Infinity-Infinity

Tracking Visitors’ Mouse Movements

You probably already know about those services which let you track where a visitor clicks on your site. They are great in determining which utilised parts of your site are most “active”. However, albeit important, clicking is just one component of user interaction.

I toyed around with the idea of tracking mouse movements, as opposed to simply clicks, over a year ago and ran a secret trial. Many (most?) people will move their mouse cursor around when looking at content — such as when scanning lines of text — and, so, this presents an ideal opportunity to track where a visitor looks. My trial, in January, 2008, demonstrated expected results: visitors tend to move their mouse cursors around, and, if the relationship holds, look at, the main content; an article.

Take this screenshot, produced from the trial’s results:

Mouse movement heat-map

Here, the red areas represent most activity; blue, little activity; white, no activity. As you would naturally expect, visitors tend to spend most time at the main content. And they seem to avoid the ad unit in the sidebar; maybe it should be moved(?) Maps like these allow designers to put important stuff (Ads are important, right?) where it is most likely to be seen; to improve navigation, accessibility or, indeed, revenue.

Well, anyway, to the point of this article:

I was thinking of creating a basic web service which allows you to produce similar maps for your site. All I need is feedback as to whether this is a good idea, and if you would use such a service. Yes or No?

-Brendon.

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