Top 10 Behavior Analytics Tools & Tips to Choose the Perfect Fit
Wouldn’t it be great if picking the right business tool was as easy as trying out a new flavor of chips? Imagine, a few simple steps and you’re sorted. But of course, this is not the case.
When it comes to something as crucial as behavior analysis, finding the perfect tool can feel like a Herculean task. You’re probably knee-deep in research, drowning in a sea of names. Plus, there are stakeholders to please, and you’ve got to be strategic about where you invest your time and resources, especially in the early stages.
It’s enough to make anyone feel overwhelmed and stuck in limbo!
That’s why we’re here to help. In this blog, we’ve handpicked the top five web user behavior analytics tools to simplify your decision-making process. Plus, we’ve thrown in some essential factors to consider, guiding lights to lead you through this maze of options. Ready to dive in? Let’s go!
Best behavior analytics tools at a glance
- VWO Insights – Web
- Hotjar
- FullStory
- MouseFlow
- Microsoft Clarity
- Crazy Egg
- Lucky Orange
- Glassbox
- Contentsquare
- Smartlook
What exactly are user behavior analytics tools?
Behavior analytics tools are software applications that delve deep into user interactions to uncover the secrets behind their behavior. By tracking mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and user feedback with features like heatmaps, session recordings, surveys, and form analysis, these tools paint a vivid picture of how users perceive their online journey.
While traditional web analytics tools like GA4 can tell you where users drop off, behavior analytics tools reveal the underlying reasons behind these actions. Armed with this knowledge, you can fine-tune your website to enhance user experience and drive conversions.
Now, let’s delve into the lineup of top-notch web user behavior analytics tools.
10 best user behavior analytics tools
1. VWO Insights – Web
Website: VWO Insights – Web
Offered features:
- Dynamic heatmaps (includes heatmap, clickmap, scrollmap, click area, and element list)
- Session recordings
- Conversion funnels
- Form analytics
- Surveys
Free trial period:
30-day free trial
Pros:
- Dynamic and flexible data sampling methods are available, providing greater control over the data collection process.
- A key advantage is its ability to gather behavior insights and take action with integrated tools like A/B testing and personalization, all within one platform.
- It offers flexible pricing plans, tailored to meet the diverse needs of businesses of any size.
- AI-generated survey questions and AI-summarized survey reports save time and improve efficiency
- Top-tier customer support team achieving a 98% CSAT score.
Pricing and plans:
1. Starter Plan: Free for up to 5,000 monthly tracked users (MTUs).
2. Growth Plan: $139/month (billed annually) for up to 10,000 MTUs.
3. Pro Plan: $248/month (billed annually) for up to 50,000 MTUs.
4. Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing based on specific requirements. This plan consists of a comprehensive suite of features encompassing surveys, form analytics, heatmaps, and session recordings, ensuring you have everything you need for in-depth behavior analysis.
You can learn more about VWO’s plans and pricing.
Case study: Lyyti.com
Lyyti.com, a Finland-based SaaS event management company, aimed to boost conversions on its pricing page, focusing on ‘Free Trial’ CTA clicks. Using VWO heatmaps, and clickmaps, they observed that users often navigated between pricing and features pages, signaling confusion. After a five-month A/B test, the optimized page increased lead generation visits by 93.71%. This demonstrates the impact of insights-driven tests and optimization.
Here is what one of our clients said,
The surveys, session recordings & heatmaps features appeal to us the most. Knowledge and customer data are king and these two features shape our roadmap as to what we prioritize for development and initiatives we work on. At the moment we are using surveys as the primary source of behavioral insight. This then shapes what the priorities are for features for our customers.
Alice Michael, Group Head Of Ecommerce Operations at APG & Co
Additional considerations:
VWO Insights – Web shines as a robust behavior analytics tool, offering a comprehensive suite of features for delving deep into user behavior. Its dynamic heatmaps capture real-time visitor data, providing valuable insights into website interactions.
The heatmap report has segmentation options that allow users to slice and dice data based on standard segments like traffic source and device, or customize segments to delve into specific page drop-offs. This capability helps dissect visitor behavior data comprehensively, providing valuable insights for optimization.
For session recordings, the platform offers flexible options, allowing you to review visitor behavior at your own pace. You can segment recordings of users based on specific actions, like those who dropped off at particular funnel stages, or those involved in A/B tests.
