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Top 10 website engagement tools to boost your user experience

Successfully tracking engagement on your website means staying on top of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative metrics and user behavior trends. 

Choosing the right website engagement tools helps you monitor how users interact with your website to improve their experience. But it can be hard to know where to start building an effective tech stack that gives you deep, actionable insights on engagement.

Last updated

18 Aug 2022

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7 min

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In this article, we list the 10 best tools out there today to boost engagement on your website and talk you through the most effective software combinations for engagement tracking. 

By finding the right tools for your business, you can understand what's working on your website (and what’s not), and make data-informed decisions to improve your user’s experience (UX).

Make user-backed website decisions with Hotjar 

Hotjar’s Observe and Ask tools reveal how users really engage with your website, so you can improve their experience.

The 10 best tools to track and boost engagement on your site

Website engagement software helps you communicate with your users and improve engagement by giving you insights into behavior trends and patterns—so you know which elements of your site to optimize. 

As we dive into the key tracking tools you might want to add to your tech stack, think about your organization's unique key performance indicators (KPIs), website type, and user needs. This will help you determine which tools are best for your specific business and customer needs.   

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is a free website analytics tool that monitors and reports website traffic and helps you identify patterns and trends in how users engage with your website. 

How GA helps you monitor and increase user engagement:

GA tracks key website engagement metrics like bounce rate, pages per visit, average user sessions, and conversion rate. It also gives you engagement reports based on events and conversion events triggered by users, as well as insight into key engagement pages. This way, you can monitor trends and triggers in customer engagement—and analyze web page performance. GA provides your business with:

  • Reliable data 

  • Range of engagement insights 

  • Visual dashboard 

  • Detailed report generation

💡Pro tip: integrate Hotjar with Google Analytics and use Hotjar Heatmaps to complement GA’s traditional data. Go deeper into where users click, how far they scroll, and where they’re engaging the most—to get a fuller picture of whether your site’s engaging users and how they engage.   

2. Hotjar 

Hotjar (hi, there 👋) is a product experience (PX) insights platform that lets you observe how users behave on your website, ask them how they feel about your website or product, and access actionable insights into user sentiments and needs. 

#Hotjar Heatmaps show you key engagement areas on your website and CTAs, so you know what to improve.

Source: Hotjar
Hotjar Heatmaps show you key engagement areas on your website and CTAs, so you know what to improve. Source: Hotjar

How Hotjar helps you improve engagement on your site:

Hotjar helps you understand user engagement on your website with Heatmaps and scroll maps that show you where users click, where they linger, and how far down your webpage they scroll. It also lets you watch exactly how users engage with Recordings of user sessions that give you user-backed insights into the customer experience (CX) and show you what’s blocking website engagement, so you can improve it. With Hotjar, you can

  • Get deep user-backed engagement insights 

  • Integrate with thousands of popular apps

  • Easily monitor user behavior and trends

  • Survey users and get user-generated feedback 

3. Segment

The Segment platform unifies all your customer data points to give you a broad view of your user data. It helps teams create better product experiences by quickly collecting and routing customer data and using it to inform website changes.  

#Segment Customer Data Platform unifies data points for reliable engagement data
Segment Customer Data Platform unifies data points for reliable engagement data

How to use Segment to drive engagement:

Segment helps you tie user data points together to give you a complete view of your customer data, including various customer journey touchpoints, to give you a deeper understanding of your their needs and the ability to craft a compelling product experience. With Segment, you can

  • Easily integrate with popular apps

  • Select inputs and outputs for customer data points  

  • Onboard new tools quickly

  • Filter events

  • Segment audiences and channels with its audience-building feature

Pro tip: merge customer data from Segment with Hotjar’s product experience insights to access and manage qualitative and quantitative user data across your organization. With the Hotjar Segment integration, you can use the 'User Attributes' filter to segment users based on where they live, their job title, and more, and target them with Feedback and Surveys for key user engagement insights.

You can also filter Hotjar Recordings of user sessions by 'User Attributes' to spot bugs that specific users face, so you can fix them and improve engagement.

4. Google Optimize

Google Optimize is a website testing and analytics tool that lets businesses A/B test variants of their web pages based on specific objectives or KPIs. It monitors the results of each variant and tells you which one is more effective and engaging to users. 

#Google Optimize helps you test variations of your website
Google Optimize helps you test variations of your website

How Google Optimize helps:

Google Optimize helps you experiment with different copy, CTA buttons, landing pages, web design, etc., by telling you what works on your site to help you find a winning combination that engages users and increases their desire to convert.  Google Optimize lets you:

  • Set up easily and select test goals

  • A/B test, multivariate test, and personalize your website for users

  • Integrate with Google apps and other apps 

  • Experiment with a range of targeting options

Pro tip: integrate Google Optimize with Hotjar to get granular insights into A/B tests—and filter Session Recordings by Optimize experiments to only see recordings of users associated with the experiment, and how they interact and engage with each variant. You can also filter Heatmaps by Optimize tests to see critical user actions and learn which page elements engage customers the most.  

5. Customer.io

Customer.io is a user engagement and analytics tool that lets marketing teams build automated messaging campaigns.

#Customer.io platform gives you clear marketing pathways to foster engagement
Customer.io platform gives you clear marketing pathways to foster engagement

How Customer.io helps you engage and retain your users:

Customer.io gives you access to real-time customer behavior data you can use to inform and personalize key messaging—and better retain and engage users. With Customer.io, you can:

6. Optimizely 

Optimizely is a digital experience platform that offers website testing tools like A/B tests and multivariate testing for actionable insights into user preferences and engagement. 

