Comments on: Freewaregenius’ clickmaps analysis

By: lunaticprophet

lunaticprophet — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:14:38 +0000

DON’T REMOVE THE TAG CLOUD!! LOL… I may be the only one using it, but I really, really like it all the same!!

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:03:13 +0000

The instant I realized what this article was about I got a big guilty grin on my face, like i was a kid and was caught doing something naughty (but not terrible) by a spying parent.
A sort of ‘ah you caught me’ feeling hit me.
I don’t know why.
I suppose Freud would.

By: Jason H

Jason H — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:31:45 +0000

I thought this information from a high traffic site was pretty insightful. Thanks for sharing!

By: Stefan

Stefan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:41:31 +0000

Hi Samer. Thanks for your realy great site.
Just one thought on way so few people are using Category navigation and tag cloud. I think that the sidebar is a bit to cluttered. The caterogy navigation I use alot but the tag cloud I have never use before because I haven’t really notised it down there with al the other text. But now when I tryed it I think it’s great. Maybe the sidebar should be a bit “cleaner” so its easyer to navigate there? As I was saying, Just a thought.
Regards Stefan
(sorry for my English)

By: Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:27:21 +0000

Keep in mind that this type of tracking looks at where people click, not where they are looking. Eyetracking, if it including temporal data, could be very useful but it’s also darn expensive.

As a suggestion, ignore more of Just One’s comments in the future. It’s far easily for a person to criticize than to build anything. I don’t care for the games that are mentioned but I don’t bitch. Just One doesn’t want the cafeteria method, he (she?) wants the slave chef method.

I’m glad you mentioned CrazyEgg. Come to think of it, I have a suggestion which might turn this lemon of a discussion into lemonade. Have you considered including a forum with limited post length that would be a way for people to ask for a program to do X? Maybe there should be a set of trusted visitors who help police it so “already answered in the blog” requests get moved into their own category. If it works, it might also help you find new things. DonationCoder seems to work this way.

By: Samer

Samer — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:10:21 +0000

@Justone: I am not bringing back comments. "Pick my battles" is a figure of speech (see here). This subject is closed. I understand that you simply wrote down what you saw. Thanks for your contribution.

By: Just One

Just One — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:03:37 +0000

@ I did not pick any battle. It is in your mind and now you wanna justify your deeds by attacking me through words. If you wanna this, I am ready. So, let people know that what is the matter. Show my first comment to all so they will know what has happened.
Ok! I accept that I am illiterate and ignorant person. Even being such person, I did not attack you at any moment. But people like you (samer) did not understand the things in simple words, if told. Look at your behavior and compare what I said and what you wrote.
Show my first comment and lets start your so called battle.

By: Pipps

Pipps — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:43:39 +0000

This is brilliant self-data-mining in action!

Congrats!

By: Samer

Samer — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:19:58 +0000

The reason I removed the reference to the service was because I pick my battles, and I chose not to fight this one. I got a $20 monthly subscription to use this service because I was going to write about it, and got people like you (Justone) lecturing me about principles and rules and google rankings (btw you have no idea what you’re talking about re: google’s seo practices). It simply wasn’t worth it. As far as I am concerned as long as I am offering this content (which takes me a lot of time and effort) for free I don’t owe you anything, and you have no right to talk to me about my supposed principles. Get a life.

But, sadly, now that the article doesn’t mention the service used, I am realizing that as far as the readers are concerned who are maybe interested in the service, it is difficult for them to know what the service is and where to go to get this implemented on their sites. Is this really better? Who has benefited exactly? Have I made this posting more valuable by removing references to the service? I think not.

So therefore I will swing back and announce that these clickmaps were done using a service called “CrazyEgg”. They used to have a free membership option which is no longer the case, but I have been informed that they will re-introduce a free membership option in August.

So there you have it.

By: Just One

Just One — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:47:29 +0000

I do not wanna hurt your feelings but what I felt, I wrote. You see, you did not follow your own rules. Whatever you mentioned that it is paid or not but you see the rules you set for yourself.
You can add one more category named something like Shareware Review or whatever you feel ok. Take care n best of luck. Do not worry, you did not washed out your one reader, me.

By: Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:39:16 +0000

Here’s an updated version of the heatmaps and layout articles I’d mirrored a few months ago. http://rapidshare.com/files/245464062/Scientific_Web_Design_-_23_Actionable_Lessons_from_Eye-Tracking_Studies.iso

By: Stephen

Stephen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:34:17 +0000

When I have used this kind of service (CrazyEgg – free), another interesting thing I have discovered is that it can show you things like which word in a title the user actually clicked on.

For example in one of the images you can see the title:

“StorYbook: a Free and Open Source tool for Organizing a Novel”

Now, the whole title is one link, so a user could click anywhere and be taken to the post. However, the clicks were predominantly over the words “Open Source” and “Organizing”. The fact that it was “free”, a “tool” or to help with a “novel” did not seem to really spark the visitors’ interest.

Take away:

Your visitors are especially interested in “open source” and in the context of “organizing”. Perhaps you can find more tools that push these same buttons?

You would never have gotten this from something like Google Analytics that would have just told you that the visitors clicked on the link itself. You would never have known whether they we really interested in the above factors, or in the “novel” connection, or the fact it is “free” etc.

Do this regularly and you will get all kinds of clues about your users’ real interests, providing you with great prompts for new content.

By: Axel

Axel — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:23:15 +0000

Well,
If there is full disclosure, which there was, what is the hassle?
While I am a regular reader, the insights are specific to website owners, I think. Didn’t get much out of it, but I can see how such a service can help optimise ROI. Which is time, at least,both Samers and ours, and I always like to say time is the most precious thing we actually have.

Most useful freeware ever found here:
My vote goes for Everything file search

By: Samer

Samer — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:30:17 +0000

I have decided to remove all reference to the tool used in creating these heatmaps because its not freeware. While in its previous incarnation I was being very clear and transparent on my relationship with the in-page analytics service used (was given free use of the tool in order to do this analysis, but was not an affiliate and did not get paid for any sales), I can understand that some readers did not see why this post was published on Freewaregenius.

The point of this post is to present interesting information that I myself would love to read if I found the article somewhere else. In other words you don’t need to actually RUN a clickmap tool on your own site to find a treasure trove of good insights in this article that you can apply to your site.

By: Dustin Lambert

Dustin Lambert — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:10:16 +0000

Google Analytics offers the site overlay view which allows you to view the “heat” by # of clicks on the page… The only downside is that it just uses link data so if you have two links that point to the same location on the page, it doesn’t know which one people clicked on.

Anyhow, it is “free” and very useful for traffic analysis.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:41:08 +0000

I did similar test at my blog with ClickHeat – free but must be self-installed on server.

Got less insight, mostly because I have less stuff going on on page so everything was predictable with hot areas in top headlines, navigation and pagination.

Disabled it for now but plan using on future theme changes.