Mouse Eye Tracking

FAQ

For any support enquiries, fill out our contact form and we'll get back to you ASAP. Thank you.

• How accurate is Mouse Tracking™ for usability analysis?

  There is significant anecdotal evidence of the correlation between eye gazing and mouse movement. Additionally, there are formal research studies that show a very strong correlation (84%) between regions of your web site pages gazed by your eye and the regions visited by the mouse cursor. One of the studies (Human-Computer Interaction Institute - Carnegie Mellon University ) indicates that 88% of regions not gazed by the eye are also not visited by the mouse cursor. This study can be found at: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=634067.634234
  
  More recently, Google has also endorsed the concept and obtained a patent to use this method to optimise it's search engine to collect information about where users hover mouse pointers when viewing search results and advertisements, and when using Google's OneBox music service. Detail and information about this patent can be obtained from:

  • http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/live/articles/mouse-movements-may-influence-google-search-rankin.asp/7133/
  • http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/100720-080313
  • http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,756,887.PN.&OS=pn/7,756,887&RS=PN/7,756,887
  • Another interesting study by Microsoft and the University of Washington’s Jeff Huang concludes strong correlation between cursor (mouse) and gaze position especially on search result pages. The study can be found at http://jeffhuang.com/Final_CursorBehavior_CHI11.pdf

• How do I interpret the results of my analysis?

  The design decisions reached by using the Mouse Eye Tracking vary depending on each site and the goals of the site. However some key signs that you should be aware of include:

  • If a section of a page has low activity consider removing it to simplify the layout of the page. This space could also be used for something that adds more value to your users.
    Mouse Eye Tracking reveals what is of interest to your users not what you think is of interest to your users so keep this in mind when redesigning your pages.
  • If a secondary page contains a lot of activity consider moving that section to your main page. This would remove the amount of navigation required for your users to reach their goals.
  • Reviewing mouse movements and time taken to move around a page you can redesign a page making the navigation simpler.
  • If you see users constantly changing a setting on your site (i.e. language) consider making that setting a default.
  • The page departures mode allows you to understand the main flow of navigation on your entire site. Spending a bit of time in the page departures mode is recommended as you will understand how users are using your site. This can then lead to redesigns that will simplify the navigation of your site.

  For more information check out the Mouse Eye Tracking blog where we post about design, usability and how to get the most out of Mouse Eye Tracking

• What is the Time Lapse Heat Map feature?

  The Time Lapse Heat Map plays back all recorded heat maps over time, resulting in a time lapse animation that can help you understand how visitors are browsing your web pages. This feature works best with our premium and self-hosted plans which allow a large volume of pageviews to be recorded.

• What is the Page Navigation feature?

  This feature reveals the inflows and outflows of pages. By finding the most popular pathways to and from pages, you can understand what pages users want and eliminate unnecessary clutter that impedes their visit through your website. Page Navigation has two modes, Page Arrivals and Page Departures that both display a central node representing the current page. The colour coded pathways extending from this node represent visitors flows (red being the highest flow, orange second highest and green third, all other pathways are grey).

  Page Arrivals:

  From the central node, Page Arrivals displays a number of nodes branching to the left. These represent where users are arriving from. This display is not only about how people navigate or arrive to a page from the same website but also from Direct and External sources.
  
  Direct access to a page (by people typing the complete URL directly into the browser) is indicated as “Direct”. External access to a page (by people clicking a URL on another website linking to the page) is indicated as “External”.

  Page Departures:

  From the central node, Page Departures displays a number of nodes that branch out in a circular orbit. These represent where users are going when they leave the central node.

• What is the Attention Heat Map with Link Analysis?

  Link Analysis Heat Maps allow you to measure the effectiveness of your links. When viewing Heatmaps and Mouse Tracking in the Management Console, you will see links surrounded by a blue dashed border. Hover over the link to reveal details for that link. Details shown are:

  • Clicks: How many times link has been clicked.
  • Hovers: How many times link has been hovered.
  • Hover to Click conversion: The percentage of hovers that successfully became clicks.
  • Average Hover Time: An average of all the hover time on that link.
  • Average Time to Hover: The average time between the moment the page loads to the moment the visitor hovers.
  • Average Time to Click: The average time between the moment the page loads to the moment the visitor clicks.

