Crazy Egg
This weekend one of the other analysts and I spent some time trying to figure out Crazy Egg's output (http://http://www.crazyegg.com/). For a simple, cheap tool it's a bit on the complicated side, I have to say. We ended up with a 21-page internal document (lots of screen shots fluffed it up considerably).
Just some sample points:
1. Crazy Egg employs the term "visit" when it's talking about a view of the tested page.
2. Crazy Egg CAN track clicks in the flash portion of a page, if the page is set up right.
3. The "tracks clicks in text, div elements, and table cells" option is definitely worth doing. These are called "other" (as opposed to the main links, images, forms, and javascript click elements).
4. A lot of quirky stuff shows up, somewhat erratically, in the elements listing. We think they might be browser-dependent. We also see clicks that are double-counted, i.e. that are covered by more than one type of element on this list. We saw bits of HTML and js comments. Altogether, for a page with 38 possible images, links, etc we found lists of 50 clicked elements.
5. The Confetti view opens with all the clicks scattered all over the screen, quickly flying down to their actual locations on the screen shot. A cute animation, but it has a nice use --- if your page has a few really dense areas of clicks, you can't tell how many clicks are in the solidly-colored masses. The fly-down gives you a quick look at how many dots really are in those spots.
6. The heat map is cool-looking but really faint blushes of heat can be hard to see because the underlying screen shot can disguise them. We found a way to see the heat without the underlay - by choosing the "other" view and then unchoosing it by clicking on "other"again. In this mode, neither "live" or "other" or "both" is active --- and two new heat maps appear below the main one. The two new heat maps are the "live" one and the "other" one but they don't have the underlay.
7. The "time to click" feature in the confetti view is surprisingly interesting.
8. You can click on an individual piece of confetti and get a little report on just that click.
9. We analysts prefer the confetti view as long as there aren't too many clicks in all. Clients are dazzled by the confetti view but they think the glow view is more executive-appropriate.
10. Crazy Egg's heat maps must be viewed through Firefox, not IE. IE7 shows all kinds of errors and misplacements.
Overall, we continue to be amazed at the value of Crazy Egg. It has some issues (particularly with tracked pages that resize according to browser resolution) but it is worth several times its price. We're waiting for some vendor to gobble it up and make it unavailable to everybody else.
Just some sample points:
1. Crazy Egg employs the term "visit" when it's talking about a view of the tested page.
2. Crazy Egg CAN track clicks in the flash portion of a page, if the page is set up right.
3. The "tracks clicks in text, div elements, and table cells" option is definitely worth doing. These are called "other" (as opposed to the main links, images, forms, and javascript click elements).
4. A lot of quirky stuff shows up, somewhat erratically, in the elements listing. We think they might be browser-dependent. We also see clicks that are double-counted, i.e. that are covered by more than one type of element on this list. We saw bits of HTML and js comments. Altogether, for a page with 38 possible images, links, etc we found lists of 50 clicked elements.
5. The Confetti view opens with all the clicks scattered all over the screen, quickly flying down to their actual locations on the screen shot. A cute animation, but it has a nice use --- if your page has a few really dense areas of clicks, you can't tell how many clicks are in the solidly-colored masses. The fly-down gives you a quick look at how many dots really are in those spots.
6. The heat map is cool-looking but really faint blushes of heat can be hard to see because the underlying screen shot can disguise them. We found a way to see the heat without the underlay - by choosing the "other" view and then unchoosing it by clicking on "other"again. In this mode, neither "live" or "other" or "both" is active --- and two new heat maps appear below the main one. The two new heat maps are the "live" one and the "other" one but they don't have the underlay.
7. The "time to click" feature in the confetti view is surprisingly interesting.
8. You can click on an individual piece of confetti and get a little report on just that click.
9. We analysts prefer the confetti view as long as there aren't too many clicks in all. Clients are dazzled by the confetti view but they think the glow view is more executive-appropriate.
10. Crazy Egg's heat maps must be viewed through Firefox, not IE. IE7 shows all kinds of errors and misplacements.
Overall, we continue to be amazed at the value of Crazy Egg. It has some issues (particularly with tracked pages that resize according to browser resolution) but it is worth several times its price. We're waiting for some vendor to gobble it up and make it unavailable to everybody else.
posted by cg at
2:24 PM
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