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November 4, 2006

Free Visual Web Analytics

Most web analytics programs display their data as text in a tabular format, or, if you’re lucky, as charts and graphs. A couple of new web analytics programs are out to change that by offering services that visually display the statistical data on top of your web site.

The first of these new breed of web analytics programs to appear on the scene was Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg allows you to view an image of your pages overlayed with a heatmap showing the most frequently clicked areas. Or use the “overlay” mode to quickly see what percentage of the total page clicks each individual link receives.

SiteShots is the newest competitor in this arena. They provide very similar features to Crazy Egg.

Both programs work basically the same. You add a couple of lines of JavaScript code to your web site that silently track clicks and gather data behind the scenes. You can see the visual results from your account on the respective web sites. Crazy Egg recently emerged from their beta period, but SiteShots still appears to be in some form of beta or preliminary state. Both companies offer limited services for free, with more robust services for paid plans.

Posted at 1:15 PM in Web Design