What should I measure to get user behaviour results on a one-page web design?

There are a few things you’ll want to track when using a single page or even just a long form webpage design to make sure you understand what’s working as intended - and what’s not:

Scroll Maps

The first (and perhaps most important) thing you’ll want to measure is how much of your page people are actually viewing.

One of the risks with using a long form design is that people have short attention spans and they may get tired and drop off before they “see the goods”.

Tools such as scroll maps can be incredibly useful and helpful here, as they show you how many people view (or drop off) at different parts of a page.

Typically, you’ll want to find the parts where people drop off the most and work to optimize those sections to retain users through them.

Heat Maps

The next thing you’ll want to measure is clicks on your CTAs (calls to action).

If you make the mistake of burying your CTA too far down, you run the risk of people never seeing it. Typically, you’ll want to “sprinkle” a handful of CTAs throughout a long form page instead of relying on just one at the bottom.

Tools such as heat maps can show you how many clicks each of your CTAs get (and what their CTR or click-through rates are), which can help you diagnose if you have this problem or not.

In addition to tracking clicks, some heat maps can also show you everywhere people move, hover, or place their mouse. Because people often move their mouse to the area of a webpage they’re focusing on, mouse movement heat maps are great ways to visualize which parts of your page your visitors are most interested in. (And as a general rule of thumb, you should rip out anything that people don’t appear to be interested in.)

Visitor Recordings

Beyond measuring “aggregate statistics” such as clicks, scrolls, mouse movements, etc., you should also spend some time examining individual interactions with your website so that you can get a better understanding of how different people actually use your site.

The best way to get this information is to use visitor recordings to record your visitors as they’re using your website and then watch those recordings back-to-back to identify the different kinds of user behavior patterns at play.

Although scroll maps and heat maps are great for understanding “the big picture”, there is very often a lot of nuance and detail going on at the individual user level that you can’t uncover using those types of tools. Visitor recordings are the missing link between the “what” that those tools show and the “why” that you’re probably trying to understand.

What’s Next?

If you’re looking for a solution that will give you scroll maps, heat maps, and visitor recordings for your website, I would recommend that you check out Tamboo (https://gettamboo.com), which has support for all of the above, as well as funnels and other behavioral analytics that might prove useful to you.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that I’m the founder of Tamboo, but I wouldn’t make the recommendation if I didn’t think it would help you and the scenario you outlined in your question.)

• Click Tracking - visualizes clicks and mouse moves, discover which areas draw visitors’ attention and which go unnoticed
  
• Form Tester - tells you how visitors interact with each field and find out which steps in the process cause dropouts
• Feedback Form - makes it easy for users to provide you with their opinions directly on your website
• Visitor Recording -  captures every mouse move, click and keystroke

• https://heatmap.gemius.com/
• http://mouseflow.com/
  
• http://www.sessioncam.com/
  
• https://www.seevolution.com/
  
• http://www.ghostrec.com/
  
• http://www.hotjar.com/