digg

Join DiggAbout

Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.

Webmasters Can Watch What Visitors Do with AJAX-based Service

clicktale.com — Unlike traditional web analytics that produce only pure statistics, ClickTale (www.clicktale.com) gives webmasters the ability to watch movies of users' individual browsing sessions. Every mouse movement, every click and every keystroke are recorded for convenient playback.

Bury
show profanity settings
expand all
  • techpimp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+52That's creepy, but when it comes out of beta I'm trying it.
    • shitthisfook, on 10/12/2007, -23/+8How is it creepy, this is damn useful.
    • apotropaic, on 10/12/2007, -26/+6Its very useful but just wait til the privacy people on digg see this! I just don't get these guys and their issues with everythink has to be about their privacy and its every companies duty to protect it. Can somebody please explain this to me?
    • merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24This has been possible with javascript for over 5 years now. All the privacy folks have always known this, and disable javascript for many sites (this is what the noscript extension is for).
    • Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21> This has been possible with javascript for over 5 years now.

      Five years? Try *eleven* years. Some of this has been possible since the very first version of JavaScript that was included in Netscape 2. For instance, add an event handler to fire when somebody changes a textarea, and load an image with the URI http://www.example.com/snoop?text=[what-the-user-typed]. The end result is you can see what people type into forms even when they don't submit them.

      With the extra stuff added in Netscape 3 and Netscape 4, you've been able to do everything this tool does since about 1997. This is just yet another example of people thinking tech that's a decade old is brand new because it has the word "Ajax" in the headline.
    • aptget, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3NoScript FTW!
    • smhill, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4"With the extra stuff added in Netscape 3 and Netscape 4, you've been able to do everything this tool does since about 1997. This is just yet another example of people thinking tech that's a decade old is brand new because it has the word "Ajax" in the headline."

      Not really. Only since about 2002, but really safely a year or two after that.

      While I certainly agree that "AJAX" isn't a new technology by any stretch, it is important remember that the client side scripts that interact with a remote server rely on the XMLHttpRequest object in javascript. Created by MS and available in IE5, it wasn't till 2002 that Moz had it. NN was still popular and IE didn't have the huge domination that it does now.

      So it is safer to say something like this has only been "viable" in the last 3 or so years. "Possible" since 1999 for IE5 users.

      Once again, I agree that AJAX is largely over-hyped. But the wide spread adoption of the core tech it relies on is only about 3 years. DOM scripting has been around for a long time though. DocOzone is a great example. Has has been doing some crazy scripting stuff since the late 1990s. Also take into account that computers have gotten faster, browsers have gotten better and more stable and connections have gotten faster and wider adopted. So again, "possible" in 1999, not viable on a dial-up with slow inefficient servers and local boxes running with little memory and slow procs.
    • Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4> client side scripts that interact with a remote server rely on the XMLHttpRequest object

      No they don't. You can transmit information back to the server surreptitiously in a number of ways. If you read my comment again, I explained one of them. You don't need XMLHttpRequest to do this at all, and following from that, what you say about this only being possible since 1999 is wrong.

      > not viable on a dial-up with slow inefficient servers and local boxes running with little memory and slow procs.

      I think you're forgetting that you don't need to transmit all the information back in real time. You can wrap it up in batches and send one batch every fifteen seconds or so. And the only stuff that would have been hard on the client memory/cpu even back then is the mouse pointer tracking.
    • joel2600, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5HEY!!!! EVERYONE IS MISSING THE OBVIOUS.

      can you imagine the kind of traffic this would cause over all of the networks involved, it would require a ton of effort and you would be increasing the chance that your page is going to crap out on the user by a thousand fold.

      this is for websites that don't get any traffic and are completley clueless
    • kLacK, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0"For instance, add an event handler to fire when somebody changes a textarea, and load an image with the URI http://www.example.com/snoop?text=[what-the-user-typed]"

      Who has the time to set all that up manually for every object for every webpage on their site and then go hunting for the images calls in the sever log?
    • Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"For instance, add an event handler to fire when somebody changes a textarea, and load an image with the URI http://www.example.com/snoop?text=[what-the-user-typed]"

      > Who has the time to set all that up manually for every object for every webpage on their site and then go hunting for the images calls in the sever log?

