Comments on: CrazyEgg vs. Google Analytics

By: Dan Dascalescu

Dan Dascalescu — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:24:28 +0000

Very interesting post! I just noticed that the links to the Crazy Egg images are broken. Can you check please?

By: Zac

Zac — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:01:49 +0000

I tried out RobotReplay just now and it threw a javascript error (unrecognised character). Not good.

Pascal: The heatmap demo in PhpMyVisites is throwing a PHP error when I checked it out just now. Also not good.

Thomas: Thanks for the clarification on CrazyEgg. Indeed, the heatmap makes sense, even when the page dimensions and font sizes are changed. It’s an impressive piece of work. (and no errors reported :-)

By: pascal

pascal — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 23:28:05 +0000

For the clicks heatmap you can also test the latest version of the open source web analytics software phpmyvisites http://www.phpmyvisites.us/

It works very well for the heatmap (demo on http://www.phpmyvisites.us/phpmv2/index.php?lang=en-utf-8.php&mod=clickheat.view_clickheat&site=1&adminsite=1&date=2007-07-25&period=1&action= )

and with this free app you control and own your data :)

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 22:00:28 +0000

Thanks for the report, tijmoe. I’ll look into seeing how it can be fixed. Worse comes to worse this will scroll off the front page in the next few days.

By: Thomas Aylott

Thomas Aylott — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:00:09 +0000

Trevor: Frankly, you’re wrong.

I’m one of the two developers of CrazyEgg. While what you say is extremely true and pathetic of OTHER heatmap-esque apps, CrazyEgg tracks clicks very differently.

CrazyEgg is completely immune from browser sizes, dynamic data, liquid layouts, etc…

Test it for yourself. When you’re viewing your crazyegg reports you can resize your text and even interact with you page in the background. CrazyEgg will notice where everything moved and then redraw the heatmap. (you might have to resize your browser window a few pixels to make it register the change in forefox)

By: tijmoe

tijmoe — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:08:47 +0000

Patrick, it seems that the width of this post cause your right menu to be moved at the bottom of your page under IE6.

It wil be be damage to lost sell of BCC due to that…

By: Money and Software :: Best software startup information - Week 15

Money and Software :: Best software startup information - Week 15 — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:33:39 +0000

[...] has an interesting comparison of Crazy Egg vs Google Analytics. The blog comments include some interesting points about [...]

By: QG Software Blog » CrazyEgg - new ways to display your site statistics

QG Software Blog » CrazyEgg - new ways to display your site statistics — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:57:26 +0000

[...] The heatmap color codes where exactly the users click on your page. Here is a quote from MicroISV on a Shoestring blog: “Incidentally, if you’re wondering “Why does Crazyegg report different data than [...]

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 07:53:49 +0000

Looks very cool – I’ll have try it. Thanks for bringing it to our attention Patrick.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 14:04:31 +0000

Both Google Analytics and CrazyEgg have their strengths and weaknesses.

Google Analytics is actually more accurate at tracking how a user moves through a site, because they are tracking actual URLs. This means you can compare statistics across page redesigns and it works even with dyanmic web pages. It falls short, as you noted, when you are trying to easily determine which link on a given page to a specific URL was clicked.

CrazyEgg has a more serious problem however. It relies on the coordinates of the click to determine where users are clicking. This only works a) if the page is completely static and b) the page renders the same across all browsers and all resolutions. If you use a fluid web design rather than a fixed width design, if the user is on a high resolution and has Large Fonts turned on, if you get people from a lot of different browsers/platforms visiting your site so the locations of links are no longer the same, if the user has adjusted the default font size, then CrazyEgg’s results will be incorrect.

In the above examples you can see a potential problem with this in that the first paragraph in your Google Analytics screenshot has four lines, but only three lines in the CrazyEgg rendering.

If CrazyEgg worked to enhance your web site, great. But be aware of the limitations. And, as you noted, Google Analytics has it’s own limitations and weird inconsistencies. Personally, I would use the CrazyEgg or Google Analytics overlay to identify potential problem spots, but then verify it by looking at the actual tabular statistics generated by Google Analytics, which are going to be the highest accuracy.