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Site Reference

Follow That Mouse! How to See What Your Customer Sees

Website traffic reports only tell you who is showing up at your site. There are now tools that tell you more valuable information - how people react to your site and what they do while there.

There are full-blown eyetracking systems and there are the cheaper alternatives.

Heatmaps

  • MapSurface.com - Based on his orginal AJAX Link Tracker, Glenn Jones' service overlays graphical click data on top of your site. You simply press "Alt-X" and up pops your data. MapSurface.com is the hosted service, but there is also a free download.
  • CrazyEgg.com - does essentially the same thing as MapSurface, but the overlays look a little more polished.
"Mouse Movements"
  • OpenCube.com - OpenCube has been known for it's nice DHTML/JavaScript/CSS widgets and menus, but it has also developed a product that goes beyond a heatmap and actually tracks the mouse movements of users. Requirements: IE to view the data. $119 per site. ASP on server.
  • ClickTale.com - Right now, this looks to be the most powerful tool for mouse tracking.

Free

  • MIT Labs - MIT's Media Lab has released a PHP-based tool that does some pretty powerful mouse tracking. It creates an overlay with arrows of differnt sizes and colors indicating the speed and direction of the mouse. They have a sort of hosted service as well as a download package. (usability study PDF)