Its on-page surveys allow for a deeper understanding of visitor behavior, with customizable survey logic to guide respondent flow. The concise survey summary with word clouds helps to easily identify feedback patterns. What’s more, it has Gen AI-based features that summarize surveys and suggest actionable improvements based on respondent feedback.
With its form analytics, it assists in understanding visitor interactions with forms and identifying reasons for drop-offs. It provides insights into fields causing confusion, consuming time, or requiring multiple refills, helping optimize form usability and completion rates.
It has the impressive ability to streamline behavior analysis through the Insight dashboard, providing a detailed overview of pages and segments experiencing the most friction. By quantifying user behavior on a scale of 0-100 via session behavior analysis, it enables targeted analysis of low-experience pages and segments, saving time and effort.
2. Hotjar
Website: Hotjar
Offered features:
- Heatmaps
- Session recordings
- Conversion funnel
- Feedback widget
- Surveys
- User interviews
Free trial period:
15-day free trial
Pros
- User-friendly dashboards for easy navigation and functionality.
- Comprehensive insights into user behavior through heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback polls.
Cons
- Limitations with cross-domain tracking, especially with frameworks like Angular.js.
- Lacks real-time support options, relying primarily on email and documentation.
Pricing and plans:
Hotjar offers three key feature sets—Observe, Ask, and Engage—each with four-tiered pricing plans. Here’s how they compare:
1. Observe
Tracks heatmaps & recordings.
- Basic: $0/month (Low recording limit)
- Plus: $32/month (Moderate recording limit)
- Business: $80/month (Higher recording limit)
- Scale: $171/month (Highest recording limit)
2. Ask
For surveys & feedback collection.
- Basic: $0/month (Low response limit)
- Plus: $48/month (Moderate response limit)
- Business: $64/month (Higher response limit)
- Scale: $128/month (Highest response limit)
3. Engage
Conduct user interviews.
- Basic: €0/month (Limited interviews)
- Plus: €82.5/month (Moderate interview capacity)
- Business: €332.5/month (Higher interview capacity)
- Scale: Custom pricing (Max interview capacity)
Additional considerations:
Hotjar offers key features for behavior analysis, including funnels for mapping page journeys and examining user behavior. Its dashboard provides a quick snapshot of metrics, with easy access to session recordings, heatmaps, and user feedback. AI-based surveys can create surveys and generate actionable reports.
However, Hotjar primarily focuses on behavior analytics and may need integration with third-party tools for data tracking, transfer, experimentation, or design changes.
3. FullStory
Website: FullStory
Offered features:
- Dynamic heatmaps
- Session recordings
- Funnel visualization
Free trial period:
14-day free trial
Pros:
- FullStory automatically records every user interaction, eliminating the need for manual tagging and streamlining setup.
- Fullstory’s real-time tracking capabilities allow users to monitor ongoing issues and fix problems as they happen.
Cons:
- FullStory does not include built-in capabilities for survey and form analytics.
- Some users express pricing concerns and suggest improvements in search functionality and data export options.
Pricing and plans:
FullStory’s pricing is not publicly disclosed, but it offers three plans: Business, Advanced, and Enterprise.
Additional considerations:
FullStory provides insights into user experience, capturing data on page load time, rage clicks, dead clicks, error clicks, and custom events. Its “Retention” feature, available for Advanced and Enterprise plans, allows users to analyze user retention and segment users based on their interactions with the site. For instance, metrics like daily active users and hourly active users are available.
4. MouseFlow
Website: MouseFlow
Offered features:
- Session recordings
- Heatmaps
- User feedback
- Conversion funnel
Free trial period:
14-day free trial
Pros:
- Mouseflow integrates well with various platforms and analytics tools, making it easy to incorporate into existing workflows.
- It allows for quick setup, enabling users to start tracking and analyzing data promptly.
- Recognized for providing outstanding customer support to its users.
Cons:
Lacks an on-page survey option
Pricing and plans:
Mouseflow has six pricing plans:
- Free – $0/ month free forever
- Starter – $31/ month billed annually
- Growth – $109/ month billed annually
- Business – $219/ month billed annually
- Pro – $399/ month billed annually
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
Additional considerations:
Mouseflow offers a dynamic heatmap feature with six distinct heatmap reports, capturing movement, attention, scrolling, geo-location, live activity, and clicks.
