Crazy Egg Review

As a new user of analytics products, Google Analytics has been one of the only tools that I have been able to pull from my toolbox. Being a pretty robust product, Google Analytics has been able to give me all of the reports needed. The best benefit was that it is completely free to everyone. However, with so many other web analytics tools on the market, it makes you wonder what the paid tools can offer that you don’t already get.

A web analytic tool that I have seen used firsthand is Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg uses a combination of Heatmaps, Scrollmaps, Confetti, and Overlay reports to show marketers how people are using their website. According to their website, Crazy Egg is “like a pair of x-ray glasses that lets you see exactly what people are doing on your website” (Crazy Egg, 2017).

The first feature is the Heatmap. Heatmaps gives a visual image of where people are clicking on your website. The areas on the page get lighter or darker depending on popularity and it even intensifies in color for specific areas that have received the most clicks. This report is a great way to test the design of your website and to make design optimization changes for the future.

Example of Heatmap:

The second feature is the Scrollmap. Scrollmaps show impressions generated on a page as a visitor scrolls your page from top to bottom. Impressions are made every time a person stops scrolling on the page. This shows what content on your page has made the visitor stop and take more time to read. For content marketers, this feature is a gem. If they can see where a visitor stops on the page, they can know to write more in the future on that topic or maybe to clarify confusing language.

Example of a Scrollmap:

Next comes a feature called Confetti. This report shows clicks on a page. Unlike Heatmap, though, it is based on individual clicks (dots) and has the capability of compartmentalizing those clicks based on metrics. This report can help you source the traffic of the clicks and shows visitor behavior. An example that was given on the Crazy Egg website was being able to see how many clicks you received based on day of the week. While the Heatmap and Scrollmap are simpler to use out of the box with little knowledge, Confetti may take a bit more skill to understand, but will lead to more in-depth analysis.

Example of Confetti:

The final feature of this tool is the Overlay. Of all of the features, this is definitely the most advanced of all four. The overlay report shows you how many clicks a specific element on the page has. Plus (+) markers are overlayed on the page, which can be clicked to give more details including how many clicks the element received and other metrics like referrer, time on page, and more.

Here is a video from Crazy Egg that gives a very detailed description of this feature:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N6eUVwA8qg

After reviewing Crazy Egg, here are my pros and cons for this software.

Pros

• Visual representation: It was great to have a visual representation of the data and metrics that I was getting. Just by adding in the sense of sight, it could lead to many discoveries about the behavior on the website. In comparison, Google Analytics seems very dense and hard to understand.
• Device change feature: This would completely change the way websites are designed for different devices. While Google Analytics can tell you what device people are using and details about their visit, this visual representation of each device gives the user a chance to really see how the design and content are affected by using desktop or mobile and between the different mobile devices.
• Easy to use: While confetti and overlay seemed to be more advanced, a user could get started setting up reports easily. This is great for novices who are looking to taking their analytics to the next level. As we have seen from our Web Analytics class, Google Analytics is tough to learn and requires hours and hours of training to really feel comfortable reading the data and extracting knowledge.

Cons

• Limited reports: While they do give great information about the clicks of the website and certain metrics, compared to Google Analytics, it is just scratching the surface. It is lacking the ability to really see the visitor path through the entire website experience. This gives only a page by page overview.
• Longer time for gathering data: Within a few days, Google Analytics can give you relevant data from your website. However, with Crazy Egg, it may take much longer to really get data that can give relevance into your audience.

After reviewing this product, I think that it is a great supplement to Google Analytics, but as a standalone product, it just would not give enough data to really know your visitors. The biggest benefit to this product is its visualization of the data and would be an ideal tool to use for website design, UI and UX strategy.

REFERENCE:

Crazy Egg. 2016. Retrieved from https://www.crazyegg.com/