heatmap, hot or not? Free alternatives for Crazy Egg
The heatmap is a graphical overlay of your website which points out what content is hot and what not. This is mainly done by tracking the mouseclicks of the visitor. A more expensive model uses eyetracking to achieve this overlay (for more informationon eye-tracking, visit the blog of Markus Weber). Although the results look the same, the two options are somewhat different. The click-heatmap makes it possible to analyse the clicking behaviour of the visitor while the eyetracking-heatmap shows you where people actual look on your webpage.
So what can you do with a heatmap? It gives you the opportunity to look through the eyes of your visitors as they navigate on your website. For example: The heatmap shows that your advertisement is easily overlooked. Possible reasons: wrong colour, close to big images which capture more attention, … Just give the ads a more prominent place and see if the visitors pick up on this. If you have dynamic content, it is a bit more difficult to take the full advantage of heatmaps (people click on different places if content changes). Instead of posting an article every day, you can consider doing so every week (or longer if you want to test longer).
I came up with this post because I was looking for an alternative for the site-overlay provided by google analytics. It’s not that this tool is useless, on the contrary, but the grass might be greener on the other side.
Crazy Egg
The first one I came across was Crazy Egg. A while ago this was a free service, but that’s not longer the case. They have various payment-options and if you have a look at the demo, you’ll notice that 9$ a month is not that much. If you prefer to have a free alternative for Crazy egg, you can just keep on reading…
Feng-Gui
A second heatmap is provided by Feng-Gui, which has a free service for simple heatmaps. Feng-Gui (so they claim) forsees human’s attention and attraction, simply by uploading a screenshot. This method doesn’t track any mouseclicks but the heatmap is generated by an algorithm, which is fabricated by the results of numerous neurologic studies. To make sure this algorithm stays intact, Feng-Gui compares the results with actual eye-tracking methods. Personally I think these results are based too much on assumptions instead of bulletproof evidence. Although the algorithm is constantly checked, changes can be made by the smallest detail. For example, what about people who read from right to left? They see your website completely different than you. One other point: you can only upload one screen shot every 5 hours when using the free version. Feng-Gui also comes as a firefox plugin.
WordPress plugin #1
If you are using wordpress, maybe you can have a look at this wordpress plugin as well. After installing and activating the plugin, it starts to register mouseclicks. It is possible to generate heatmaps for every page and with a handy datepicker you can easily go back in time. You can set the time limit and memory in the provided php. Although this plugin is a good way to get started with heatmaps it doesn’t offer the possibility to generate weekly/monthly summaries, which makes testing a bit difficult.
Clickheat
Another free heatmap comes from Labs Media and is called Clickheat. This open source application uses php and needs to be installed on your server. To make things easier, they developed Clickheat as a wordpress plugin as well. After several search strings into google I came across this article on heatmaps written by Matt Ridout and gave me some new insights of Labs Media. Apparently the plugin adds a little link into your webpages back to the website of Labs Media, which can conflict with some searchengines. It’s not difficult to remove the link, but I’m not really fond of this kind of strategy.
Corunet
The next free trackingsystem is called “The definite heatmap” by Corunet and is a “do it yourself solution”. Corunet gives you the opportunity to build your own heatmap, this way you have a better understanding how these programs work. For the lazy people among us: you can download all necessary files at the end of the tuturial. I will give this a try later on and will let you know the outcome.
Clickdensity
Although I’ve never used ClickDensity, I heard quiet a lot about this analytics tool. They offer a 30 day trail, in which you can fully test the functionalities. If people are using this package, please let me know. Because it got so many good reviews, I’ll be giving this tool a try as well. This is part of the latest update (see below)
As mentioned before, heatmaps are better used on static websites than dynamic ones. The content on dynamic website is often changed (e.g. new posts/comments on blogs), this in contrast with the coordinates of the recorded clicks made by the visitors. This shouldn’t be a problem if you update your blog/website monthly and attract a serious amount of visitors.
In this post I tried to make a small summery of really cheap or free heatmaps. Whatever your choice will be, you have to be carefull with heatmaps. Most of them make a connection with the help of Javascript (from the client-side) to the webserver for every click made by a certain visitor. This can interfere with the performance by slowing down the system. A possible solution is to activate the recording of clicks when a low number of people are visiting your website. You’ll have to test it over a longer period of time because of the sheer number of people, but at least they will enjoy your website at full speed.
If you have any experience with heatmaps (free or paid versions), please let me know.
Update: 13th of May 2010
A lot of new heatmap systems made their way to the public since this article was published. Time for an update!
Mouseflow
Just to let everyone know: I’m not getting payed for writing this review, but I’m very thrilled about Mouseflow. Not only does it offer a detailed mouse click heatmap, but also a mouse movement and scroll heatmap. But that is not where it stops. Mouseflow is in fact a powerful web analytics package that gives you plenty of statistics and features to play around with. It records the pageviews, total visit length, interaction time (which I find very useful), bounce rates, loading time, response time and the scroll reach (in percentages and pixels).
