Howuku
Starts at $59 for lifetime
Pros
- A complete conversion rate optimization platform with Session Recordings, Heatmaps, Personalization, A/B Testing, and Visual Feedback Collection.
- Wide range of filters to choose from to segment the session recordings
- Built-in A/B Testing & Personalization
- Excellent user interface
Cons
- More native integrations must to be added
- Location based website personalization is not available yet
If you are running any type of online business, it is an undisputed fact that website traffic is one of the most important aspects to get it to the point of success and scale it further.
Therefore, any traffic you get out of all the marketing efforts you put in, you have to make sure that you make the maximum out of it and increase the conversion rates as high as you can.
However, it is not as straightforward or as easy as it sounds. Conversion rate optimization needs a highly strategic and data-driven approach that needs quite a lot of data points to analyze, so much so that large enterprises have a dedicated team of analysts working on it.
Does it mean the small to medium scale businesses can't afford to do it? Well, it was the case before SaaS tools like Hotjar came into the scene.
These software tools helped to get tons of insights from your website visitors by just installing a simple code. It didn't need any complex programming and gained widespread adoption within a short space of time.
Howuku is one of those that promise to be quite good with a few unique features. How good is it? Let us find it out.
Dashboard, User Interface & Features
After the sign up is done, the first thing is to do is to install the code snippet above the head tag of your website.
There is an official plugin for WordPress and Opencart which makes installing the code even easier. All that is needed is to copy the code and paste inside the plugin.
Overall, the main dashboard and the user interface are quite neat with all the navigation elements well-labeled & intuitive to use.
The five fundamental features Howuku offers are,
- Visitor Heatmaps,
- Session Recording,
- A/B Testing,
- Feedback Collection,
- Website Personalization.
You can add a detailed heatmap profile by setting up the page URL, the number of sessions, and also import the historical recordings.
When it comes to session recordings there are a lot of filters to choose from to see exactly the right set of visitors you want to analyze. Some of the available filters are,
- Device type,
- Operating system,
- Browser type,
- Session duration,
- Page count,
- Event tracked,
- User attributes (Name, Email).
The feedback widget can be easily customized to look the way you want, matching your brand colors. You can also enable screen recording where visitors can easily record a video and send it as feedback.
You can also set up different conditions for displaying the feedback based on the device type, country the traffic comes from, displaying only on specific pages on your website, etc.
Website Personalization is another excellent feature in Howuku that is very easy to implement. Just paste the URL of the page you want to personalize and add the variants based on the traffic source, referring domains, etc.
Any number of variants can be added with each part of the page content personalized according to the audience.
Personalization based on the visitor's location & geography is not currently available which is a negative for sure.
A/B Testing works similarly to personalization whereby you can set up as many variants you like, set up the conversion goals, and select the best variant based on the results.
Pricing
The plans start from $20 per month and range up to $100 per month based on the page views your website gets.
Apart from page views, the plan you that suits your need might depend on the number of websites you want to install Howuku on, how many months you want the data to be stored, integrations needed, number of heatmaps, and number of conversion funnels.
The top of the line Premium plan also gives you white label functionality where you can brand the tool with your logo and domain.
The pricing is quite affordable and competitive. However, it would have been nice to see a free plan for up to 2,000 page views.
Integrations
When it comes to integrations, Zapier is available to connect with other apps and webhooks are supported.
There is a public API as well if you want to integrate Howuku with your development process of an app.
However, no other native integrations are available currently. This is an area where Howuku definitely needs to improve on as the market leaders like Hotjar and Smartlook have native integration with multiple tools like Slack, HubSpot, Intercom, Segment, etc.
Support
Live chat support is available on the main website and the knowledge base is quite good as well with articles covering all the important features.
However, it would be nice to see some video tutorials on how to set up all the features.
How it compares to free tools like Microsoft Clarity
There are a few tools in this space like Microsoft Clarity and you might wonder why Howuku is needed when Clarity is completely free.
Well, to start with Microsoft Clarity is an excellent tool, but it offers only Session Recordings and Heatmaps. Howuku on the other hand offers way more in terms of a complete Conversion Rate Optimization platform.
Session Recordings & Heatmaps are perhaps only 15 to 20% of what Howuku offers. The real USP is the overall experience Howuku provides with A/B Testing, Visual Feeback Generation, Website Personalization, etc.
To get all of these features, you might need multiple other tools along with using Microsoft Clarity.
Conclusion
To wrap up and coming back to the initial question, is it a good conversion rate optimization tool?
Yes, the features are really good with the likes of personalization and A/B testing not available even in Hotjar. However, more native integrations have to be added and as with any new SaaS tool, more time has to be given for the platform to mature with more users.
Start with conversion rate optimization
Overall, Howuku has the fundamentals nailed down to develop into a very good conversion rate optimization tool, and it is surely worth a try.