How Optimizely helps boost website interaction:

Optimizely lets you test your hypotheses about various web design aspects—like navigation bars, color schemes, CTA placement, or search bars—to build better websites and products that resonate with and engage your audience. In addition to its visual editor for non-technical edits, Optimizely lets you: 

  • Leverage your audience for key website changes 

  • Conduct website experiments and gather data 

  • Add custom CSS and Javascript to your site

  • Easily customize your product experience

Pro tip: integrate Optimizely with Hotjar to get a detailed picture of user preferences and the reason behind those preferences. Combine Optimizely's split tests with Hotjar Recordings to segment your recordings based on your control and variant tests, to get a granular perspective of user data that helps you prioritize design decisions and engage customers.

#Hotjar Recordings show you how users experience your onboarding process and product

Use Hotjar's Session Recordings to watch how users navigate your website and make design changes that will help them navigate more easily

7. LiveChat  

LiveChat is an online customer support software that helps businesses provide 24/7 customer service support across various communication channels like live chat, website, email, Whatsapp, and SMS. 

#LiveChat messaging platform helps you engage more customers by quickly answering user questions
LiveChat messaging platform helps you engage more customers by quickly answering user questions

How LiveChat helps you promote engagement with your product:

LiveChat helps teams remove gaps or frustrations in the customer journey by quickly responding to user questions and providing them with useful information and resources. By supplying users with constant support, you engage them across key touchpoints and interactions. With LiveChat, your business can:

  • Integrate with popular apps 

  • Provide your users with a smooth product onboarding process

  • Use live chat and ticket functions to address user issues

  • Reach and engage users across multiple platforms  

8. Omniconvert  

Omniconvert is a website testing and analytics software that helps teams increase conversions and engagement with A/B testing and conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools

How Omniconvert helps increase engagement and drives user conversions:

Omniconvert lets you run crucial web design and copy experiments that help gauge user needs and preferences, so you can make user-backed website changes that drive engagement. It also:

  • Provides your business with user targeting flexibility 

  • Possesses a strong support team 

  • Gives you tailored tests to design and develop your site

  • Offers advice on useful analytics and new website flows

Pro tip: integrate Omniconvert with Hotjar to better understand how users interact with key pages. Generate split tests of important web pages with Omniconvert and combine them with insights from Session Recordings to observe how users navigate and engage with your page variants. Then, use your insights to refine design features and boost engagement.  

9. HubSpot

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that helps teams manage their contacts and supplies them with the tools they need to build customer-centered experiences. 

#HubSpot CRM software keeps track of your customers and their interactions
HubSpot CRM software keeps track of your customers and their interactions

How HubSpot helps you with website engagement:

HubSpot helps you keep your users in one place and monitor their journey history and key interactions to build detailed customer profiles and engage your customers with targeted, personalized messaging on your site that gets results. HubSpot helps you:

  • Create detailed customer profiles 

  • Streamline contact management

  • Integrate with popular apps 

  • Segment various contacts and markets

  • Connect to other HubSpot platforms

  • Gives you access to customer engagement insights and analytics 

🔥Bonus: integrate HubSpot CRM with Hotjar to build comprehensive customer profiles with qualitative information gathered by Hotjar Surveys. Hotjar auto-populates customer feedback directly into their contact timeline—so you get a fuller picture of your customers, their needs, and how you can engage them.

#Asking for written feedback through Hotjar Surveys helps you find out how your users feel about your product and whether or not they want to see specific improvements
Asking for written feedback through Hotjar Surveys helps you find out how your users feel about your product and whether or not they want to see specific improvements

10. Contentful 

Contentful is a cloud-based content management system (CMS) that lets you easily host, update, and automate published content on your website, web app, or mobile app. 

Contentful gathers the quality data you need to successfully engage your audience with targeted content—and allows marketing teams and developers to work together, resulting in faster, more straightforward digital product launches.

#Contentful lets product and marketing teams work together to build web pages and track user engagement.
Contentful lets product and marketing teams work together to build web pages and track user engagement.

How Contentful helps you optimize content to boost site engagement:

Use Contentful’s intelligence to create multichannel and personalized content strategies based on actionable insights gathered from raw user data. You can also generate reports to help you optimize your engagement strategies over time. Contentful helps you by:

  • Providing a range of key metrics on content performance 

  • Generating reports on user engagement

  • Enabling you to target users with personalized content

  • Allowing multiple teams to collaborate and speed up development

Pro tip: combine insights from traditional web analytics tools with software that helps you collect voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights—like Hotjar's Observe and Ask tools—to connect the dots between patterns in engagement behavior and why those behavior patterns happen. Then, use these insights to go deeper into the customer experience to understand if you’re engaging users and make changes if necessary.

Boost your users' product experience with website engagement tools

User engagement with your website can change over time, so you need to keep a close eye on the user experience and act quickly to make any necessary changes.

By incorporating our list of tools into your tech stack, you’ll be able to make data-informed decisions that'll increase users' engagement and boost their product experience on your website.

Make user-backed website decisions with Hotjar 

Hotjar’s Observe and Ask tools reveal how users really engage with your website, so you can improve their experience.

FAQs about website engagement tools