Sunny Man’s Blog

December 12th 2006

(1) ClickTale

Blogging, Internet, Programming, Technology

I’ve was invited to join the closed beta of the Israeli start up ClickTale. The service allows you to see a snapshot of what your visitors do and it records their mouse movements, actions and text input in real time. I was sceptical at first but although the beta service isn’t quite what they advertise on their main site, it has got most of the features and sure is something unique - and something I think could be very useful. I’m going to cover what features ClickTale provides, their uses and also the privacy issue that ClickTale brings to the table.

Mice Behaviour

There is a lot of statistic services out there that track your visitors, where they come from, where they enter from and how long they stay on your site - some even go as far as to provide a heat map of ‘hot spots’ on your site that are clicked more. But what ClickTale does is unique in that it tracks the mouse movements of the visitor around your site, whether they right or left click and also what text they enter into fields such as searches. It records these movements and allows you to see what the visitor is checking out when and where - where do they go as soon as the page loads?

This is useful to site owners because in order to optimise your site or service you first need to understand the habits of your users. ClickTale bridges the gap between eye tracking and statistics for websites. I’ve found that when I’m browsing a website, especially a text heavy site, I follow my mouse with my eyes as a reading aid. Watching how a user navigates around the site, how a user responds to links or images can be vital information for any site owner not only in designing the user interface but other style decisions.

Data Analysis

Having all the data being made into the movies of the users’ movements and actions is very nice but what ClickTale also does is provide a statistical analysis of the data it collects. Much like Google Analytics (although at time of writing much less advanced) it provides data grouped by country, language, browser, operating system, screen sizes and window sizes. Although the statistical analysis is not as comprehensive as Google Analytics or say AWStats, I think that the main feature of seeing what your visitors do could potentially be more useful and important. At the moment the analysis is limited to what I’ve mentioned above but I feel that a lot more could be done with the data.

The data could be transformed into a ‘heat map’ of mouse movement and actions - which parts of the page does the mouse move over most, which links are most clicked and which parts of the page are seen the most. Services such as Crazy Egg already offer a service that creates ‘heat maps’ based on where users are clicking. This is useful as it shows which links are used the most but tracking mouse movement could potentially be more useful. Mouse movement usually signals interest on the visitor’s side. In my own experience, if I’m weary of a link I hover over it first and see what it points to. If I’m not, I go straight to it. The behaviour of the user’s cursor can say a lot about how visitors perceive your site and provide suggestions on how you can make the user feel safer browsing your site.

Privacy Issues

Obviously, with the fact that visitors’ mouse movements, text input and mouse actions are all recorded, the issue of privacy arises. ClickTale battles some of the arguments about privacy by not recording password inputs, not recording any activity outside the web page, not tracking visitors between websites, not tracking any personal files, internet history or interacting with any local files or software. Also, only authorised people (people with the username and password) can actually view the recorded data.

Although the creators have good intentions for their product, it could be used in the wrong manner. Passwords could be captured via a normal text field, some crafty JavaScript and ClickTale. If the users are properly screened though, this could be avoided.

Final Thoughts

I love the idea of ClickTale and since trying it out on my own blog, it’s been interesting to watch the visitors’ movements, where they click, and how much of my posts they really do read! Although it’s been in closed development and testing since the early part of this year, it seems the wait will be worth it. In my case as a small blog owner, it has been interesting to see how the users interact with my bookmarks, seeing whether or not that use the lower part of the sidebar and also seeing whether or not they find searching intuitive.

Also, the fact that adding the service to your site is done by just two pieces of JavaScript means that site operators will find it incredibly easy to use. Once the user interface has been polished, I think that it would be a vital service for any serious website owner.

Oh, and a special thanks to Arik for giving me permission to write this review and including shots of the current user interface.