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.

AOL

Buyer: Yahoo

Why: Yahoo needs to expand its base of distribution for the Yahoo ad platform. What better way than to acquire the population segment who uses AOL and loves it? AOL users click ads which means a potential cash win for Yahoo sa they could integrate contextually-relevant advertising into AOL, something AOL doesn’t do currently. It would also give them access into Hulu thru the AOL Video portal. It might even perk up the employee morale which I read has been quite low this past year.

Zoho

Buyer: IBM

Why: A couple times each week I read about IBM wanting to own the services market. Acquiring Zoho would give IBM a foothold into Web 2.0 and since Zoho targets the small business, would give IBM a chance to sell the small business on even more IBM-based services. It could even help IBM to slowly become a household name again in the Web space, something that they have no real presence in today.

Clicky

Buyer: Webtrends

Why: Webtrends is so completely out of the Web game, it’s sad. I remember beta testing the first version of Webtrends in the mid-90s and watched the company never move forward. Clicky is hot, both from the application-side and the buzz-side, and could be a good fit for Webtrends. Most small businesses need simple Web analytics and while Clicky is more robust than just simple, it would give a slow entry into the current Web market for Webtrends. That is of course if they actually want to move forward, something I’ve wondered for eight years now.

CrazyEgg/ClickTale

Buyer: Omniture

Why: To help Omniture move further into the Web testing market and provide a rounded suite of tools for their clients. Last year I said that CrazyEgg should be acquired by a large creative agency but I’ve changed my mind and am going with Omniture. CrazyEgg and ClickTale provide the testing and Omniture provides the analytics – I could see some nice A/B type testing with these acquisitions.

Pageflakes/Netvibes

Buyer: Yahoo

Why: Both Pageflakes and Netvibes have good footings into the early adopter, "cool techie" segments. This is a segment which Yahoo lacks on but could be a very influential segment for buzz. Completed correctly, Yahoo could (once again) start to get their search and other products in front of the early adopter, blogger crowd which can be an excellent way for Yahoo to get messages out and have forced use of their technology.

Note: Zoho is a current sponsor of CN.

Just for readers of CenterNetworks, CrazyEgg is offering Ten (10) Free Accounts for life. To enter for one of the passes, send in an entry using our contact form. We will select the winners this weekend!

(I’ve turned off comments on this post to avoid any entry confusion)

With that said, I’ve been working hard to line up a variety of exclusive Holiday Gifts for you. Over the next ten business days, there will be one gift each day. From service discounts, to premium beta access to free conference passes, we’ve got something you will like!

In the graphic below, you will note one slot with ??? in it. That’s because I have left one slot open. I’d like your feedback on who should fill that slot and I will go after them! Leave your ideas in the comments. And if you have a service to offer as a treat, contact us. It can’t be a free service is the only rule.

Here’s who’s participating — pretty impressive lineup!:

• OurStage – 12 free song downloads – get holiday gift
• Compete – free credits towards the search analytics tool – get holiday gift
• Clicky – two free pro accounts – get holiday gift
• Freshbooks – 30% off new subscriptions – get holiday gift
• TapeFailure – 40% off new subscriptions – get holiday gift
• Drop.io – free premium upgrade codes – get holiday gift
• CrazyEgg – Some pro accounts – get holiday gift
• Future of Web Apps in Miami – 5 free conference passes – get holiday gift
• CenterNetworks – 50% off job board posts – get holiday gift

Update: Please DO NOT signup for TapeFailure – the site will be closing at the end of this month :(

You won’t know which Holiday Gift will come which day nor what time – so be on the lookout! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to All!

I decided to change the game for some of these social visitors. I spent a good bit of time analyzing exactly what these users do when they visit CN. And the results were sad. Visit the page, leave. Over and over I saw this pattern thousands of times. In my new test group, users clicked the ads an average of 7% more and picked up the CN feed 12% more than in the non-modified group. I consider that a huge gain. The key is a simple thing I learned early in my career as a salesman at The Wiz. Welcoming someone by name will increase the likelyhood of a purchase. A person’s name is the most beautiful sound they can hear. In this case, I used the referring social media site as their name.