Additionally, it automatically detects forms and tracks their data for analysis. Its proprietary friction score aggregates visitor satisfaction levels based on +7 friction events, providing valuable insights.
Moreover, Mouseflow sends notifications for new user feedback responses through third-party apps like Slack and email.
5. Microsoft Clarity
Website: Microsoft Clarity
Offered features:
Heatmap and session recordings
Pros:
- Easily filter recordings and heatmap data by device type, country, traffic source, session duration, page path, and more.
- Easy access to heatmaps and session recordings for any page, offering quick engagement insights.
Cons:
- Lacks essential tools like surveys, form analytics, and user feedback
- Session recordings are retained for only 30 days (except favorited recordings)
Pricing and plans:
Microsoft Clarity is available for free
Additional considerations:
Microsoft Clarity provides unlimited heatmap and session recording reports for free. Its static heatmap shows click and scroll behavior, and the dashboard summarizes user behavior.
With 25+ segmentation filters, users can analyze recordings for patterns, and integration with Google Analytics ensures comprehensive reporting on user experience.
6. Crazy Egg
Website: Crazy Egg
Offered features:
1. Website heatmaps (Includes clickmaps, scrollmaps, confetti maps, overlay maps, and list maps)
2. Session recordings
3. Traffic analytics
4. Surveys
5. Conversion tracking
Free trial period:
30-day free trial
Pros:
- The heatmaps, session recordings, and confetti reports provide clear insights into user interactions.
- Crazy Egg includes a range of features like A/B testing, surveys, and the ability to track user behavior effectively.
- Features like automatic session recording and click tracking help users save time during the setup and analysis phases.
Cons:
- Restricted range of integrations with third-party tools.
- No support for native mobile applications
Pricing and plans:
- Plus: $99/month
- Pro: $249/month
- Enterprise: $499/month
Additional considerations:
In addition to core features, Crazy Egg provides robust tools for traffic analysis, conversion tracking, A/B testing, and user feedback through surveys.
Traffic analysis segments visitors by source, device, and demographics, while conversion tracking identifies drop-off points in funnels. The A/B testing feature helps us experiment with webpage elements to improve conversion rates. Surveys gather qualitative feedback to inform design and content strategies.
7. Lucky Orange
Website: Lucky Orange
Offered features:
- Dynamic heatmap (types include clicks, scrolls, and moves)
- Session recordings
- Form analytics
- Surveys
- Conversion Funnels
- Live chat
Free trial period:
7-day free trial
Pros:
- Session recordings, heatmaps, and the ‘Discover’ tab help identify website issues and optimize user experience.
- Integrating with other tools is smooth.
Cons:
- Limited customizability and insufficient export options complicate data management.
- Lacks AI-powered features and detailed demographic insights like age and gender.
Pricing and plans:
- Free: $0/mo (100 monthly sessions)
- Build: $32/mo (5,000 monthly sessions)
- Grow: $72/mo (15,000 monthly sessions)
- Expand: $184/mo (50,000 monthly sessions)
- Scale: $720/mo (300,000 monthly sessions)
Additional considerations:
Lucky Orange’s conversion funnel allows easy tracking of visitor drop-offs during processes like checkout or account creation, with five reports identifying problem areas in website forms.
Users can create unlimited, customizable dashboards for specific campaigns, providing an organized view of visitor behavior.
The visitor profiles feature captures the entire journey, compiling sessions, chats, and engagement over time, with search and filter options by name, segment, date range, traffic source, or cart value.
8. Glassbox
Website: Glassbox
Offered features:
- Website heatmaps
- Session recordings
- Mobile app analytics
- Performance analytics
- Conversion tracking
- Funnel analysis
Pros:
- In-depth insights: customer journeys, interaction maps, and behavior analytics
- Strong integration with other tools and systems
- Detailed session replay: captures AJAX errors, JavaScript issues, and more
Cons:
- Setting up filters and generating reports is complex.
- Session replay does not allow for comparisons of data across longer time periods.
Pricing and plans:
Glassbox’s pricing is not publicly disclosed.
Free trial period:
Glassbox does not offer a free trial.
Additional considerations:
The Glassbox Insights Assistant (GIA) automatically captures all user interactions and technical events, providing video-like replays for clarity.
Another standout feature is the Voice of the Silent feature, which gauges sentiments from users who don’t provide feedback, measuring actions and experiences to identify friction points, quantify satisfaction, and drive initiatives based on customer sentiment.
