Install Clixpy to your website and watch exactly what your visitors do once they’ve found you. Think “usability testing” rather than “stalking”.
If you listen closely, you can hear SEO-pros and website usability enthusiats the world over drooling all over their keyboards.
As long as the Clixpy servers are up for the task, this offers a solution that up to now was expensive, difficult to access and involved - the horror - of dealing with people.
While pros will find this a godsend, I can see amateurs spending hours watching their Clixpy captures without really knowing what to do next. Cue maddening decline into insanity.
In a virtual world of Google Analytics, click-thru rates and monthly impressions it is easy to take the precision of knowing what is happening on the Internet at any given time for granted. Clixpy is a new service that takes user tracking to a whole new level by recording the virtual steps and mouse clicks of your visitor and playing them back to you in a seamless video presentation.
I love the fact that you can get away with stuff like this on the ‘net. Somehow I can’t see this type of thing taking off in the dirt world. Personally I would find an unobtrusive but noticable film crew following me around Big W recording what aisles I headed to first and what bulk laundry detergent caught my eye a little off putting, to say the least. On the Internet though? No problems. Javascript in the background means that as a user I have no idea that every move is being recorded.
Clixpy may prove to be the holy grail for site-usability professionals. The difference in a user going where you want them to go on your site and meandering off down the virtual garden path can be big bucks. Clixpy offers a near flawless package: great design, a simple user interface, simple integration with your website and even a free account to start you off. The business model is based around the purchase of ‘captures’ with reasonable rates: watch 300 users visit your site for as little as $20.
My only fear is that this service may be too much for the amateur user: sure, I can see that Jim-Bob didn’t sign up for my newsletter, but what now? Without some idea of site usability principles, the hobbyist or blogger could be stuck with great user videos but with no idea of how to use them. Maybe a user forum discussing site usability could help to bridge the gap between watching videos and actual knowing what you are looking at is in Clixpy’s future?
If you are a SEO pro, holistic website designer or a site-usability guru, I don’t know why you are still reading this review. Go! Fly like the wind! Check out Clixpy now! (Remember, I’m watching your every move…)
May 14th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Getting some fiery feedback here!
May 14th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Here’s some feedback from Kirk, as sent through by email:
“… Anyway, how can anyone in good conscience put a key logger on someone’s computer when the provider, Clixpy, remains completely anonymous. Isn’t there something fishy about that?
Does Goodbetatest feel any responsibility to evaluate the credentials and ethics of the sites it reviews. Clixby may be entirely on the up and up but unfortunately, when they maintain complete anonymity with an application that has potential to violate user identity and otherwise possibly break trust, it seems to me everyone should hold such providers to a minimally high standard.
Clixpy has a good idea. They need to take care of business, i.e., be honest and trustworthy. There are simple ways to do that.”
May 14th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
If I can reply…
Kirk raises a good point here: Is it pushing the guest-host relationship too far by recording your visitor’s movements with a service like clixpy.com without their knowledge?
In Clixpy’s privacy terms they detail what data they collect which is just about everything apart from passwords and anything in a form with the noclixpy=”true” HTML tag. So, for instance, you would put a “noclixpy” tag on any forms that collect customer data. Can you trust in that? Sure - I guess as much as you trust any privacy statement that you see on any other website on the net.
The way that I see it is that using tools like affiliate trackers and even Google Analytics we can see the results of a user’s experience - how long they stayed on a site, where they clicked and where their IP resolves from. Isn’t Clixpy just taking you on the ride instead of reading you the report?
There’s no doubt that Clixpy may prove controversial, but is this just using technology to enhance one of the great powers of doing business on the Internet: that user behaviour can be tracked?
goodBETAbest doesn’t make any comments on the ethics of any company or individual - I only review the products. With that said, I only endorse products that are legal and are in the spirit of the betterment of the dub-dub-dub.
What do you think? Has Clixpy.com pushed it too far?
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
THe clixpy domain is registered in Bulgaria. Considering that much of virus, spam amd identity theft action is coming from Eastern Europe and Russia these days, and that almost every mention of this ’service’ on the Web is obvious astroturfing, you’d have to be a fool to install this.