Top 10 user behavioral analytics tools
In the world of user behavioral analytics, there are many tools available provided by different vendors. The behavioral analytics tool also fall into various categories following:
- A/B testing
- Session Replay tool
- Heatmap tool
- Feedback analytics tool
- Cohort analytics tool
You may find it overwhelming to choose the one fitting your business objectives. A wide range of questions would be raised: which one is worth investing in? Which one can deliver desired outcomes? How can you handle the technical level? Etc.
These metrics are essential pieces to a complete picture of how users are interacting with your platform. The indicators mentioned can significantly grow your business and revenues.
1. Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a leading product analytics software company helping businesses understand how customers interact with their products/websites. Their event-based tracking solution enables product teams to gain actionable insights into how to acquire, convert, and retain their users across multiple platforms.
Main features:
- Interactive reports
- Data visualization and Alerts
- Segmentation
- Group Analytics
Pros:
- The setup is clear and manageable, going with top-tier documentation
- Live View – monitoring your active users in real-time
- Affordable and cost-effective tool for small businesses or startups
- The funnel is organized and can work on past events/properties
- Easily filter actionable insights on any cohort or attribute
Cons:
- There might be delays when tracking a huge volume of data
- Although occasionally, users might encounter duplicate and missing data problems
- The auto-save feature is not on the dashboard side
- You might need to dig deep into the documentation part for the initial configuration
Pricing:
- Free with 100k monthly tracked users
- Growth: starting at $25/month
- Enterprise: customizable
2. Amplitude
Amplitude is a tool that allows marketers to track how their customers engage with their business. It’s ideal for learning more about the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts and identifying areas where you could make improvements to boost conversions and sales.
Main features:
- Instant query results
- 360-journeys
- Root cause analysis
- Behavioral targeting
- 1:1 Recommendations
Pros:
- Data visualization
- The analysis is shareable via a link.
- Amplitude tracks “events,” such as click volume on a CTA button and blog, instead of following their movement across the website
Cons:
- High cost for additional functionality
Pricing:
- Free: start with 10M events per month
- Growth: contact sales
- Enterprise: contact sales
3. Heap
Heap is an analytics tool that measures user behavior across multiple platforms, devices, and operating systems in real-time. It is used for tracking website performance by gathering data about what users do on your site over time (such as how long they spend on each page), which gives you insight into which pages perform well and which don’t quite get the job done.
Main features:
- Segments
- Data visualization
- Playbooks
Pros:
- Retroactive analysis – Heap allows you to track past events and conversions.
- Real-time reports – automatically capture events in real-time.
Cons:
- Path reports are limited to 5 steps.
- There is no auto-naming feature for events to save time.
- It doesn’t support personalization as it only tracks aggregate data (data in one place)
Pricing:
- Free: up to 10K monthly sessions
- Growth: contact to get an estimation
- Pro: Custom session or MTUs
4. Hotjar
Hotjar is a successful startup in the analytics field, helping businesses interpret how users behave and what they feel strongly about, so organizations can deliver real value. Their missions are to discover product opportunities, consolidate qual and quant, and communicate user needs. Hotjar works on the compelling challenges of large-scale web traffic and analytics on a product that has a real impact on thousands of users worldwide.
Main features:
- Data capture
- Analyzing the underlying recordings and heatmaps
- Filter and segment data
- Analyzing performances
- Offer Surveys on website
Pros:
- Real-time visitor recordings: the journey of visitors and users on your webpage is actively recorded, which helps you detect any possible problem and mitigate its harm to your performance.
- Heatmaps: Hotjar uncovers where are the user’s touch points, what is attracting them, and what is not
Cons:
- Hardly can separate elements clicked on for deeper insights
- There is still room for improvement when it comes to mobile apps
Pricing:
- Free: 35 daily sessions
- Plus: 100 daily sessions and start with $32/mo
- Business: 500 daily sessions from $80/mo
- Scale: customizable
5. FullStory
FullStory offers digital experience intelligence, on-the-fly conversion funnels, advanced search capabilities, video-like replays of actual user sessions, and robust debugging and developer tools—all while integrating with leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) products.
Key features:
- Complete data capture
- Product analytics: frustration signals, funnels & conversions, journey mapping, dashboards, and user segments
- Session insights: session relay and heatmaps
Pros:
- FullStory effectively provides conversion optimization and content marketing information
- Timely update the user feedback to figure out what is preferred
- Its implementing stage is easy and doesn’t require any technical background
Cons:
- No custom for the dashboards
- Selecting the fitting session might be a riddle
Pricing:
- 14 days free trial
- Enterprise: contact for details
- Business: contact for details
6. CrazyEgg
Crazy Egg lets you effectively visualize your website’s visitors. The platform provides a heat map – an easy way to understand what users want, care about and do on your site. They visually represent user clicks- the most vital indicators of visitor motivation. A Crazy Egg heatmap allows you to collect more than 88% of the traditional eye-tracking data.
Key features:
- Heatmaps
- Recordings
- A/B testing
- Traffic analysis
- Errors tracking
- Surveys
Pros:
- Portrait a clear picture of the way users interact with your website
- Identify problems in website design and suggest improvements
- Detailedly presenting user engagement with scroll map, confetti, overlay, and heatmap
Cons:
- There is still guessing work since the context is not embedded in the data
- No the funnel analysis feature
Pricing: free 30-day trial
7. Smartlock
Smartlook is a qualitative analytics solution for web and mobile, helping businesses of all sizes and industries answer the “whys” behind users’ actions. Smartlook gives you a look into user behavior at the micro level through an impressive feature set. Automatic event tracking empowers you with the data of customers’ browsing history and digital footprints. At the same time, conversion funnels take those events and show you how much success you’re having with conversions.
