crazy egg Archive

We’ve reviewed a number of web usage analysis services including ClickTale, RobotReplay and CrazyEgg. We’ve also written about an analysis service named TapeFailure which was closed over a year ago. This week TapeFailure founder Joshua Gross has launched his new web analysis service named Vistrac which is a complete rewrite of TapeFailure plus more functionality and analysis.

Joshua notes, “This service (Vistrac) will analyze everything from where users click, to where they pay attention when scrolling. It takes the concept of sites like UserFly one step further and breaks down the data for you.”

The features page is worth a look for detailed info on what Vistrac provides. There are reports on browser type, OS, screen resolution and browser size. I’ve never seen browser size on a report before but it’s pretty interesting – this is where a user is using their browser at a size other than fullscreen. Other reports include link tracking, heat maps, scroll metrics and form metrics. For a startup, form analysis can mean more signups and more paying customers.

There’s also a Superfunnel report  which provides a map for each user and how they navigate through your website or application.

Vistrac pricing ranges from free to $149/month for a corporate plan. Most of the web analysis services offer a free trial. My suggestion is to give each of them a try on the same website, compare the results and move forward with the services you find beneficial.

Over the past week, we reviewed a new mouse tracking application named TapeFailure. This app has received loads of praise around the Internet even though it is still in a private beta. We gave away all of our private beta keys in minutes of posting the note.

On Saturday, Corsin sent me a review of another semi-new application, also in private beta, called ClickTale. Just as I am about to post it, ClickTale founder Tal Schwartz sent me an embargoed press release through today including some information about their new heatmaps which went live today. I am going to try to get some beta keys and will let you know if I am able to.

A few people have asked me if this is better than Crazy Egg. These heatmaps are a bit different than the ones on CrazyEgg. ClickTale's heatmaps produce their charts based on mouse movement and page activity while CrazyEgg maps based on clicks.

Tal discusses three major benefits for using ClickTale's heatmap technology: Optimize advertising location and increase its impact, Maximize content effectiveness by rearranging its location, and Reduce webpage abandonment rates.

I asked Corsin to update his review of ClickTale to include the heatmaps. It took me a while to convince him and let's just say that he is now on a first class flight to NYC. Of course I didn't buy him the return (oh well).

Corsin's review follows…

ClickTale Review

Wikipedia describes ClickTale as "a qualitative web analytics service that provides a full-playback option for each user in the general statistics. Also, meta statistics allows playback experience of an artificially created "average user", or an "average user" that originated from a specific referral, thus enhancing webmaster's ability to optimize content per affiliation." And that is exactly what ClickTale does. Like TapeFailure – our review can be found here – it records all clicks, mousemovements and browses of your website visitors. All you need to do is paste a little JavaScript code somewhere on your webpage, decide how many recordings a day you want and wait.

Now that you had some visitors and recordings, you can go and analyze them. On the "My Projects" site you find all recordings for the last few days and some other data, like a demographics report with countries, languages, browsers and operating systems (92% of my users are using Windows and 40% Firefox 2). If you have selected a day you want to analyze, you find all recorded sessions on one list.

On this list you can see how many pages the user was visiting (the first row), what browser he used and from which country he was. You also see the referrer, the actual page, its loading time and the time the user was on this page. With the little play icon (that green arrow on the left) you start the ClickTale player. This is the tool that plays the user session.

The ClickTale Player

The interface is pretty simple. You have a start button, two buttons for the previous/next page the user visited and some more details. Inside the window you can follow the user from every mousemove to every click.

The icons on the right side explain the click behaviour of an user. A big blue square means the user clicked with the left mouse button, the green square means a right click.

Further you see the actual resolution the user had. So it might happen, that your user has a widescreen display but you don't. In that case you have to scroll horizontally to see everything. But this has of course its advantages as well: You can see what the user sees and what he doesn't. Maybe you have important information to low and the user has to scroll first. And if he scrolled and clicked you know the information is valuable for him. Maybe you should move it up a little bit? This and much more is possible with the ClickTale Player.

For Professional Use?

Do you know any software like ClickTale that you can install on your own servers? If so, use it. The player is pretty slow and you have to wait until it has loaded the next page the user visited. But for a quick look on how your users behave on your site this is a great tool. Maybe once the beta is complete, it will load more rapidly.

The Heatmap

Today, April 4th, ClickTale announced an new feature in their producht: Heatmap. This little extra shows exactly where the users spent the most time. This is different than what CrazyEgg does: CrazyEgg shows the clicks on your site elements, not the time the users was in an area.