9. Contentsqaure
Website: Contentsqaure
Offered features:
- Heatmaps (includes clickmaps, scrollmaps, and move maps)
- Session recordings
- Customer journey mapping and funnel analysis
Pricing and plans:
Pricing is available upon request.
Pros:
- Journey analysis, zoning analysis, and session replay are valuable tools for understanding customer behavior.
- The onboarding process is smooth and effective, with adequate training resources available (e.g. CS University).
Cons:
- Doesn’t support comparing more than two conditions (like device type, date, or segments) at once in journey and zoning analysis.
- Certain export features can be cumbersome or lacking in flexibility.
Free trial period:
Contentsquare does not offer a free trial.
Additional considerations:
Contentsquare features innovative visual tools like sunburst diagrams for journey analysis, enabling effective visualization of customer flows.
Its zoning analysis evaluates engagement across webpage areas for targeted improvements. The CoPilot assistant provides instant analysis through user queries.
Additionally, error analysis identifies technical issues, allowing proactive resolution with real-time alerts, helping users eliminate blockers and address user complaints efficiently.
10. Smartlook
Website: Smartlook
Offered features:
- Heatmaps
- Session recordings
- Funnel analysis
Pricing and plans:
- Free Plan: Free for 3,000 sessions/month.
- Pro Plan: Starting at $55/month for 5,000 sessions.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for tailored solutions with unlimited sessions.
Pros:
- Users can create custom heatmaps, funnels, and other analytics tools.
- The tool offers robust analytics capabilities, including customizable dashboards.
Cons:
- Limited bulk data export options make analysis cumbersome.
- Graphs and analytics lack customization features, such as varied colors and styles for differentiating data points.
Free trial period:
30-day free trial
Additional considerations:
Smartlook offers advanced event tracking, enabling users to define interactions like button clicks and form submissions for detailed data on user behavior, which aids in analyzing their impact on site performance.
Its robust session replay feature includes extensive filtering options by device, user, or event, allowing teams to focus on specific segments or issues.
Additionally, Smartlook’s crash reports enhance mobile app performance by integrating session recordings with crash analytics, helping developers visually identify crash causes without extensive QA reproductions, and saving valuable time.
Best user behavior analytics tools summary
Tool | Key features | Starting Price |
VWO Insights | Dynamic heatmaps (includes heatmap, clickmap, scrollmap, click area, element list), Session recordings, Conversion funnels, Form analytics, Surveys | From $139/month (billed annually) |
Hotjar | Heatmaps, Session recordings, Conversion funnel, Feedback widget, Surveys, User interviews | From $32/month |
FullStory | Dynamic heatmaps, Session recordings, Funnel visualization | Contact for pricing |
MouseFlow | Session recordings, Heatmaps, User feedback, Conversion funnel | From $31/month (billed annually) |
Lucky Orange | Dynamic heatmap, Session recordings, Form analytics, Surveys, Conversion Funnels, Live chat | From $32/month (billed annually) |
Other user behaviour analytics tools
While they didn’t make the top 10 list, these tools are also worth considering:
Why does your business need behavior analytics?
Behavior analytics is essential for businesses because it provides deep insights into how users interact with your website, products, or services. Here’s why it matters:
1. Understand user behavior
Behavior analytics helps you identify patterns, preferences, and pain points by tracking how users navigate through your website or app.
2. Optimize user experience (UX)
By analyzing user journeys, you can improve site layout, functionality, and content to make the experience smoother and more engaging, which can lead to higher satisfaction.
3. Personalization
You can tailor content, product recommendations, or marketing efforts to different user segments based on their behavior, creating more personalized experiences.
4. Reduce churn
Behavior analytics helps you understand why users leave your site or app and enable you to address those issues, reducing customer churn and improving retention.
5. Data-driven decisions
Rather than relying on gut instinct, behavior analytics provides quantifiable data that informs decision-making, whether it’s related to design, marketing, or product development.
6. Identify opportunities for A/B Testing
Understanding how users behave helps you generate hypotheses for A/B testing, leading to more effective experiments that are based on real user data.
Choosing the right web user behavior analytics tool: What factors should you consider?
Now that we’ve explored the top behavior analytics tools, let’s delve into what you should consider when selecting one.
a. Efficient data collection
Choose a tool that offers both flexible and dynamic sampling methods, giving you greater control over data collection. Flexible sampling allows you to manage how much traffic is tracked, conserving your data quota, while dynamic sampling ensures all interactions during peak periods are captured, so no valuable insights are lost.
