I just found out via TechCrunch that a new free visitor tracking service called ClickTale is available. ClickTale lets you see heat map movies that show the hot spots on your blog where people click. But it does more than that. According to TechCrunch, other metrics include:
Hovers over Links – counts users hovering over a link. This is particularly useful when lots of people are hovering over a link but deciding not to click.
Hovers to Clicks – a conversion metric. Tells you how many of those ?hovers? turn into actual clicks.
Hesitation – the average time between hovering over a link and clicking it.
Time to Click – the average time between the page loading and a user clicking a link.
Most blogs already are a kitchen junk drawer of JavaScript calls to third party tools, some of which can significantly slow down page loads. ClickTale addresses the question of slowdowns on their FAQ:
Website visitors do not notice any difference in their browsing since ClickTale is optimized to minimize the use of CPU and bandwidth resources. Visitors download approximately 10K of JavaScript, which remains in their cache and does not need to be downloaded again. Visitors upload approximately 2K of data per page which also does not have a noticeable impact on their browsing.
Did I mention It’s Free?
ClickTale’s service is free for up to 100 pages recorded per week. Only a random sampling of pages is recorded. You want more, you pay. They also have a blog, where you can read all kinds of self-serving case studies. The free service from ClickTale starts Monday, August 6, at 6:00 a.m., EST.
Interesting, it’s seem like people are giving out more heatmap application to use. CrazyEgg is one of them.
Not sure what is the different between ClickTale and CrazyEgg, do you know?
@Hoobin, I have used CrazyEgg, but not ClickTale. From what I can tell, ClickTale has some interesting metrics like pauses between hovering over a link and clicking on the link. I don’t recall CrazyEgg measuring that.
Thanks, Micheal. 100 page recorded per week just seem too small for me, but since it’s free, it’s no harm to give a try and see how it’s help.
@Hoobin, I think the idea is to have a representative sampling. Recording user actions for anything more than that wouldn’t improve the value of the data. Let me know how you like the results.
Sure Micheal, thanks for the tips up. Now, we are playing with couple of heatmap application and see which one work the best.
Maybe you just like to know that we manage to find a list of heatmap application from mashable, clicktale is missing from the list though:
http://mashable.com/2007/06/25/analytics-toolbox/
@Hoobin, Thanks for providing that handy resource. Looks like it predates ClickTale’s launch, so that would explain why it’s not on there.