AdesBlog.com

This heatmap to the left was generated from 2,228 visits and 1,263 clicks from my site at adesdesign.net. I have used CrazyEgg’s free service.

With the free plan you can track up to 5,000 visitors and have 4 different URLs or sessions. The basic plan costs you $9/month, you can track 10,000 visitors and have 10 different URLs or sessions. If you have only one site, free plan should be enough to get the idea about your visitors and where they are clicking on your site.

Heatmaps are a great way to visualize the clicks, you can track them on your own by other scripts or counters but you won’t get this kind of information. With heatmaps you know exactly (you can see it) which part of your website is working and which ones are not. In my case here, I was glad to know that my promotional banner is working great.

Making Money

Once you get your heatmap, you can see where the users are clicking the most. And this information is vital for publishers who are serving ads from GoogleAdsense, because you want to place your publisher ads near to this (hot) region. This region gets the most attention, therefore placing your ads near to it will get better visibility for them, and hopefully that will generate into more clicks. (Please make sure that you do not violate the Google program policy when placing your ads, otherwise that check might stop coming).

crazyegg.com

For a normal webdesigner testing the user interface (UI) of the website or the usability of the site is very difficult. Because it costs a lot. First of all you need a lab with at least few PCs, and then you need to find people to test your newly designed site. And you need additional people to observe/record every user’s mouse movements and eye tracking. All these will cost you money.

Fortunately, there is a tool that can do this for free (at least for 7 days). After which the basic account will cost you $8/month. It can’t do the eye tracking, but it can record the users mouse movements while he/she is on your site. It will also show (ripple effects) when the mouse is clicked.

Yesterday I signed up and installed it in my blog, tracked for one day and went through few of the recorded sessions. I should say, it was pretty boring. ;) Since it’s a blog, there is nothing much going on. People are just reading and scrolling the page - not much of clicking or mouse activity is going on.

This will be good to implement in websites (not blogs), and especially eCommerce sites. Because you want to see where the users will click first (you want to test if your promo banner is attracting users attention or not). You want to test the User Interface - to test if the users are clicking on where you want them to click (intended design).

TapeFailure will allow you to record 1 out of every 2, 3, 4 and 10 users. This will allow you to get sampled data, if you have a high traffic site.

You can play the recorded sessions directly inside your account or download them for later viewing. Player allows you to speed up or slow down the viewing. You can also specify your own (or other) IPs from being tracked in the members area.

This was not a paid review. I just thought it could be useful to many of you out there, so I reviewed it. I am sure it will be useful for myself on my other projects.

If your blog or site receives less than 1,000 page views a day, then you can use this service (GetClicky) for free. If you have a high traffic site, then the monthly price for the service is about $2.00/month (which is I think very very reasonable).

Before you sign up for the service you can see it in action at the demo site here. I think overall it’s a pretty good service. I am sure they will be adding more features as the time passes.

However if you want a more detailed pro stats service you should check xtreme tracking. It’s also free, but if you want to have a non-public account then it will cost you $4.50 a month. I have been using xtreme tracking for years now. And I should say it’s one of the best.

AdesBlog has entered 100K alexa list beginning from current month (May 2007). Yesterday’s traffic rank was 59,034. As you can see from the graph above, the traffic is increasing steadily. Within 3 months it moved up 81,213 ranks.

Alexa Rank is measured by the level of traffic your blog receives from the number of people who visit your blog with the Alexa toolbar installed. So it’s not the exact measurement of your blog’s traffic. Because there are many people who surf the net without Alexa toolbar (including myself). Nevertheless Alexa stats together with Google PageRank system has become the reference for setting advertisement prices, determining the price of the site (for auctions) and simply for exchanging links with others.

Increasing your Alexa Rank
Dosh Dosh has a good article titled “20 Quick Ways to Increase Your Alexa Rank“. He discusses 20 ways to increase your Alexa rank, however be careful some of them are simply unethical. And implementing those tactics might get you in trouble with your publishers programs.

My advice for the new bloggers is that, just make a good website or blog, with a good sticky content. And Alexa Rank together with Google PageRank will come to you themselves.

Toggl is an online time tracking software. It provides users with a secure and convenient way to track their individual and team work hours.

Great tool for freelancers who charge customers on hourly basis. It allows you to pause and resume the project anytime you want. www.toggl.com

Measure Map provides free, easy stats for your blog. Measure Map helps you understand what people do at your blog, and what influence you are having on the world.

* Easily navigate the numbers that matter
* Track links to see who sends you traffic
* Find out what people do at your site
* Setup is a breeze — it only takes a minute

At the moment they are making some upgrade to their service so they are not offering any new accounts for the time being. Just leave your email and they will contact you when the upgrade is completed. www.measuremap.com