These sampling options should be applicable to specific pages, groups of pages, user segments, or combinations of these. For instance, you might monitor interactions on your pricing page for users accessing your site on a Sunday via mobile. This approach helps you gather meaningful data without overwhelming your resources.
b. Full-featured free trial
Obtaining a comprehensive free trial of these tools provides a holistic view of their capabilities and their potential to help you achieve your business objectives. This trial allows you to assess how they integrate with your current third-party tool stack and monitor behavior specific to your business scenario. Furthermore, it enables you to select the most suitable plan from the multiple offered plans. So prioritize the tools that are giving a full-featured free trial.
c. A comprehensive tool that also allows to take action on the insights
After the behavior analysis, the next natural step is to enhance the user experience based on insights, conduct experiments, or craft personalized experiences to boost the conversion rate. Utilizing a comprehensive tool that allows you to seamlessly transition from observing behavior to implementing the mentioned campaigns directly from the platform can save time, backend resources, and money. Therefore, aim for a tool that offers more than just standalone behavior analysis capabilities.
d. Gen-AI based features
Generative AI is revolutionizing how businesses approach problem-solving, and behavior analysis is no different. Traditional challenges like spending hours on session recordings or manually analyzing survey responses are being addressed with generative AI. For example, platforms like VWO utilize Gen AI-based surveys to summarize survey data and provide actionable suggestions swiftly. Leveraging such tools can help conserve human resources and enhance the accuracy of your CRO efforts.
e. Pricing model based on unique tracked users
Several tools offer quotas for heatmap reports, session recordings, or other features depending on your chosen plan. However, these pricing models individually count multiple data records, such as recordings or heatmap reports from the same user. This limitation may prevent you from obtaining user behavior data from a wider user base.
It’s preferable to opt for tools that are based on unique users, where the quota is based on unique users rather than data logs. In such cases, multiple data records from the same feature report (heatmap, session recording) are not counted individually, allowing you to gain a broader understanding of user behavior across a wider user base.
The four pointers mentioned above can guide you in selecting a tool that minimizes financial risk, offers comprehensive features, utilizes modern technology, and enables tracking of a broader user base, thereby maximizing the benefits of your behavior analysis efforts.
Wrapping up
With the plethora of options available in the market, it can be a daunting task to choose the right one. However, with our handpicked list of the top ten web user behavior analytics tools, along with their features, pricing, key information, and customer feedback, you can make an informed decision.
One of the standout tools is VWO Insights – Web, which offers a comprehensive suite of features, including dynamic heatmaps, session recordings, form analytics, and surveys, as well as intuitive dashboards and AI-generated insights. It offers a full-featured free trial and offers plans based on unique tracked users monthly. By leveraging the insights provided by such behavior analytics tools, you can optimize your website for maximum conversions and better user engagement.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Behavior analytics tools are tools that analyze user interactions on websites or apps, providing insights into user behavior, preferences, and patterns to optimize user experience and improve conversion rates.
Behavior analytics tools work by collecting and analyzing data from user interactions, such as clicks, scrolls, and page views, to create visual representations of user behavior, helping businesses identify trends and areas for improvement.
User behavior on a website can be tracked by implementing tracking codes, heatmaps, and session recordings, enabling businesses to monitor user journeys, identify pain points, and enhance overall site performance.
The most popular web user behavior analytics tools are VWO Insights – Web, Fullstory, ContentSqaure, Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, and MouseFlow.
Behavior analytics tools such as VWO Insights – Web tracks user behavior by monitoring actions like scrolls, clicks, mouse flow, etc.
User behavior analytics, like heatmap reports, offer visual insights into website interaction, displaying where users click or don’t, aiding in understanding user engagement.
The types of behavior analysis include:
1. Descriptive Analysis: Summarizes user interactions (e.g., heatmaps, user journey mapping).
2. Diagnostic Analysis: Identifies causes of behavior (e.g., session recordings, A/B testing).
3. Predictive Analysis: Forecasts future actions based on historical data (e.g., funnel analysis, user segmentation).
Behavioral indicators are measurable actions taken by users on a website, such as click-through rates, time spent on a page, conversion rates, and navigation patterns, which help businesses assess user engagement and the effectiveness of their strategies.