      I take it you aren't a web developer? Who said anything about setting things up manually and looking at logs? You can write a single piece of JavaScript that applies a handler to every form on a website, and make the image a PHP script that emails you, writes it to a database, generates a web page, or whatever. It's pretty simple stuff.
    • kLacK, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1I am, and I am also the designer, marketer, SEO, and partner in my company. I can see that X/Y coordinates recorded and played back is a much better solution.
    • Ghiblian, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1@Bogtha

      While AJAX is overhyped just a bit (although I think the hype is well deserved), it is certainly what I would consider "new technology." Whether tracking was "doable" with Javascript eleven years ago, it was definitely not "viable." You mention how through simple Javascript, you could track form input. That doesn't begin to touch what this AJAX driven application can do. This program tracks mouse movement, scrolling, input, everything, and all in a nice little video format. And that is a huge step from merely tracking form inputs and making PHP images out of them.

      Technology can still be new even if it expands on existing functionalities. AJAX makes these kinds of tasks easier to program, nicer to look at, and all around cleaner in form and function. So no, this isn't decade old technology. And give cred where cred is due; ClickTale is pretty awesome if it can do what it says it can do.
    • smhill, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@Bogtha
      "No they don't. You can transmit information back to the server surreptitiously in a number of ways. If you read my comment again, I explained one of them. You don't need XMLHttpRequest to do this at all, and following from that, what you say about this only being possible since 1999 is wrong."

      Since you brought up AJAX I was referring to that in general. Client side DOM interaction was not viable until then. Sure you could do image requests and pass a lot of stuff with them, but highly impractical and very hacky, especially with the amount of traffic (collected info) for this type of thing. And it is also only one way. So you are right, in this case, data collection, it would have been doable. AJAX (real client server interaction on the script level) was not.


      "I think you're forgetting that you don't need to transmit all the information back in real time. You can wrap it up in batches and send one batch every fifteen seconds or so. And the only stuff that would have been hard on the client memory/cpu even back then is the mouse pointer tracking."

      I wasn't refering to the amount data being transfered, I was talking about requests. Modems slow not only for transfers, but with connections. Also a much larger percentage of the internet using community was on services like AOL. Which were proxied to the internet. So just the connecting would have been very burdensome. Even a request every 15sec back in the day would be very noticeable. Again, doable, just not viable.
  • thisalias, on 10/12/2007, -2/+58AT LAST! Something that let's the Webmaster know EXACTLY when his lame site makes you go for the X button
    • YHCIR, on 10/12/2007, -1/+28You could trace out the words 'this site sucks' with your mouse/clicks :)
    • tom212tom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You mean if you can get past the non-existant flow of 90% of sites on the internet?
    • texpundit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Not only that, but tracing clickouts and all kinds of other stuff. Holy CRAP this will be useful.

      I'm trying to get in on the private beta. I have a few sites I could TOTALLY use this on. *thumbs up*
    • dotdan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Most applications (like AWStats) already track exit pages.
  • ayavilevich, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11More interesting info at http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/11/watch-internet-users%e2%80%99-behaviour-with-clicktale/
  • masterkenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This would be great for Information Architects, and projects for revamping older sites to be more user friendly. I can't wait to beta test this!
  • locri, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Although they say that privacy is a major concern of the company, I don't see how you could use this on some sites without recording information that most people wouldn't want recorded. What's worse about it is that it's completely transparent to the user. Even if ClickTale doesn't do it, what's to keep another company from making a similar "service" and possibly hacking someone's website and inserting the required javascript?
  • LazArt, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16I like the way they use digg as a free way to make publicity for their company. Very creative! BUT WHERE IS THE STORY? Why is this NEWS ? (Topic: Tech Industry News)
    • Stecchino, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23No joke, this shlomiatar guy submitted this story 4x today.
    • Stecchino, on 10/12/2007, -8/+7double post
  • NetJoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15and when i show up at the site with adblock, flashblock and noscript it'll show what? a blank page?
  • Stecchino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Don't know enough about this to digg it yet. It seems very cool for the webmaster but very uncool when it comes to privacy.
  • johnkoer, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Just another reason to disable javascript.
  • joshHighland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think the usability potential of this is huge. i want to get in on the beta!
  • pbaehr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18It's a nice idea and all, but what webmaster (no matter how obsessive they are about their stats) has time to watch movies of how people are using their site? How many would you have to watch to get a good idea of the "average user?"
    • Isyso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Second this. Web usage analytics are getting better and better. A webmaster that wants to design his site effectively has the tools he needs--he has aggregated data of user input and response. Instead, this seems a step backward. The 'data' isn't aggregated--instead, it is separated and the webmaster has to sort through each individual 'dataset' to understand the hole picture.
    • seventoes, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5'whole' picture.
    • zeero, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3actually i think this would be quite useful, to see where people click and what paths they take through your site, where their eyes/mouse goes, how well your banners are doing. I would rather watch a movie than sift through logs of text / graphics. This is good for websites that are starting out and want to see how they are doing with their layout.
    • avsa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"but what webmaster has time to watch movies of how people are using their site?"
      Have you ever heard sometihng called usability tests? That may cost something from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Althought a complete usability test involves videos of the users and asking them questions, this takes the ease of the process to a whole next step.
  • meat30, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Sounds like it could be an invaluable tool from a usability point of view, allowing you to see whether you're directing users to relevant sections of your sites effectively. Am certainly hoping to give the beta a shot.
    • awhiteflame, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2But come on? Privacy aside, right now I have tabs in firefox open from 2 days ago. Have I been "recording" ever since?
    • TalSchwartz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No, ClickTale records actions and plays-back activity, so your 2-days of non-activity would be skipped over in play-back.
  • quine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmmm - as an app owner, I'm not entirely sure I want a third party keeping track of my users sessions, regardless of their intentions to maintain some semblance privacy standards.
    • mattb308, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0(This is in reply to gorkon's post; not sure why it posted under quine; perhaps I can't click correctly!)