The Pricing

ClickTale is currently in a closed beta. You can sign-up on their page and you might receive an invite.

The ClickTale team started a poll and forum post about their plans on pricing. These prices are not yet fixed (we can't publish them) but I think they are at a fair level. What would you pay for this service? Add it to the comments and please include how many domains you want to track and how many recordings you want to do per day.

I had a chance to check out a new app in private Beta called TapeFailure. I was thinking it had something to do with backups and server protection but in fact it is a way to tape your users. You basically create tapes of your users and their interactions with your page.

You setup a code for each page, plug the Javascript code on your page and that's it. You can set it to record every x session and it creates a page showing the OS, browser and screen resolution. Tapes can be played online or downloaded for offline viewing. This tool is a great complement to a heatmap tool such as Crazy Egg. They also offer some interesting stats about mouse movement.

Here is an overview of the difference between TapeFailure and other analytics packages, "Tapefailure does not collect basic data that other analytics software (such as Google Analytics) gathers. Instead, it focuses on what the user does, not who the user is or what they use."

Check out my full video review below. My only current issues with the service are:

• make the playback window wider – 8×6 is not wide enough
• offer a way to see a complete user experience from page to page – right now it appears to stop on the click (which actually is not registered from what I can tell) — it can do multiple pages as long as you set the correctly, I made a mistake

If you want to see the tapes I have recorded, or want to do a test with your computer on CN, just let me know. Corsin also let me know of another private beta in the same category, ClickTale.

After Kristen posted today on a suggested mashup, I thought it would be interesting to look at 5 great acquisition targets for 1st quarter 2007. I do not have financials for any of these companies, so I am working from a base of technology and visability. For each company I list, I have also listed a possible buyer along with my commentary on why the purchase makes sense. Do you agree or disagree?

Acquisition target 1: Renkoo

Possible buyer(s): Evite, Yahoo or Meetup

Why: Evite is still stuck in Web 1.0. Upcoming.org (owned by Yahoo) is pretty strong for tech, but lacks the mainstream audience. Meetup is awesome for group meetup planning and organization but is missing the 1-1 connection ability. Renkoo's technology to help when you know who but not where or when could really benefit all three of these organizations.

Links: Renkoo, video review, interview

Acquisition target 2: CrazyEgg

Possible buyer(s): Any large web shop. Ogilvy, BBDO, etc.

Why: I think of this more as a defensive play than anything else. CrazyEgg is tops when it comes to web site testing and every agency should be using their service when testing new client web sites. USAToday for example should have used the CrazyEgg service with the relaunch this past weekend. So why do I say this is a defensive purchase? Because, while there are other players in this market, CrazyEgg is leaps and bounds ahead and gobbling up this offering will keep other agencies from utilizing it and it could be a good point of differentiation from other agencies.

Links: CrazyEgg, interview

Acquisition target 3: ConceptShare

Possible buyer(s): Any large web shop. Ogilvy, BBDO, etc.

Why: Same reasoning as with CrazyEgg. I am willing to bet that a buyout of ConceptShare would be a rounding error for the large agencies but again would keep the competitors away from the service. This tool speeds up production and any agency would be more productive by using ConceptShare.

Links: ConceptShare, interview, review

Acquisition target 4: Viddler

Possible buyer(s): YouTube (Google), Metacafe, Any current television network

Why: Viddler has some really innovative technology with regard to video. They continue to improve the service as well and frankly, I enjoy using their service more than any other current video service. Yeap, YouTube is the big one, but that does not mean they are the best. Viddler has better sized video windows, a better picture quality, time based tagging/commenting and a more seamless friends section. YouTube needs this, Metacafe needs this and even more importantly, the television networks that are attempting to enter this space need this. Imagine being able to tag precise times on a 24 or Lost episode?

Links: Viddler, interview

Acquisition target 5: MyDesignIn

Possibly buyer(s): Home Depot, Lowe's

Why: Kristen wrote about MyDesignIn this morning. Back in a former life, I negotiated a deal to get this type of technology for a consumer site I was working on. The technology was not as good as what MyDesignIn offers and this is now a pretty robust tool. I could easily see a Home Depot or Lowe's purchasing this type of app for three reasons. First, it keeps the competitor away. Second, it allows for a strong branding experience along with a long user session for additional branding and advertising options. So you design your kitchen, print it out and a coupon for 10% off shows up on the bottom for use at the purchaser. Lastly, it will allow Home Depot or Lowe's to start to embrace socialness when it comes to the Web. They will gain a first mover advantage.

Links: MyDesignIn, mashup talk