• What is the Browser Sizes feature?

  Browsers sizes reveals the top 10 resolutions visitors are using to browse a specific page and how that page looks in those resolutions. These are drawn onscreen as transparent overlays in various colours. Hover over an overlay to show how that page renders in that resolution. A tooltip will also appear revealing the browser size and the number of pageviews using that resolution (as a number and percentage).

• What is the pricing structure of the Mouse Eye Tracking SaaS (Software as a Service)?

  PicNet’s Mouse Eye Tracking is free however, a small signature “Mouse Eye Tracking by PicNet” is displayed in your page in the location where you place the Code. Should you wish to remove the message entirely, you need to upgrade to a premium account.

• What is a premium account?

  A premium account allows more recording in terms of the number of pageviews stored, days kept for analysis and days that can be viewed on the Management Console. Additionally, some features are only available to Premium Accounts. For more information, visit the Pricing and Features pages.
  
  To upgrade to a premium account, select upgrade in the menu. (prices are provided in Australian dollars).

• Does Mouse Eye Tracking have a reseller program?

  Yes, should you be interested in reselling PicNet’s Mouse Eye Tracking service, please visit the reseller page, or please contact us.

• Can the Mouse Eye Tracking service read my user's passwords (or other form data)?

  No, the PicNet Mouse Eye Tracking service does not read any keyboard interactions only mouse movements so no data is ever sent to our servers. You can verify this by using something like FireBug to monitor the data being sent to our servers.

• What is a pageview?

  The Mouse Eye Tracking service records user mouse pageviews. These pageviews are an interaction with a web page that completes when a user:

  • moves to another page (clicks a link)
  • refreshes page / presses F5
  • closes the browser

  When viewing any of the heat map visualisations in Mouse Eye Tracking we limit the number of pageviews displayed to 5,000 per page. The reason for this is that 5,000 is an optimal sample size for an informative heat map and small enough to render efficiently.

• I have noticed that not all of the user requests are being recorded?

  The Mouse Eye Tracking client script will try to never impact the performance of your page. Unfortunately this means that occasionally we do not capture 100% of requests.

• Can the Mouse Eye Tracking client script impact the performance of my website?

  Maintaining the integrity and performance of your website was the number one goal of the architectural design of Mouse Eye Tracking. After extensive research & development and thousands of users using Mouse Eye Tracking worldwide, we are certain of no impact on your website. However, as a normal risk management practice, we strongly recommend testing the Mouse Eye Tracking client script on a test environment prior to moving to a live site.

• What is the performance impact on my web server?

  None. You should not experience any performance degradation as Mouse Eye Tracking does not interfere with your web server at all.

• How can I use the Mouse Eye Tracking service with YouTube videos or any flash content?

  If you try to use the Mouse Eye Tracking service on a page with flash content such as YouTube videos, you will notice that the navigation information is displayed behind the flash content. The easiest way to fix this is to add the wmode="transparent" tag to your embed script. If you are using an external javascript API such as SWFObject to embed your flash content, you will need to add the wmode="transparent" to a parameter object e.g var params = {wmode : "transparent"}. Then pass that object when you call the API.

  Example:

  <object width="560" height="340">
      <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l25D4veZMj8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param>
      <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
      <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
      <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l25D4veZMj8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"
          type="application/x-shockwave-flash" 
          allowscriptaccess="always" 
          allowfullscreen="true" 
          width="560" 
          height="340"
          wmode="transparent"
  	</embed>
  </object>
  

• Why is my page is not showing mouse interactions such as interactions with menu items, etc?

  Mouse Eye Tracking does not show individual user/UI interactions with the page being recorded. Which means that interactions such as Ajax or menu item interactions are not shown other than being displayed as mouse clicks.

• What are the system requirements of the Management Console?

