The first two blogposts in our ‘career website series’ focused on the seven basic components of a great career site, and how Google Analytics can help you widen your traffic funnel. In our final post of the series, we will look at how you can optimize your site performance even further by analyzing how individual visitors interact with your site.

While Google Analytics enables you to evaluate your overall site performance, there are several paid applications which can provide you with a more detailed breakdown of your site’s traffic patterns.  These applications provide comprehensive measurements of individual visitor browsing histories, using extensive heat map technology and smart tracking resources.

Four Benefits to Paid Analytics Applications

1.    Increase Conversion Ratios

By tracking visitor patterns, you can resolve reoccurring turn-offs and increase your site’s conversion ratio.  Heat maps depict the viewing frequency of specific segments through a color-coded layout of each webpage.  They record mouse movements, which tell you where on the page each visitor was focused, as well as click rates, which are helpful in showing you where and how often visitors clicked on any given link.  You can also view session recordings, which are video playbacks of every single visitor’s browsing history.  If Visitor A was logged on for 3 minutes and 23 seconds, you can actually watch what he or she did during that entire time – every mouse movement, every click and every keystroke.  

These powerful tools enable you to get inside visitors’ heads, and emerge with a more-informed awareness of their browsing patterns.  This will allow you to focus on improving the problem areas and be sure that future visitors will have longer and more productive sessions.

2.    Improve Website Design

Heat maps and video playbacks are integral in understanding how visitors respond to your website’s layout.  For example, you may find that many people are not clicking on important links – you then need to figure out why and reposition/redesign the button.  Or you may discover that visitors are always clicking on the links featured in the top section of the page, but that they rarely scroll down to the bottom.  In that case, you may want to move all of the lower buttons to the top, so that they are exposed to the same amount of traffic.

You can also see how much time visitors spent on each page, and their interaction extent, including which page they were viewing when they logged out of the website. With this knowledge, you are better-equipped to make modifications to the layout of the website to increase visitor browsing time, and directly improve web traffic.

3.    User-Friendly Content

Tracking mouse movements and button clicks clue you in on what visitors want and notice most in the specific page elements.   Even if the page only has a few buttons, seeing where the visitor was pointing the mouse, whether consciously or subconsciously, indicates where they were looking on the page.  If visitors consistently do not pay attention to a certain paragraph or picture, that means that you need to adjust the content.  Change a color, font, size or page placement, and see if more visitors begin to notice those sections.

By providing you with a detailed report on each visitor, you can better understand which sections were more engaging than others – and how altering the content can produce a more effective site performance.

4.    Target your Audience

In order to maximize visitor interaction, it is imperative that you recognize what your target audience requires in your career site.  These tools help you zero in areas which do not meet their expectations, and allow you to effectively and quickly resolve the problem.  Your webmaster should be on call in order to make any necessary modifications.  Take a look at the first post in our career website series for more ideas on what visitors want to see in career sites.        

Conclusion

There are several paid analytics applications out on the market which you can integrate with your career site to give you a more in-depth understanding of how to maximize your site’s traffic potential.  By providing you with a virtual play-by-play of visitors’ browsing sessions, these applications, even more than Google Analytics, enable you to dig deeper into interaction patterns, helping you focus on the deficiencies which deter visitors from engaging with certain areas of your site. Pinpointing problem areas that are slowing your applicant conversion ratio offers concrete indications as to what changes need to be made.

It is in your company’s best interest to do your research and find out which application will fit your company’s needs.  Start your search by checking out these sites:

Check out:   ClickTale CrazyEgg   Mouseflow Feng-GUI userfly LabsMedia