The test was relatively simple. I used "seconds" to define whether the visitor would be part of the "modified" group. Odd, yes – even, no. Both groups saw the exact same article and same Web site. The only difference was the inclusion of a "name" box for the modified group which is shown below (it’s a mockup example). What this name box did was call out to the user "Hello!" and drew attention to it.

The box included the following elements:

• Welcome from x site
• Message about RSS with orange RSS icon
• Targeted ad

As for the specific ad types, gadget ads appear to work best for Digg visitors, while content ads worked better for Stumblers.

The great thing about what I setup is that only visitors from those sites saw the box. Many sites will run a "Welcome Digg’rs" type message when their story hits Digg but everyone will see that message. So not only are you not welcomed by name, you are welcomed by someone else’s name. I found that this tactic didn’t work as I had hoped over the past year.

My test has concluded and I am very pleased with the results. The next step is to refine the Welcome box and determine what it might look like going forward. Should every Digg user see it every time? Should a user be able to close it permanently? How far can I push it before I annoy the new visitor. It’s important to keep the brand and trust high.

As you can see a simple change returned dramatic results. And it has me wondering, who else can I welcome?

(tools used include: GetClicky, CrazyEgg, TapeFailure and ClickTale)

The report released today discusses amount of scrolling a site visitor is willing to process. What would be great is to know what type of sites make up the report. For example, people might be more willing to scroll further on a blog than on a product site or a corporate brochure, etc. Most blogs seem to have a good bit of scrolling, especially on the home page.

A few of the interesting conclusions from the Scrolling Report:

• Almost identical percentages of page views (15%-20%) reach the page bottom regardless of page height.
• It appears that regardless of page height, scrolling reach is very similar on the relative scale with some resemblance to a linear model (or a very flat exponential): between 64% to 68% of the page views are likely to reach the 1K pixel line and 15% to 20% will reach the bottom of the page.
• It appears that visitors scroll in a relative way – about the same percentage of page views will reach the middle of a web page regardless of the actual page height in pixels.

Do you believe that blogs have changed the way we scroll on a Web page? From the old days where the belief was to fit as much as possible on the first screen, I would say they have. Check out our previous ClickTale coverage.

I really like what the CrazyEgg team is doing. They are providing a quick, easy-to-use, reliable way to test web pages. I wanted to find out more so I gave the CrazyEgg CEO, Hiten Shah a call. I hope he does not mind me saying this, but he has one of the best minds of anyone I have ever met. A great business mind to go along with the web side. I really enjoyed our conversation and hope you will get something out of it as well.

Grab the RSS Feed and always know the instant we post other interviews.

Click the start button below to begin the audio interview (or download the mp3):

Below is a partial text transcript of the audio interview. Please listen to the audio for the entire discussion.

Allen: Why don’t we start with a little background about who you are and where you are from.
Hiten: My name is Hiten Shah and I am one of the founders of CrazyEgg. We had an Internet marketing company that did SEO, Internet marketing and consulting. I started it about 4 years ago with my brother-in-law. We decided to create some web applications and CrazyEgg is one of the biggest so far.

Allen: What does CrazyEgg do and why the name CrazyEgg?
Hiten: CrazyEgg helps you visualize your visitors. What that means is that it gives you a clear understanding of where people are clicking on a web page with visual heatmap and visual overlay. It is mainly a testing platform that helps you improve your web site. And so we decided to use it for our heatmap, data visualization software called CrazyEgg.

We came up with the name very randomly some years ago because we wanted to start a web design company several years ago but that never happened.

Allen: I have seen a lot of press and a lot of it talks about CrazyEgg as an analytics tool. Do you consider CrazyEgg an analytics tool?
Hiten: I do not consider CrazyEgg a web analytics tool. I think of it as a testing platform to help people improve their web site.

