We often hear, “Outside of my core events, my site has a lot of interactive elements and I need direction in knowing what to define first.” Have no fear, Heap is here! Heap provides you with the ability to know what users are interacting with the most, without having to define everything – giving you the power to define with intention in your own Heap account.
Step 1: Define a generic “Click any Element” event
Head into your account and use the wildcard (*) as your CSS selector to define a generic click event!
*You will want to be sure Heap Redact is not set up in your account – this prevents text being picked up by Heap and is used for privacy and security purposes.
Step 2: Uncover your most used elements that haven’t been defined!
| Query #1 | What elements are clicked on the most? |
|---|---|
| Graph | Count of Click any Element – Group By: Target Text |
If you head into the “table” view, you can organize this list by the total and see clearly which elements have the highest, and lowest, number of interactions. This can be a great starting point to help you identify your top 10 or 20 events.
Additional ‘Group By’ Suggestions
For anyone who is comfortable with CSS selectors and the code on their site, we recommend grouping by “target class” and “target ID” as well. This is because not all elements might have “target text” available. These additional properties give you a little more flexibility when analyzing interactions on your website.
Step 3: Define top events from the previous report
Using the above query, start defining more elements on your site based on what has been interacted with the most.
Are you seeing single button clicks? Define them! Are you seeing elements that indicate the start of a flow, like “Open Template,” “Click Sizing Guide” or “Open Resources?” Great! Define those elements/interactions, and a few elements within the flow, like “customize template,” size guide interactions”, or viewing your most popular resources.
Step 4: Define top events that have the greatest impact on a conversion or activation event(s)
Identifying a few key conversion or activation events to focus on will ultimately help you narrow your focus and give you direction as you begin building your queries, but this can be helpful when determining additional events to define.
Oftentimes a conversion event is a one time event, such as “sign up,” “submit order,” “request a demo,” or “learn more.”
Alternatively, activation is when users find that ‘ah-ha’ moment. This is usually a metric that happens early on, is done quickly, and shows that users are starting to get value out of your tool. A few examples to help guide you: Adding 7 friends in 10 days on FB, following 30 users in 7 days on Twitter, getting your question answered in Quora.
We will use a single “conversion event” to narrow our focus in this Play.
| Query #2 | Discover what users are interacting with leading into conversion event |
|---|---|
| Paths | Raw Pageviews & Defined Events Into your Conversion Event |
What does this tell you?
Paths analysis allows you to see what users are doing leading into your desired conversion event.
This report can help you determine if you still need to define more events – if you see the same pageview repeated in multiple steps, you will want to define more events from that particular page to see which element users are interacting with.
Step 5: Interpret your results and take action
The above steps allow you to identify your most interacted with elements so you can define the right things, not the things you assume should be defined. This direction can save you time and effort as you continue building out your Heap account. Plus, knowing what users are clicking on can help you organize your site for a cleaner experience, especially if you’re surprised by what your customers are interacting with the most! We recommend going through this process at consistent cadence, or any time your site has any changes made.
Conclusion
With Heap’s concept of autocaptured data, you don’t need to define everything on your site. Let Heap help you identify the most engaged with elements so you can spend your time finding useful insights instead of defining things.