Ever wonder what people are looking at when they go to your site? 

If you can find out where your visitors are clicking, you can get several clues about how to structure your site so that you can get the most benefit from your site.

For example, I'm going to be making some changes to my site, but here's how I found out what needed to be changed.

On accident while doing my daily surfing …some habits are hard to break   I came across 'The crazy egg', the tool is free so I thought why not try it out, after all I'd like to have a better idea of what people are interested in when they come to my site, so I signed up and got started.

After signing up it gave me a little piece of code to place on my site, I did that and let it do its thing. 

The results come in two forms; there is a heat map that colors the areas that get the most clicks.  There is also a view that shows you where viewers are clicking and how many clicks occur. 

Here's what I found:      

Most of my home page clicks occur on my newsletter sign-ups, but I have a sign-up form in two places, one in the upper left hand corner and one in the body of my text, however since starting this test I haven't gotten any sign-ups from the form in the body of the text, not one.  That's telling me that maybe I could use that space more constructively for something else. 

I also get 10 times more clicks on the Google large rectangle ads than I do  with the link ads in my navigation bar, that was interesting as well since I'd heard just he opposite was true. 

Another thing I noticed is that viewers click on my picture and my signature. Now I don't have links attached to my picture and signature but maybe I should, particularly since no one has clicked on the 'about Ms. Liz" text link.   If I really want people to look at my profile to find out more about me I should probably add links to my picture and signature.

I had a 'bookmark this site' at the bottom of the page and never got even one click on it.  I moved it to the top of the page and got several clicks within 24 hours of doing that.  A good indication that it belongs at the top of the page. Not sure why I didn't put it there in the first place but it's exercises like this that can open your eyes.

Also, every single text link gets clicked on, that's not the case for the links in my navigation bar.  What is that telling me?  That text links in content get clicked on.  That also tells me that good content is important …like we haven't heard that before

The moral of the story?  It's important to test.  You need to know what interests your visitors.  We've all heard that making just one small change in your site can make a huge difference. 

I was pretty impressed with Crazy Egg and their free version.  I don't get anything for saying that, just the satisfaction that it might help you and your site.

If you give them a try let me know what you think  : -)