      I believe you're misunderstanding the technology. There isn't a magical video that gets created each time you're on the web; the technology that this company has created is presumably recording mouse positions and actions, overlaying them on your known website design and thus creating a video that a webmaster can use to view the actions taken by the user. This isn't rocket science but I think its beauty is potential in its simplicity, we'll just have to see once/if/when it comes out of Beta.
  • gorkon, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1Um they couldn't before? I mean the video has to exist SOMEWHERE on the box. You could always have monitored this with most web servers easily with out AJAX. This is a bogus story....no DIGG
  • atlantisceo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This could be very useful for a web designer while he is planning or testing a new design. Past that, it wouldn't be too useful IMHO. Even if your site only gets 10 visitors a day, when are you going to have the time to watch a video of all of them?

    Like I said, this could be great for research and testing, but for a completely release, public site I just don't see it helping too much.
  • Jicksta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Ahem,

    What about wild use of AJAX requests here? If the administrator is able to see each element the users are *hovering* over, this means there is Javascript code to report this information back to the server.

    If this is the case, users' connections could be hit pretty hard just fumbling their cursor around the page.
    • mookieXL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6But server's connections too. Some people (including me) tend to make circles with cursor when bored... I guess that's considered DoS from now.
  • raindog469, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10OK, this might sound totally stupid to anyone younger than about 30, maybe even 35, but this sounds totally cool... NOT because I want to spy on my users but because I miss the days when I'd be sitting there reading a book next to my Commodore 64 on which I ran my single-line, green-screen, 40-column bulletin board system, and someone would call.

    With most of that early BBS software, you could sit there and watch the user log in and navigate the board, and if they were having trouble or something you could break into chat and help them out. Everyone knew the sysop could be watching, but people really didn't write each other incoherent, flaming emails in those days.... and I don't think anyone had thought of sexing each other up over email yet in 1984.

    Some people would start entering messages just so they could type, "Hey, are you there? Chat please?" because they wanted to talk but it wasn't important enough to hit the "page sysop" key.

    I think that nostalgia is no excuse for hiring some third party to track your web users' movements, but I'd love to set up my own forum software with this feature, kept entirely in-house so I could ensure my users' privacy. Just for old times' sake.
    • SweetsGreen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+626 and I ran a bbs in the early 90's... 14.4/2:1 ratio .but it was only open after 8:00pm cause my mom would pick up the phone otherwise.

