If you’ve not noticed already then I suppose I should officially announce the change in domain name for this blog from TheMakeMoneyOnline.net to MoneySchemes.net The reason is a fairly simple one, it’s much shorter to type. As part of the update process I’ve also been looking at some new templates and this brings me on to the subject of this post. Before changing template I’d like to know what is and isn’t working with this one first – the easiest way of doing that is to analyse where people are and aren’t clicking.
The most popular service on the internet for doing this type of click analysis is called Crazy Egg. Everybody seems to recommend them but for cheap skates like me there is a downside. Basically you have to pay a monthly subscription to use the service. With the web being what it is you’ll tend to find that there are very few services online that don’t have at least one free alternative and that’s what I went looking for.
After not much search at all what I found was a PHP script by the name of ClickHeat. It is essentially giving you the same service as Crazy Egg but for free. All it requires is for you to go through some very simple installation on your own web server. In no time at all you can see where people are focusing their clicks on your website. The good news as well is that I’ve not really noticed any extra lag from using the ClickHeat script.
Standalone, ClickHeat gives you a very basic overview of where people are clicking but if you’re after more then that you can integrate it with a free analytics script called Piwik. Piwik gives you a way of running your own analytics package (away from Google) and combined with ClickHeat can certainly give you all the visitor information you could ever need. It’s a very powerful solution for click monitoring and easily matches if not surpasses Crazy Egg.
A Couple Of Things I’ve Learned From Using ClickHeat
Here’s just a couple of things that I’ve picked up from using ClickHeat
1. Over 90% of clicks seem to happen above the fold. There has always been an importance in having your best content above the fold but honestly until you see it yourself you may not appreciate just how true this is. In terms of a blog, once your post title is gone from above the fold then it may as well not exist to your home page visitors.
2. Non standard navigation is pants. Take for example my RSS and Email update buttons. Although they are clearly buttons they just don’t attract clicks at all. None. My visitors heavily associate UNDERLINING as an indication that what they are clicking is a link and anything else just gets ignored (with the exception of the Twitter/RSS counters). This isn’t just unique to this blog, I’ve seen it on the other websites I tested as well. So what I need to do is ensure that any positive action links stand out as being links.
Overall ClickHeat is a very simple and free way of opening up your eyes to a whole world of visitor clicking wonder. I can guarantee that using it will throw up a few surprises in what you think your visitors are doing as opposed to what they are actually doing. You’ve got no excuses for not giving it a go.
You can download ClickHeat from here.
9 Responses to “ClickHeat – A Free Alternative To Crazy Egg”
Paul Olyslager
August 19, 2009
Clickheat may seem great, but take a look at this post from Matt Ridout (http://www.seounique.com/blog/name-and-shame-secret-cloaking-website/) Definitely something weird going on this app. Do any of you have problems with this?
cheerio
Paul
|Paul B
August 19, 2009
It’s just the authors trying to get some link equity for their work. It’s nothing that can’t be solved with a very simple edit of the include code
|Lasse
May 3, 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.
|Martin
April 15, 2011
I am sorry, but you must be blind if you didn’t notice any lag.
|See for example http://www.antiradary.net – and click on the slideshow in the middle.
The 0.5 sec lag is caused by clickheat’s GET request.