Among other things, Yandex offers features that very effectively show how your website is perceived by its visitors. This article explains why Yandex stands out from the countless analysis tools (apart from its open source status).
Among other things, Yandex presents analyses visually. This eliminates tedious processing of figures and diagrams, the result of the analysis is faster and easier to understand. Unfavorable layout or neglected, good content is recognized much faster.
First, the most important and effective features of Yandex, step by step:
Session Replay
Probably the most powerful tool from Yandex when it comes to thinking like your website visitor!
First of all, there is an overview of all visitors to your website in the selected time period (Today, Yesterday, Week, Custom). This contains customizable information about each individual visitor, including: Country, operating system, browser, dwell time, etc.
This list can be filtered according to various conditions, such as dwell time or browser. The real highlight is the play button. Each visitor session can be viewed again here, as the real visitor experienced the session.
Yandex opens a pseudo-browser and, one after the other, all the subpages that the visitor has opened. The time spent on each subpage is displayed before the next one is opened. This makes it clear which page the visitor is more interested in and which less. In addition, every mouse or finger movement is saved. This is then visualized in the replay and the visitor's behaviour can actually be tracked as if you were sitting next to them.
This feature alone is worth trying out Yandex, especially because it is open source.
Maps
The Yandex maps are divided into 4 areas:
Link map
This tool shows you all clicks on links on a given page. Displayed in color (the warmer the color, the higher the value) and provided with data on clicks (click-through), you can also gain quick insights into topics such as the layout or content maintenance of your site. This is not done by means of a list, but similar to the session replay , you see your page in a pseudo-browser in front of you and all links are marked with the corresponding color. For example, you can quickly see whether different links are clicked on a homepage than on a subpage, or whether a link is clicked at all (this would be colorless).
In principle, only real links are evaluated here, i.e. links that point (without a redirect) to another page within your site. It is therefore possible that a link is colorless, but experience has shown that it is often clicked (e.g. external or redirect links). In order to include these in the evaluation, this must be set in your code when implementing the analysis tool.
This tool therefore shows the effect of your links on the website. However, it can also recognize what the visitors are interested in. If you have a menu with different topics, you can quickly see which topics are more interesting and therefore more important thanks to this color coding.
Click map
Similar to the link map, this tool records the click behavior on individual pages. The difference is that all clicks are evaluated here, including clicks on external or redirect links, images or those with no effect. Link fields are not marked here either, but each click is a point. Depending on the number of clicks, this becomes increasingly visible on the screen. There are adjustable visibility modes, by default the heat map, which displays the points like in a thermal imaging camera. The more clicks, the warmer it gets.
This can be used, for example, to draw conclusions about link placement. A frequently clicked link/button should perhaps be placed more often. Clicks on unlinked texts or images can indicate that this content is interesting and it is worth considering optimizing it at this point (possibly by linking!).
Scroll map
The scroll map shows the number of visitors and the average time spent per page area and also displays these in color. Here too, the warmer the color, the higher the value. If an area is highlighted in red, this area is viewed often and for a long time, which indicates that these page areas and their content are interesting. In most cases, it will become apparent that visitors linger less frequently in the lower regions of a page, whereas the upper part (above the fold) shows a high frequency. It can also be recognized, for example, that areas with images also increase the length of stay. This can be used to quickly draw conclusions and take measures for improvement.
For example: you have important content at the bottom of your page that is not seen or clicked on often enough. However, this cannot be moved to another area (e.g. for technical reasons). Knowing that images increase the time spent in the respective area, an image can be inserted in this under-visited area. You can use the scroll map to check very quickly whether this has the desired effect.
Form Analysis
As the name suggests, this function analyzes the behavior of your visitors when using forms. If there is a form on one of your pages, every interaction with it is recorded. It is then analyzed how many people have visited this page, how many of them have interacted with the form (e.g. by clicking in a form field, filling in a form field) and how many have actually submitted this form. In addition, each individual form field can be viewed, which, as before, also shows in color how often it was in the focus of the viewer. There are 3 analytical values per field:
- Average time to complete the field
- Fields not filled in (in %) when submitting the form
- Fields filled in (in %) before the form was left without submitting it
This information can be very helpful, especially if you need to communicate with customers via forms. An excessively high time to complete a field could mean that it is not clear what exactly needs to be entered. This can lead to the form being left without being submitted. Similarly, fields that are often left blank when submitting a form are an indication that they may be superfluous - but can also cause the visitor to leave the form. Completed fields before leaving a form can indicate that the user experience with these fields was not optimal.
Each of these 4 tools offers further options to refine the analysis. You can set the time period, specify various filter conditions or compare the analysis between pages. Switching between all your pages is done by simply clicking on Interaction with site (Analysis) and Map Viewing (Switch page).
In summary, these maps are a powerful analytics tool from Yandex. The focus is on visualization and thus easier handling of analyses. Good/bad content, whether buttons, images, texts or entire pages, can be identified more quickly and easily than when analyzing with numbers.
Miscellaneous
In addition to the features mentioned above, Yandex of course also offers standard features such as traffic or monitoring and much more. All analyses can be preset by segmentation so that any filters are already included when you use the analysis.
The integration of the code on your website is done quickly:
- You need an account on Yandex
- You need to create a counter where you enter your website address.
- You need the short JavaScript code snippet, which you place in the HTML directly after the tag in the HTML.
Conclusion
To summarize, Session Replay and Maps are Yandex's most powerful tools. Especially with regard to the keyword " open source", the enormous effectiveness of the insights that can be achieved with these tools is absolutely outstanding compared to the relatively small analytical and technical effort. A must for website operators interested in the reaction of their visitors!
Images from other sources were used in this article. The sources can be found in the imprint.