      z-modem for life!
    • Roedran, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Teh Interface BBS Color 64 for teh win... I'm 35, ran it for about 3 years. Large, brown 300 baud modem to start, 5 MB HD set my dad back about $500. Had my own phone line, so I'd wake up at night when people would login, and they chat with them. ;)
    • stuartcw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I used to name the sysop account on my WWIV BBS "The Eye That Sees All". It was fun to freak out users who were writing a mail to the sysop by bursting into their on-line editing session with a split screen chat.
  • gmurray, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is exactly like my senior capstone project.
  • joquarky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So, does this capture when I start to fill out a form and change my mind when I get down to the part where I realize this just means i'm going to get called or spammed by sales people? Great, now they'll have any info I started to type in without even submitting the form...
    • SweetsGreen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is already very easy to do with AJAX.... I'd imagine that "spoofed" sites will start implementing this soon....Goodbye submit button, hello rise in identity theft.
    • Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If somebody's fooled by a phishing site long enough to enter their details into the form, they are going to be fooled long enough to hit 'submit'.
  • SweetsGreen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Kinda reminds me of the bbs days...It was kinda fun to see which users went straight for the pron section.
  • xqus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Ohh.. and it's a hosted service...
    But the site does not say it records all keystrokes..
    It might be a nice tool, but if you care about your users, leave them alone.
  • SickBoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Pr0n webmasters should get a kick out of seeing the length of time spent on each pic or vid.
  • jamaicajane, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0There's a much more basic site that tells you how long people have been on the site using ajax that someone posted here a while ago. Although it's nowhere near as cool as Clicktale, it's available now: http://www.vuby.net
  • glafira, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This sounds like a really good idea. If you are able to see what people do on your site most you can target things at that type of people.
  • eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I don't understand the negative reaction. If you've designed a site and want to see how your site in particular is navigated by users, this service looks good. General information about how people navigate isn't necessarily going to solve your individual problems, let alone diagnose them.
  • o0joshua0o, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I can't wait to start spying on my website visitors right away!
  • IHAEVADD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i dunno, amazing concept but i would feel really weird if i knew every mouse move was being recorded. kinda like grocery shopping with video cameras all over the place.
  • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1..They are watching us..

    http://blog.clicktale.com/?p=6
  • longwang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is neat but I'd like to know when I visit a site if it has this service active.
  • RationalBeaver, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1TeaLeaf does the same thing for enterprise level clients (it costs like $100k). Chances are, there are already several 'recordings' of your user sessions out there. I'm not worried about it though. There's a lot more money to be made by finding and fixing the errors & usability blunders in an online store than there is in stalking individual users.
  • mauriz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Damn, I predicted a year ago that it would happen: http://www.svay.com/blog/index/2005/08/23/297-ameliorez-votre-site-grace-a-ajax
  • RaggTopp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Hey is this an advertisement? The "article" link only goes to www.clicktale.com, and nothing else. Don't Digg this if it's not an article.
  • expresso, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I implemented this once for my own webstore. Just grab the mousemove event and send mouse coords and current page to the server every 10 seconds using XMLHttpRequest. Seeing it digged this much I feel some regret of not developing it into a full-fledged service. I ran into problems with being unable to know how different browsers would render the page. Like how can you know from JavaScript if the user has increased the font size?
  • PhotoSnob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.formalive.com offers field abandonment tracking via Jscript tags. No fancy movies, but a quick down and dirty aggregate of people who left your forms. Its cool for me to see whether they just simply abandoned or actually filled out some fields. It's in beta and completely free.... it seems... for now.
  • Scriptic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Way too many privacy issues, I would only use it for design testing and research purposes.

    I don't like the idea of being the user who is watched so I'm not going to subject my users to this kind of nonsense. Especially if its third party.

    I'm surprised so many people dug this, its not new and its not a useful implementation, could have severe back lashing from your user community
  • CourageousRobot, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0I can see how useful this might be for webmasters - especially when trying to make a site as streamlined and user friendly as possible. However, as a user I would like to know if and when a website is using such a system.

    Even if the website doesn%u2019t deal with questionable content, something about the webmaster being able to see exactly what and where I click and for how long makes me a little uncomfortable %u2013 especially when the webmaster will be able to actually WATCH me.

    I%u2019m well aware that much, if not all, of what a user does online is logged, but I feel like a disclaimer or notice at the bottom of the page is in order. Just because your can do something without the user knowing doesn%u2019t mean you should.
  • CourageousRobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Please dig down my previous comment because of the weird formatting - sorry.

    I can see how useful this might be for webmasters - especially when trying to make a site as streamlined and user friendly as possible. However, as a user I would like to know if and when a website is using such a system.