On top of that Mouseflow offers livestreaming, a very nice feature with which you can follow your users live (only for paying subscriptions)! It also records whole visitor sessions, which you can playback in your browser or simply download to your hard drive to watch it whenever you want. These recordings include the mouse movements, clicks, scroll events and key strokes.
For only 10€ a month you get 1000 recorded sessions – which is a bargain – but if you’re still not sure you can always start with a free subscription. You’re just one line of Javascript away from trying out this great application.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you share this post with twitter (don’t forget to mention @paulolyslager), bookmark this article with delicious or give it the thumbs up with facebook you will receive a promotional code for 500 free recordings instead of the normal 100.
Clickdensity
What I immediately liked about Clickdensity is the ease of implementation – just five lines of code – and the ease of use. With only four buttons you can choose between the normal heat map, the click map, the hover map and the page stats. The page stats however shows minimal information because Clickdensity does not collect much data other than the X and Y coordinates of the clicks to generate the heatmap. You can filter the clicks by browser, click time, date and screen size.
A very nice feature is the ability to attach the X and Y click coordinates to a certain element of your page. This can be necessary when you update your website on regular bases with new content, meaning a change in lay-out. A minor setback however is that it takes quiet some time to generate the heatmap overlays. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a straightforward and easy to use heatmap application without extensive analytical information, you should definitely try Clickdensity.
WordPress plugin #2: WordPress Click Tracking Plugin
I’ve been reading a lot of positive reviews about the Click Tracking Plugin, but unfortunately I can’t get it to work properly. I’m blaming my inadequate technical knowledge of GZIP for that, but it looks like I’m not the only one having problems with this plugin. If someone can get this one to work, please let me know!
Picnet Mouse Eye Tracking
This Australian company, named Picnet, has two heatmap systems: the eye tracking heatmap and the click heatmap. The name “eye tracking heatmap” can be a bit misleading because there is no eye tracking going on. Picnet justifies the name with the result of certain studies, which claims: “There is a strong correlation (84%) between the regions of website pages scanned by your eyes and the regions visited by the mouse cursor. Additionally, 88% of regions that are not scanned by the eyes are also not visited by the mouse cursor”.
So instead of tracking the eyes, Picnet tracks the mouse movements.
There are two ways to display the click heatmap – a general map of the sectors your visitors are scanning with their eyes, and a more detailed view that shows the pattern of mouse clicks on each area of the page. It also tracks mouse movements and shows you the website architecture and user movements throughout the website.
If you subscribe for a free account, you need to mention Picnet’s website with a small line of text which is provided by them. To get rid of this text you will need to upgrade to a premium account, which costs A$2,000 per annum per domain or A$500 per month per domain.
The free account however delivers very useful information but has some downsides.
For example, it doesn’t keep your data longer than 2 weeks, it doesn’t record any keyboard interaction (which is useful for investigating your forms) and it does’t show user interactions with the page (so no AJAX or drop down menu’s for example).
alternative, Clickdensity, Clickheat, Corunet, crazy egg, Feng Gui, free, heatmap, mouseflow, picnet, plugin, wordpress
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11:24 am on September 4th, 2009
Very accurate job!
Another solution to avoid performance issues, could be to have a separate server just for heatmap.
What do you think?
P.S.
I didn’t know CrazyEgg has got commercial, damn!
10:37 am on September 5th, 2009
If the cost-benefit ratio was ok, then this would be a great solution… but only for those websites which attract a lot of visitors. More visitors means more clicks to be recorded, so they would certainly benefit of a second server.
7:31 am on September 28th, 2009
great post, thanks kindly
8:37 am on September 28th, 2009
You’re welcome Dave!
8:36 pm on October 6th, 2009
This article has been shared on favSHARE.net. Go and vote it!
10:16 pm on October 15th, 2009
I am new to the world of web analytics and i think the functions are unbeleivable. I have an online private business and it has always been so frustrating to me how i could not observe the activity of my customers. I came accross ClickTale analytics on a similar blog and i tried out the free option offered and my eyes have been opened. I now feel confident to adjust my website according to the behaviour i can see in the videos and all the heatmaps. Its so simple and so effective, I wish i had found it earlier.
6:22 pm on November 9th, 2009
@Steve Mann: Thank you for the comment Steve. Since a few weeks now I’ve been testing ClickTale as well. I’ll let you know my findings as well.
11:02 am on November 17th, 2009
Hi, I found your page when i was searching Google for sites related to this article. I have tell you, your site is good. I like the design too, its nice. I don’t have the time at the moment to fully read your website but I have noted it and I also registered for your RSS feed. I will be back in a day or two. Thanks for a great website.
2:54 pm on November 17th, 2009
@ArticleDirectory: And thank you for the nice comment! Hopefully you like the rest of the website as well.
