Track Every Click with Crazy Egg’s “Confetti”

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

Optimizing your website can be tough business since you can’t “see” your customers online. Analytics packages like Google analytics do a good job letting you see how many visitors are coming and going on your site by tracking every page request. However, another breed of analytics focuses on optimizing how they’re using it, by tracking where visitors click. Crazy Egg, one of these optimization services, now has a new feature “Confetti” that lets you easily see where every visitor clicked on your site and what brought them there. We’ve covered their previous overlay and heatmap features here.

Confetti overlays your site, showing each visitor’s click as a colored dot. The colors stand for the categories you sort the clicks by: operating system, browser, window size, time before clicking, and what search term brought them to the page. It even shows you clicks that weren’t on links, so you know if your users are expecting a link where there isn’t one. You can see the results in aggregate as a bar chart or click on individual dots to find out more information about a particular user. For instance, you can use Confetti to see how users from different referrals behave, and settle the debate over exactly how many of those Digg users click on your ads.

Crazy Egg has been implemented on over 250,000 sites and is free if you just want to track up to 5,000 clicks on 4 pages at a time each month. But if you upgrade to a paid account, you can track more clicks over more pages with real time data. The limited number of clicks tracked may seem restrictive, but analytics from Crazy Egg are meant to run for a short period of time on a specific url to grab a sample of how your users react to design changes.

There are a couple other optimization services out there: Map Surface, ClickTale, and Click Density. Click Density was one of the first services to show each unique click on your site, but Crazy Egg has added a simpler point-and-click interface for drilling into your data.

Crazy Egg is based in Orange County California and has reportedly been in acquisition talks.

Read More...

Summary only...

The Long Tail Is Getting Fatter

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Three separate news stories involving numbers this week caught my eye. iLike announced it has now has 6 million registered users and is now adding 300,000 new users a day. Apple’s Safari browser for Windows has now had 1 million downloads. Finally SpaceTime, a 3D browser we reviewed June 5 passed the 100,000 download mark.

All three may not seem obviously related, but there is something they all share: large user numbers.

It wasn’t that long ago that 100,000 users was considered huge for a Web 2.0 related business. Today a small startup such as SpaceTime can gain those numbers in two weeks. 6 million users three years ago would have seemed an impossible dream, and yet iLike joins a long and growing list of Web 2.0 sites with 1 million or more users. Web 2.0 offerings are improving their appeal to a broader audience which in turn is driving growth in the overall market: the Long Tail is getter fatter.

Although this fattening of the Web 2.0 marketplace makes it more difficult to stand out from the crowd, the marginal cost and ROI potential has now improved. Consider the SpaceTime browser. Immediately many would question the need for an alternative browser, yet this isn’t an all or nothing proposition. Every single user of SpaceTime presents a ROI for the company due to search deals. An average SpaceTime user might return $5 per month to the company by clicking on Google ads or surfing eBay; $500,000 per month @ 100,000 users. The figure could be lower or higher, but it’s still a return. Safari will be operating on a similar model for Apple. The need to find appeal has actually decreased as a percentage of the overall market. Conversely the bar to creating a sustainable business hasn’t risen in line with the number of potential users, today startups can achieve with a smaller percentage of the overall market.

From a developers or startups view, the fattening long tail should be seen for what it is: a marketplace that has improved opportunities for smart startups. A bigger marketplace makes today and tomorrow an even better time to build a Web 2.0 business than yesterday. A fatter long tail means that as a whole there will be an increasing number of success stories and sustainable startups, a win-win all round.

Read More...

Summary only...

The Rise Of The Prosumer

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Mark this word in your mental diaries: Prosumer.

The word is a combination of producer and consumer that perfectly describe the millions of participants in the Web 2.0 revolution.

It’s not a new word, but it’s a word that will become the norm in the coming years. It’s already being used by companies such as Sony to describe users of video cameras.

Earlier in the week, Read/Write Web featured a video from Davide Casaleggio where Prosumer is featured strongly. Video as below, other highlights include world domination by Google in 2050 and Lawrence Lessig becoming US Secretary of Justice in 2020 and declaring copyright illegal. I’ve not been able to get Prosumer out of my head since watching this video so expect it to be dropped regularly in future posts.

Read More...

Summary only...

Embedded Joost Will Change The Market

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Reports that Joost is now talking to hardware vendors about embedding Joost into set-top boxes and televisions will change the market as we know it.

While Joost is generally now regarded as the leader in the television over internet, the market for watching television on a computer remains limited. Sure it’s nice for a lark or good for an occasional break, but as Microsoft has proven with its attempts to bring a computer into the livingroom with Windows Media Center, computers as a focal point for watching television is not a popular idea. Recent reports even have the Apple TV box going the way of the Apple Lisa, straight into the dustbin of failed convergence history.

Joost on an actual TV set without the need for a computer is a different proposition.

Millions of American’s pay for cable television services that require a set top box. Imagine Joost becoming available for free on these boxes, or better still embedded directly into television sets; Joost is currently discussing this very option. Millions of people world wide will be upgrading to next generation BlueRay and HDDVD players in the coming years, imagine Joost embedded as standard in these players. Network devices that play video and music from a network alongside standard DVD’s from companies such as Netgear and Zensonic are growing in popularity, the move to include Joost in these sorts of devices seems like a natural progression.

Of course there are still issues to be worked out. Viewing quality on Joost isn’t perfect and the need for high speed broadband is a given. Presuming that these will be overcome with time will result in a product that married with a television set will deliver a choice that many will happily embrace, after all free is the ultimate price point in a crowded marketplace. Millions, tens even hundreds of millions of people who aren’t fussed with watching television on their PC’s are suddenly dealt into the Joost world. They say that lightning never strikes the same place twice but with Joost’s founders it could well become three in a row in terms of phenomenal startups. I’m also looking forward to the day I can sit back on my couch and surf Joost, it’s a much more appealing proposition than doing so from my computer.

(in part via El Reg)

Read More...

Summary only...

Mashup: Get your package to the nearest mailbox on time with Mailbox Map

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Mailbox Maps is Google Maps mashup that shows you the closest set of mailboxes and the pickup times at each so that you can be sure to get your package out on time.

All you have to do is enter your address. Mailbox Map quickly shows you the nearest mailboxes, and clicking on the mailbox icon shows you the pickup information. We posted about a similar tool a while back, but my biggest complaint was that it need a better interface. Mailbox Map does exactly that and then throws in the pickup schedules and driving directions to the mailbox.

Mailbox Map [via Brent Evans]

Read More...

Summary only...