Comments on: Usability Heatmaps, Eyetracking vs Mousetracking

By: Usability Testing : Heat Maps « Usability Factors

Usability Testing : Heat Maps « Usability Factors — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:13:04 +0000

[...] According to Jesper Rønn-Jensen, there is a difference in the results collected by mouse-tracking because it’s skewed by the mouse (or “pointing device” to put it in academic terms). You can read more about at: http://justaddwater.dk/2006/12/21/usability-heatmaps-eyetracking-vs-mousetracking/ [...]

By: Usability Study Proof: Is 2nd really better than 1st in SERP…?!? | MAXincube on Marketing 2.0 (Beta)

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:46:03 +0000

[...] อ่านรายละเอียดเพิ่มเติมที่นี่) [...]

By: SEO fun: Heatmaps, eye-tracking and a wordpress plugin | eydryan

SEO fun: Heatmaps, eye-tracking and a wordpress plugin | eydryan — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:47:37 +0000

[...] run out of time now so I have to leave you off with an interesting article about web heatmaps and invite you to try some of these heatmaps and see if they provide any useful [...]

By: Convertup.com | Web Usability » Blog Archive » CrazyEgg Heat Maps

Convertup.com | Web Usability » Blog Archive » CrazyEgg Heat Maps — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:25:52 +0000

[...] Jan CrazyEgg Heat Maps January 10th, 2007 under Usability. Jesper has an interesting post describing some ofthe pros and cons of using CrazyEgg to generate heat maps (a color coded map of where the clicks are happening) on your site. Results depend on how users use the mouse. Results will be skewed by users that don’t use mouse, users that use a laptop with trackpad or another device for moving the cursor around on screen. [...]

By: Thomas Aylott

Thomas Aylott — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 21:11:21 +0000

We had originally wanted to do eye-tracking in addition to click-tracking.
We looked into it, and decided that the potential security risks outweighed all of the potential benefits of secretly video recording all of your web visitors.

The fact that javascript has no window.eyePosX and eyePosY properties was only a minor inconvinience ;)

(Actually, IE7 probably _does_ have those values burried in there somewhere)

By: Nelson Rodríguez-Peña

Nelson Rodríguez-Peña — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:37:10 +0000

I think this kind of tools are useful for analyzing another kind of data: what are your users actually clicking on. And what are they not clicking. Traditional server logs can show you what pages are being requested and how are they being reached: by clicking a link, by referrer, etc. But if you have two links to a page on the homepage, for instance, you can't possibly know which one was clicked. Unless you place a URL parameter, like a unique ID. This is where click tracking might be useful. You can see what was clicked, and how frequently. As I see it, this is not about competing with eye tracking techniques. This is not a technique for observing user focus, or attention, is for one simple thing: what is perceived as click-able (and what is not ) and what is being actually clicked on. I had previously written a post about this matter, but it is in Spanish: Registro de Clics y Comportamiento de los Usuarios.

By: dalager

dalager — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:11:24 +0000

There seems to be a bug in the reports for Firefox on OS X. Here's two screenshots from a short tracking test for my weblog: In safari In firefox. The safari-variant is also what you see on windows + firefox.

By: Thomas Baekdal

Thomas Baekdal — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 13:11:57 +0000

Trine, You can also see target areas (or lack hereof) – for instance if people continually click just outside a hotspot (because they think it is bigger than it really is).

It is useful for systems that does not load a new page – mostly in web applications and all these new AJAX applications.

For visual presentations – flash movies/films – it can provide navigation clues.

And, if your site has more than one way to get to another page, you can see which path they take.

By: Thomas Baekdal

Thomas Baekdal — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:57:31 +0000

BTW: I do agree that CrazyEgg is a very poor replacement for Eye-tracking

By: Thomas Baekdal

Thomas Baekdal — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:49:14 +0000

But, do not forget future time tracking – than we will know what people will think before they think it, and use their peripheral vision, eye-tracking and mouse tracking :)

(sorry, this discussion is getting side-tracked).

I do not, as such, think that CrazyEgg is bad. It provides a good illustration of what decisions people make. Eye-tracking does not provide this – it show you what people noticed, but not necessarily what they think about it. They might look at a specific button, but you do not know if they decided to click on it.

The optimal solution would be to use both. Eye-tracking for recording interest and top choices, and CrazyEgg to record the decisions made afterwards.