Customer Experience

Mobile Experience Manager captures complete interactions of every mobile user without dependence on JavaScript or other mechanisms that can miss mobile interactions. The module can then replay an exact browser-level recording of each session, taking into account mobile variables including specific device capabilities, screen sizes, and other limitations (such as not supporting JavaScript). Insight revealed through Mobile Experience Manager is critical to discover and diagnose mobile site experience problems, compare mobile experiences with desktop experiences (or between devices), and ultimately improve success in this growing channel.

Additional Updates to Tealeaf CX Solutions:

Bot Traffic Reporting

Tealeaf also announced the addition of bot traffic reporting. Utilized by search and price engines for Web crawling and indexing, bots often make up a high percentage of site traffic.

Understanding bot behavior has been challenging however — bots don’t accept JavaScript, making most Web analytics solutions unable to report on their traffic. With the new bot reporting capabilities, Tealeaf’s visibility is now extended, providing the unique combination of actual user traffic alongside bot traffic – including which bots visit a site, their frequency, and how they are traversing the site during each visit.

Multiple teams within an organization can benefit from better understanding bot behavior Insight into bot traffic sheds light on how product pages are getting indexed and ranked by a search engines—informing better search engine optimization decisions for emarketing teams. Understanding bot behavior can also help emarketers launch new product pages and update pricing—content companies want customers to find via organic web search. In addition, affiliate marketing programs can be enhanced through an understanding of how price crawlers and other bots are cataloging a site. And IT organizations can leverage bot traffic reports to help manage site traffic levels and protect against intrusion by “bad” bots.

“In the rush towards “more accurate” data collection companies around the world have managed to exclude as much as 50% of the traffic to their site from reporting and analysis,” says Eric T. Peterson, web analytics consultant and author of Web Analytics Demystified. “Tealeaf’s ability to record and report on traffic from automated agents and visitors using mobile devices allows site operators to develop a more accurate picture of what is happening on their web site.”

Filed Under: Mobile Analytics, Usability

Enhance Usability with Eye Tracking

June 1, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

If you’re interested in truly understanding how visitors interact with your site then I recommend using Eye Tracking. The results from Eye Tracking can really help you improve the usability of your website and can help answer numerous questions:

How visitors use your site?
How easy is your site to use?
What features/advertising are visitors glancing right over?
How effective are your landing pages?
How will users react to a new design?
Are users reading your messaging on your site and on search engine results pages?

After data is collected with Eye Tracking you can generate a heat map (similar to the one above) which shows the areas on a web page where visitors’ eyes spent the most time gazing. If you’re interested in using Eye Tracking on your website, search marketing Firm, Enquiro, has become a leader in providing usability testing through their Eye Tracking Panels.

Below is a video of an actual eye tracking session being done on the home page of Enquiro.com. In the video you can totally see where users are scanning and what parts of the website they find interesting. Go to Enquiro’s Eye Tracking page to find out more information.

Link to Video

Filed Under: Usability