  To display results via the Management Console, we recommend a computer with at least 2GB of RAM and Intel Core 2 CPU or later. We also highly recommend using either FireFox or Chrome web browsers.

• Does the Management Console work on Internet Explorer?

  Mouse Eye Tracking's Management Console only works on Internet Explorer 9+, if you have an older version of Internet Explorer we highly recommend using either FireFox or Chrome.

• Why can't I view old data?

  Mouse Eye Tracking keeps data for a limited period of time depending on the plan that you are registered for. The premium plan and self hosted options allow for longer storage.

• Can I modify or remove the PicNet signature from my page?

  To remove the small advertisement text from your page you can upgrade your account to a premium account via the upgrade menu option in the Management Console.
  To modify and minimize the impact of the PicNet signature on your page, you can style the 'PicNetEyeTracking' span in your style sheet to best meet the look and feel of your page. An example style for the PicNet advertisement span is:

  <style>
      #PicNetEyeTracking {                
          font-size:10px;
          color:#9999cc;
          }
     #PicNetEyeTracking a {
          text-decoration:none;
          color:#9999cc;
          }
  </style>
  

  Please note that any other modification to the PicNet message may disable the Mouse Eye Tracking mechanism and the service will not work.

• I have a premium account, so why do I still see the PicNet advertisement for a fraction of a second and then it disappears?

  If you have a premium account you can remove the advertisement message in your Html you can also hide the PicNetEyeTracking element using CSS (see example). Both will stop this brief message from showing.

  <style>
     #PicNetEyeTracking {
        display:none
        }
  </style>
  

• Can I install the Mouse Eye Tracking server on my own servers - self hosted solution?

  Yes, please contact us for more details.

• Does Mouse Eye Tracking support SSL web sites?

  Yes, Mouse Eye Tracking service supports SSL websites.

• Can I test Mouse Eye Tracking with html files on my local machine?

  Due to browser security restrictions the Mouse Eye Tracking service does not work with file:// URIs. This means that if you want to test with local files you will have to ensure that these files are accessible with valid web URLs, i.e. 'http://localhost/filename.html'.

• How long do I need to wait to see my recorded data?

  At all times, you should allow some 5 minutes to see visitor activity reflected in the analysis and displays of the Management Console. This is due to the queuing of messages into the Mouse Eye Tracking service and the time taken to resolve the queue.

• What is Tunnel Vision?

  Tunnel Vision is a feature that encourages the correlation between mouse movements and where user attention is focused. It is designed for your closed testing purposes, do not use it on your live site! To turn on tunnel vision simply add (use-tunnel-vision="true") to your PicNetEyeTracker span. i.e:

     <span id="PicNetEyeTracker" usercode="usercode" use-tunnel-vision="true">
  

  
  

  To turn off tunnel vision simply remove this tag or set use-tunnel-vision to "false". Please note this feature does not fully work in Microsoft Internet Explorer. To find out more about Tunnel Vision, read Guido Tapia's (architect of Mouse Eye Tracking) software development blog.

• Editable Heat Maps

  Version 4 of Mouse Eye Tracking introduces a new great feature to edit heat maps and drill deeper into the analysis of visitor behaviour on each page. If a heat map has high concentration in certain areas, i.e. hot in one or more specific spots, with other areas appearing soft or unrepresented, you can use the Editable Heat Map option to select with your mouse (by dragging the mouse) sections that are too hot and need to be cut off, to better observe the heat map excluding those extremely hot areas.

• What is the compare screenshots feature?

  The compare screenshots feature allows you take screenshots before and after layout redesigns and compare them to get a better idea of how your changes affect user behaviour. Take screenshots using the camera button in heat map and mouse tracking modes, then choose the 'Compare Screenshots' mode to queue the screenshots you wish to compare.

• How many screenshots can I save and compare?

  The number of screenshots you can save depends on your account, see the pricing page for the full breakdown. Once you reach your limit you may delete existing screenshots to free up room to take new ones. In the compare screenshots control panel, select the screenshot you want to delete and push the trash icon.