What is Crazy Egg? In this article, we are going to explain to you what this tool is specialized in heat maps. We will also study the main aspects of this analytics solution. Together with Google Analytics and split-testing tools like Visual Website Optimizer, Crazy Egg should be part of every marketing professional’s toolkit. And in this article, we explain why.
Marketing is not about setting up a website, crossing your fingers and hoping it works. The real sellers create a page and measure what works and what doesn’t. Then, based on that feedback, they make adjustments, try again (and again) until they get the conversion they were looking for.
But how can you know what works and what doesn’t?
One way is to use heat maps. That’s where Crazy Egg comes in.
What is Crazy Egg?
Crazy Egg basically tracks how visitors interact with your website. It uses mouse movement tracking technology to create a visual representation of:
- The sections of your page that users click on the most.
- Where Your Visitors Come From
- Which elements of your page read the most and cause the most interactions
- Which parts of your page are being completely ignored
It’s like getting an X-ray of what’s going on on your website, very difficult to get without an analytical tool like this.
Here is a breakdown of some of the highlights….
Usability of Crazy Egg
We still haven’t seen any plug-ins, software or scripts that claim to be “all-in-one” and that really are great in every aspect they offer. We’re from the school of “choose one thing and do it right”. That’s one of the things we like about Crazy Egg.
They focus only on heat maps, and their heat maps are very good.
Crazy Egg offers four different views:
Heatmap
With this type of view you can see where people are clicking. The most clicked areas are called “hotspots” and are displayed in red. Using this feature, I was able to find popular areas on your pages that you would otherwise never have noticed in life. It’s very interesting because it allows you to optimize them and make them even more interesting for your users. Or even replicate what you see in them in others that you are more interested in promoting.
Scroll
This visualization is really useful. Scroll maps show where on your page visitors spend the most time. The more time they spend in a particular section, the more likely it is that they are interacting with that section.
For example, if you’re analyzing the scroll map of a long page where you’ve had to include a lot of text, you can see which parts of the copy people are spending the most time on and which parts are skipping completely.
Lighter colours indicate that your audience saw a particular section for longer.
Confetti and Overlay
These two views are less relevant. They allow you to get additional insights into where your visitors come from, but the two views above (heat maps and scroll) are infinitely more interesting.
Ease of use of Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is very easy to use. It takes a couple of minutes to set it up, following a basic 3-step process that begins with signing up for a free 90-day trial. Once you’re all set up, you can continue:
- Log in to your account. Once inside, click on “Add new snapshot” and enter the URL of the page you want Crazy Egg to start crawling.
- Choose the number of visitors you want to monitor, to generate the code.
- You will be given a code that you have to insert into your page. If you use WordPress, you can do it very easily using a plugin.
Crazy Egg Support
This is an area where Crazy Egg can improve.
The good news is that it is so easy to use that you don’t need to contact them too often. When we had to do it, it was by email (but they offer a phone number). The answers have always been quite generic and not very helpful. We ended up discovering things.
Personally, I would love a “live chat” option as support. That way, you wouldn’t have to wait that long to get answers and it’s possible to ask quick questions.
In defence of Crazy Egg, we do want to reiterate that we haven’t really needed support so often because, in the hundreds and hundreds of heat maps we’ve installed, we’ve only had about 3 problems (and all of them ended up being an error in the configuration that was our fault).
Crazy Egg value for money
Crazy Egg offers a free one-month trial. Once it expires, you will need to sign up for a plan. These range from $29/month to $189 for the most advanced plan.
Conclusion
By itself, Crazy Egg is a tool that can tell you:
- Where to focus the optimization of your website
- How to place the most important elements of your page
- Which areas of your page are receiving the most clicks