Allen: What is your role with CrazyEgg?
Hiten: We wear many hats here. My official title is CEO but that does not go far in a startup. I usually take care of all of the support and product development.

Allen: What is the value proposition for CrazyEgg?
Hiten: People should signup for CrazyEgg because they want to improve the design, layout and content of their web site. And they want to make people convert into buyers or any kind of goal on your web site, CrazyEgg can help you get there.

Allen: In the CrazyBlog there was a mention of 5 million tracked clicks – how cool is that? Is this the kind of number you were expecting?
Hiten: We are already past 5 million and are at about 7.5 million as of today. We wanted to get it out there and we knew the pain we had. We are very happy with the results so far!

Allen: How many signups have you had since the launch? What’s the feedback been like?
Hiten: We have 30,000 users and have had lots of great feedback so far. Lots of feature requests and ways to improve. Lots of people submitting bugs which is exactly what we need and we have been working fast to fix the bugs and add the features that people are looking for.

Allen: Who are the CrazyEgg competitors?
Hiten: That is a very tough question because I consider CrazyEgg a testing platform rather than a web analytics. Many people would consider any web analytics software a competitor even though I do not. We want to provide something different than everyone else.

Allen: Whats the makeup of the CrazyEgg team?
Hiten: There are 3 of us on the business end and we have 2 full-time programmers and we had a design firm create all of our design and UI stuff.

Allen: We must talk about the technology behind CrazyEgg – what is it that makes those maps and charts so cool?
Hiten: The tracking is all Javascript. We do that in a bunch of ways because we want to track everything is done on the page. When it comes to the software and programming lanugage, we chose Ruby-On-Rails. There is a lot of image manipulation, there are iFrames as well. We use a MySQL database. We picked Ruby because for me it was easiest to find really good programmers.

Allen: Alright… I love web analytics, it is something that started with my auditing background – and I wonder if I there is any thought around combining CrazyEgg with any of the stats programs currently available?
Hiten: I think that is a good possibility which we would have to see how people react and how it fits into the picture. We do collect a lot of things that web analytics collects and we will be adding more features to show more data than we currently show.

Allen: Any thought about adding some filters? For example, when I hit the test page as the owner, my clicks and visit should not be recorded. I think this is a big bug in the application.
Hiten: We are hoping to have a feature (ip blocking) within the next few months so that the data does not show up in your reports. It is in the works!

Allen: Any thoughts on adding an agency package – so I could add say all of my clients to one master account?
Hiten: We are planning on something like that in the longer-term six months so agencies can log in and see their clients results. That is definitely in the works as well, great idea!

Allen: Apart from CrazyEgg what other web apps do you like?
Hiten: Very interesting question – I like things on my desktop more than on the web. Overall I like the web apps that entertain me and I like delicious, youtube and digg for the entertainment value.

Allen: So you mention YouTube – what do you think of the deal with Google purchasing them?
Hiten: Someone was going to buy YouTube – I think it was great – they made a great name for themselves and when people think of video online, they think of YouTube. It was almost a nobrainer that someone was going to buy them.

Allen: Where does CrazyEgg go from here?
Hiten: I see CrazyEgg going to a place I can’t even imagine right now. We want to make sure that people can easily test things on their web site and are constantly making improvements. More people are on the Internet today and it is important to constantly improve things on your web site and that you are converting visitors a lot better than before. So we want to provide a testing platform to easily do these things and easily understand what is going on with their web pages.

I expect the Internet to be everywhere like a road you are traveling down, maybe even plugged into your brain and I am excited to be a part of it.

Well we have reached the end of our interview with Hiten. Thanks to Hiten for participating and to you for reading and listening. CrazyEgg has a very bright future ahead of it!

If you would like to participate in a conversation on CenterNetworks, or if you have any comments or questions, let me know.