    Even if the website doesn't deal with questionable content, something about the webmaster being able to see exactly what and where I click and for how long makes me a little uncomfortable - especially when the webmaster will be able to actually WATCH me.

    I'm well aware that much, if not all, of what a user does online is logged, but I feel like a disclaimer or notice at the bottom of the page is in order. Just because your can do something without the user knowing doesn't mean you should.
  • charlesjillian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0This technology can be nothing but abused.
  • charlesjillian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Oh wait, I misunderstood :)
  • kLacK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Retail stores have security cameras, guards, sales people, and checkout stands that are all watching what you are interested in. What do you think the VONS club card is for? Does that stop you from going to Walmart for a good deal? They may not be watching a recording of each individual person, but I bet you big chain stores did while in their infancy. Marketing on the web is still very new, and tools like this are not made to embarrass you. In the end, they will benefit the consumer.
  • lotusboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very interesting idea, signed up for the beta. Want to see the actual implementation.
  • aviat0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Interesting potential for end-to-end (e2e) user/performance monitoring, evaluating the usability of a website, and simply seeing how the users are REALLY using the website.
  • BillDoE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Let me know if you are using this on your site so I can click some nasty graffiti
  • nirm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Cool tool. When you are in the internet marketing business trying to raise your conversion (and profits!) this kind of tool can probably give you insights other webstats programs can give you. As for the privacy issue... As a Google analytics user (as I am sure a lot of webmasters are) - who cares about privacy? ;)
  • MyLongTail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0> Hey is this an advertisement? The "article" link only goes to www.clicktale.com, and nothing else. Don't Digg this if it's not an article.

    Just to clarify for future reference, is this true? Is Digg not allowed to break stories, but only allowed to regurgitate news posted elsewhere first?
  • MyLongTail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Also, the coolest part of this is not that someones finally doing it, but it's how they're making doable and efficient from a network traffic perspective. I could totally get into the client-side JavaScript pre-processing of the collected data so that the ajax payloads were lean and mean. Kudos to this company, if they can deliver.

    And to the folks who wonder if this is newsworthy or the company self-promo'ing, I ask you why getting some strange version of Linux to run on some strange device is ALWAYS digg-worthy. Just because it's marketing-related and might have been announced from the company that created it doesn't mean its not news.
  • scottschiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's deja vu all over again! ;)

    I did this as an experiment for my site back in 2003 - I captured all mouse movement, clicks (what element was clicked, what "type" of click, etc.,) scrolling and so on. I'd only record a "frame" as being at least 16px of movement, so not too many "frames" were generated (and thus a ton of data to submit on unload.)

    I was inspired by some of the Flash work of Yugo Nakumura, http://yugop.com - he had some "studies" called "fingertracks" which recorded and played the mouse movements of the last 5 or 6 visitors to his site, showing a grid of radio buttons that said "nothing" when hovered on.

    Anyway, here's the code (roughly 7 KB) I used on my site for my variant of this in 2003:
    http://www.schillmania.com/interactive/browsercap/browsercap.js

    I called it "BrowserCap" - and no, I never did anything with the info aside from see some random mouse movements, and no, it was not used on later versions of my site. ;) I tried to set up some meetings with the Interaction/Architecture department of my employer at the time, but they were too busy to take a look at it.

    It was an interesting experiment, but I don't know if this has too much value "out there." (Would vast amounts of this data really be meaningful over just tracking exit links, etc.?)
  • scottschiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I forgot to mention - it would probably make sense for these guys to use their own stuff on their site, right? ;) It's almost hidden, but their tracking code is in there. They probably got a ton of data from the Digg traffic.
  • joeldg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I put something like this together in a couple days.
    http://dreamvendors.com/
    primarily I didn’t like that all links on a page were rewritten to point to their servers..
    I like to run things on my server :)

    anyway, there is a free version and I may opensource the backend portions as well if there is any interest.. though, as a webservice it is a quick way to check out realtime stats and see.
  • seblhomme, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Interesting tool. I clearly see the potential here for a better understanding of website visitors behavior.
    http://www.FormVester.com offers one line forms analytics which can be an excellent complementary tool for anyone willing to go deeper with websites statistics. After pasting a single snippet code into your website pages, you can get field abandonment rate, and other on line forms strategic metrics. This greatly helps on line marketers to better understand how visitors behave with their on line forms, and how to easily optimize them.
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.