Knowing what your visitors click on your pages is incredibly useful.

Having the ability to tag links and look up a link in an admin program to determine what is or is not being clicked is one way to track clicks. However with Google Analytics you are able to use a tool they provide that shows a bar on top of each item or link on your page that is clickable. They call this an “overlay”, look at the three bars in this picture:

The bars in this picture are colored in white as no one has clicked the links. The above screen shot is taken from one of the splash pages I am using for RSS subscription campaigns. Using the overlay will show you, and only you (not your visitors), which links have been clicked an how often. Hovering over a bar will tell you

As you can see items are tracked for each link and appear, as in the above picture, when you mouse over a bar: clicks, goal value, and the various goals. Clicks are the number of clicks on that specific link, goal value is the number of times that goal has been met, and the goals can range from 1 to 4 goals and give you a goal description. I will write more about goals, however the short description is an action you want the user to take, therefore a goal may be to click a specific link on your site.

Looking at the graphic above which is mirrored on the homepage, you would see the bar to subscribe to the site via email was clicked much more often than the large orange subscribe. This type of information can help you plan a site redesign.

I am using the overlays to compare various marketing campaigns driving people to the site and hope they click to subscribe.

I highly recommend you use Google Analytics and test out the overlay.

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