5:18 am on February 18th, 2010
Love the list thanks so much.
Regarding clickheat – I installed it on the checkout pages of a store to see how people used the page.
A while later the site owner complained that when he viewed the checkout pages he got the IE ‘this page contains secure and insecure content’ error, and he worried that this was reducing the conversion rate. I checked and checked and checked again, and I couldn’t find any non-https images.
Eventually I finally realised what was happening – it was the clickheat script that was the insecure content on the https page!
11:33 am on February 18th, 2010
@Stuart: Hi Stuart, nice to hear that you like this list and thanks for your interesting comment. I’ve been using Clickheat sporadically for a few months now (actually only used it to write this article and test it a bit) and I never crossed this IE error message before. The implemented code from Clickheat seems a bit aggressive and maybe a good thing to keep it out of the secure checkout pages. I can imagine that the CR dropped down a bit because of this message, but maybe you can switch to a less intrusive package.
Although I find Clickheat’s system interesting (follow the mousemovements of the visitor), I prefer to use A/B testing in checkout pages to increase the CR.
3:34 am on April 21st, 2010
Hi there,
Interesting article. We have also created our own heatmap service at http://intuitionhq.com, and at $9 a test we think it’s very reasonably priced. We’ve designed it to be simple, quick and easy to use, and we think it works pretty well in that respect.
If you’d like to give it a go, please email me back on this address, or contact us on twitter @intuitionhq – we’d happily set you up with some free tests if you’d like to have a play.
Cheers!
6:03 pm on May 3rd, 2010
You should try http://mouseflow.com that gives you heatmaps on mouse movements and clicks, but more importantly records whole visitor sessions (including mouse movements, clicks, scroll events and keystrokes) and lets you watch the whole thing in your browser.
There are free plans as well as paid ones.
8:10 pm on May 3rd, 2010
@Jacob: Hi Jacob, thanks for the offer. You can expect an email from me
!
8:13 pm on May 3rd, 2010
@Lasse: Hi Lasse, thanks for the great tip. I just subscribed myself to Mouseflow and I’m very curious for the result. I will update this article as soon as I have enough information.
12:45 am on May 7th, 2010
Love this article altough i havnt found any perfect solution as for now, wich would be Heatmap + a simple wordpress plugin + Free
please keep this post updated !
12:51 pm on May 7th, 2010
@Julien: Don’t you worry Julien, i’m working on an update of this post! I hope to finish this soon!
1:11 pm on May 7th, 2010
Glad to read that
1:28 pm on May 13th, 2010
This article has been updated on the 13th of May 2010. More information on its way!
12:48 am on May 19th, 2010
Thanks for the mention Paul, I notice you’re using Mouse Eye Tracking on this blog too. Let us know your feedback, we’re always looking to improve the product.
We’ve also created a plugin that makes it easy to setup Mouse Eye Tracking on wordpress websites, see:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/picnet-mouse-eye-tracking-service-plugin/
2:12 am on June 23rd, 2010
@Paul Olyslager: @Paul, overall which of all these tools both the paid and free do you personally recommend and prefer?
By the way great review
2:38 pm on June 24th, 2010
@Owen McGab Enaohwo: Hi Owen and thank you for the reply. When I was doing the research for this article I had to know what Crazy Egg was all about in order to form a better opinion. I have to say that Crazy Egg is a very good heatmap system, but nothing more, noting less. For a paying alternative I would recommend Mouseflow because it gives you much more than a heatmap system. The live streaming is a very nice feature but it also provides you with plenty of statistics and a scroll heatmap. Don’t forget to retweet this article to get 500 free recordings
.
As for a free alternative, I would go with clickdensity. It is similar to Crazy Egg but doesn’t have the nice interface.
I hope this will satisfy your question. If not, just ask!
10:20 pm on June 27th, 2010
@Paul Olyslager: After reading your blog post and asking my previous question, I installed the free Picnet and in a couple of months I will be moving on to Mouseflow (which is subscription based). I even compare Mouseflow to Clicktales and I think Mouseflow provide more bang for less money.
10:50 am on June 30th, 2010
Fantastic article. I have just install mouseflow. I was between mouseflow and clicktale but the price was the main reason i choose mouseflow. My main concern is security. I have install also the proxy.php file in order to track shopping cart etc. How secure is this? Any ideas?
12:52 pm on June 30th, 2010
@gerorge: Hi, if your website is running SSL, all data transmitted to Mouseflow is also encrypted. You can even adjust the php proxy script so that it sends data to https://... instead of http://.
If you’re not using SSL then all data is transmitted unencrypted across the network, including the compressed mouseflow data.
If you want more information about Mouseflow security, feel free to post specific questions.
Lasse
1:05 pm on July 3rd, 2010
@Lasse Schou: Thanks Lasse for the useful info, I couldn’t do a better job. I’m sure @gerorge could use it.