Eye tracking, as used by top enterprises such as Google, uses cameras and specialist software to track where the eyes of internet users land on a webpage. Mouse tracking follows the mouse movements of an internet user to simulate eye movement on a webpage. Over the last few years, mouse tracking has greatly matured, developing features and achieving accuracy that make it a credible alternative to eye tracking.

Heatmaps created using traditional eye tracking (left) and mouse tracking (right)

Research has shown that when both methods of testing are conducted simultaneously, there is an 84%-88% correlation in the results. In addition, both the eye and mouse move to relatively the same rhythm and focus in on the same page content. 

Now you could argue that the above heat maps actually don't really look like they're 80% the same (and I would have to agree) but this is more a case of cost vs. benefit. Eye tracking seems to be more accurate but also much more expensive compared to mouse tracking so maybe mouse tracking could be a good initial first step to inform a potential later eye tracking study.

Read the full article on the ClickTale blog on eye tracking vs. mouse tracking for a list of pros and cons of each method and create a free ClickTale account and generate some heat maps.

ClickTale launched two new heat maps feature today that are worth mentioning.

The Segmented Heap Maps (see screen shot below) allow analysts to show mouse movement, mouse click and page scrolling data for different segments to analyse differences in behaviour. The segmentation options include customer status, conversion status, media channels and any other custom segmentation variables such as age, gender or location but I especially like the fact that we'll now be able to analyse website usage for new prospects vs. existing customers separately.

Ultra Scale Heat Maps on the other hand allow analysts to show aggregate mouse data from up to 100,000 visitors in one single image enabling usability testing on a super large scale compared to standard eye tracking methods.

"With an 84-88% correlation between our Mouse Move Heatmaps and expensive eye-tracking studies, website owners can now conduct incredibly accurate usability studies on a massive scale, and at a fraction of the cost."

http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

A little while back, Google discretely introduced a “Show Options” tab that lets you filter your results by media, time or in other interesting ways. Filters are not new, but combined with Google’s awesome search, have become quite useful to me.

Filtering by Visited Pages. Google is being used more and more as a navigational device towards content you already know. Google is good, but if you’re deep in research sometimes it’s hard to find that site again, and this is a brilliant tool for this purpose. 

This behaviour is not uncommon, and an interesting trend I don’t feel is getting enough attention. Search has become less and less about discovery, and more about meeting basic usability requirements about finding existing content... Something search marketers are adjusting for. How often do you already know exactly what content you are looking for before you search? What chance do the other sites have of capturing your click for that impression? if you’re a search marketer, how do you adjust your optimisation metrics to cater for navigational search and usability from something traditionally focused on acquisition?

Here is my search for Domain names. I searched for this last week and couldn’t remember the name of the site which I decided was the way to go. 

Another feature in the options is the wonder wheel – we haven’t seen a lot of people using this from our analytics data, and I am thinking it probably would be more useful for internal search where you have a more defined content set. There are some implications for search, and with adoption will come more users entering your site via more specific keywords and the reduction in broad search terms.

We’ll be interested to see adoption rates of these filters  and any considerations for search marketing – we’re monitoring our logs and see about 5% of visits contain at least 1 filter, and will be looking to use this data in the future to enrich insights around keywords and what users are looking for when they use them.