Appreciation post: The cheap analytics tool that saved my bacon

Used to build sites by feel. Just picked colors and layouts I liked. Didn't look at data at all. Three months ago a client said 'your homepage needs to work better.' I finally tried Hotjar for free. Found out 80% of visitors clicked a dead button. Fixed that one thing and conversions jumped 15%. Now I check heatmaps before any redesign. Anyone else have a tool that changed how you build?

3 comments

3 Comments

emma_lee2214d ago

@ivan462 was saying dead buttons are the worst and i totally agree. but here's what nobody else brought up. the real problem isn't the button itself. it's that we assume our sites work the way we think they do. @aliceharris mentioned watching her friend click it and realizing it was broken. that's exactly it. we get so deep in building stuff we can't see the obvious flaws anymore. i started making myself use my own site the way a new visitor would no shortcuts no dev tools. it's humbling every time.

ivan46214d ago

lmao what is it with dead buttons right? I had one on my site for like 6 months and wondered why nobody was signing up for my newsletter. turned out the button just... didn't work. fixed that and got like 40 new subs in a week. hotjar's a lifesaver for finding dumb mistakes like that.

aliceharris14d ago

Oh man, dead buttons are the absolute worst! I had one on my portfolio site that I thought was sending people to my contact form but it was just... sitting there looking pretty. Three months of wondering why nobody was reaching out. Finally had my buddy click it while I watched over his shoulder and we just stared at each other like "well that's embarrassing." Hotjar really is a lifesaver though, caught another button that was hiding behind some random div and blocking the whole layout. At least we can laugh about it now lol.