Key features:
- Session recordings
- Heatmaps
- Events
- Funnels
- Cross-platform analytics
- Mobile app analytics
Pros:
- It is cost-effective and easy to use
- It provides a wide range of analyzing options for customers browsing data
- Customizable dashboard
- Identify customers through names and personal emails
Cons:
- Some of the tracking features offered might be misleading sometimes
- Extra cost for app integrations
Pricing:
- Free: 1,500 sessions/month
- Startup: 5,000 sessions (upgradable) – $39/mo
- Business: 15,000 sessions/month (upgradable) – $111/mo
- Ultimate: Custom – contact sales
8. WVO
VWO is one of the world’s leading web testing and conversion optimization platforms that enables growing businesses to optimize their web experience across electric devices to deliver a unique experience.
Key features:
- Traffic allocation
- A/B testing
- Segmentation and Targeting
- Session recording
Pros:
- WVO allows you to group tests so the interactions between tests can be seen while running simultaneously
Cons:
- Tagging options are limited which may be challenging to identify the one you need while running multiple tests
Pricing: request pricing directly from their website
9. Tableau
Tableau‘s self-service analytics platform empowers businesses of any skill level to work with data. From individuals and non-profits to government agencies, thousands of customers worldwide rely on Tableau’s advanced behavioral analytics capabilities to make impactful, data-driven decisions.
Key features:
- Tableau cloud
- Tableau data management
- Tableau desktop
- Tableau prep builder
Pros:
- Offer various options for types of charts, interactive features, and effective performance
Cons:
- The pivot table usage is limited on this platform
Pricing: starts with $70/mo billed annually
10. Google Optimize
Google Optimize is a website experiment platform that integrates with Google Analytics and allows you to conduct A/B tests, multivariate analysis, and redirect tests. You can first use Google Analytics to determine the page needs improving and then apply Google Optimize to test changes and launch a new fixed version for a better user experience.
Key features:
- Split URL testing
- Multivariate testing
- Standard visitor segmentation
- A/B experiment testing
Pros:
- Quick data track as connecting with Google analytics
- Easy interface to use
- Free
Cons:
- Not applicable for app testing
- The audience divisions in groups can be misleading sometimes
- The number of concurrent tests is limited to only 3 tests
Pricing: free
Tips to choose the best-suited tools
A good behavioral analytics tool is flexible and easily embedded in the business with the entire stack of compatible features with your business scale. They need to meet your present and future demand, whether digital products or mobile applications. The best tool has a user-friendly interface enabling teams to quickly adapt to the technique and get the results at no time.
Switching to another behavioral analytics software along the way is not a good idea since it can occupy much time and cost. Therefore, choosing a tool with outstanding scalability is necessary if you want to save your resources and allocate them to the proper channels. Research must be carefully conducted to determine the best-suited solution for your business.
Other than that, the most important thing is your goal and your intention with the chosen tool. You need to decide how the behavioral analytics software will support your business. Start asking yourself these questions before being on board with any vendors:
- What do you want to know about your users? Which insights matter to your business’s growth?
- How can you leverage your web analytics data by analyzing customers’ behaviors?
- Can you precisely segment your reports according to particular needs over time?
Once you get the answers to those questions, you move to the stage where a comparison will be made among available software providers. Opt for the user behavior analytics tool that can:
- Perform practical features
- Automatically collect and update user data in real-time
- Timely query data in various ways
- Effectively build reports based on current data
- Make automated notifications and recommendations
- Visualize data in a clear context
Watch out for common mistakes with behavioral analytics
While you’re getting support from vendors when using a behavioral analytics solution, there is a chance that your implementation goes wrong.
Look out for these common user behavioral analytics mistakes to make sure you get the best of it:
Utilizing too many features at one time
Managing analytics features can take a lot of work, and having it done effectively requires proper resource allocation. Launching too many features simultaneously can create too much workload and mess up the whole operation efficiency.
Ineffectively setting the governance rules while collecting data
The governance rules are the core of success in analyzing user behavior data to avoid instrumenting disparate events and properties. The rules need to be well-set and clear for the data to be organized so you can export quick and accurate reports.
Tracking too many events at the beginning
If you don’t want to handle the same scenario resulting from the above mistake, you should initially concentrate on the key events which make transparent impacts. Instrumenting an acceptable range of events aligned with your capability to get the most favorable outcomes.
Lacking compatibility among teams in analytics usage
Every department (UX/UI design, sales, marketing, supporting, leadership,…) in your organization needs to have access to behavioral analytics tools, as understanding data analysis will allow the business to run smoothly. Every team contributes to the best user journey where potential barriers are timely removed.
Leveraging Behavioral Analytics from scratch might be a daunting start, so it would be better to seek advices from data scientists and data analysis before execution.
Synodus provides Behavioral Analytics services, including advisory, BI reporting components, tailor-made your analytics platform and managed services to help businesses benefit from a the most tangible insights.
Conclusion
With the available behavioral analytics tool, you are in front of the doors to better understand users’ online behaviors. However, getting the right one for your demand and scale can be challenging. Synodus would help to provide you with consultation and even execution so you could save time for other matters.
Our experts armed with expertise and experience would work along with you to develop a coherent strategy to gain valuable insights from customers’ behaviours and level up your business!
More related posts from Data analytics you shouldn’t skip:
