Yesterday, over at css-tricks.com, Chris published an article by Jay Salvat about using PHP and jQuery to create a clickmap on your site. I started playing with that idea and decided to make it into a wordpress plugin.
A couple hours of coding, and several versions later, I happily finished WP-Clickmap v1.0
This little plugin will store each click made on pages of your site in a database, and from there, you’ll be able to go to your blog’s admin section and view the various pages. See what is popular with your visitors and what’s not. It’s had some interesting results on the sites I’ve run it on so far, and wanted to share it here for people to download and play around with.
For anyone who is wondering about the advantages of clickmaps, clickmaps let you see your site from a usability perspective. Your clickmaps show literally every click a user makes on a particular page. Every click is loaded into the database and over time a visual representation of collective clicks gives you an overview of the hotspots on the page.
While it is interesting to see links that are being clicked on, it is even more valuable to see where people are that are not links. Why do people keep clicking on the middle of my page?
WP-clickmap is based on the original idea Jay Salvat published on his blog and on css-tricks.com. Thanks to Jay and Chris for the idea.
Gotta be fast! I was just about to turn it into a WordPress plugin myself but thought I better check there wasn’t something already like it – but I’m too slow.
I’ll give it a whirl sometime soon.
As for your question, I tend to absently click the text I’m reading…
Thanks so much for this! I was looking at turning it into a WP plugin myself – but it would have taken me a wee bit longer
Thank you very much for this release Roger! I just installed it and it is just gourgeous useful!
At first the dots highlighting the “twilight zones” didn´t appear but i just looked again after a while and you can infere a lot of things out of this.
Many thanks,
Sk
this is awesome. i just set it up on three of my blogs. i’ll hit you back if i run into anything weird. thanks..
Thats just awesome! Thanks for turning it into a WP plugin.
Very cool plugin.. I have been using CrazyEgg for usability testing but like this idea of having it baked into WordPress. thanks for a killer plugin!
by the way… which tweetback plugin are you using?
Using the tweetback plugin from Yoast.com, with some tweaks on the output to match the comments section of my template.
I am waaaaaaaaaaaaaay toooooooooooooooooooooooo sssssssssllllllllloooooowwwwwwwww.
I thought of the WordPress plugin idea, too. Well, at least I learned about how to make a custom plugin. Thanks!
It happens, for every idea you have, another guy gets the same idea.
Sometimes, it feels like too many people are plugged into the same lightbulb
great plugin!
in which versions of wp does it works?
It’s only been tested in 2.7, but there’s nothing in there that won’t work on 2.5+
Great idea, great turnout !
I saw the clickmap-things at work and thought about building one, and now i don’t even have to do that. Works like a charm !
Thanx & greetz,
ToM.
Great plug-in!
I’m all about visual statistics and this is a great way to view whats “hot”
Way to go.
This is incredible, thanks!
Thank’s, nice pluggin.
Very nice plug-in, I have installed and activated it on a few blogs, and very very useful “visual stat” tool. I’m sure this will help alot of us determine exactly where our visitors are clicking, it’s going to be great to monetize those stray clicks! Thanks Roger.
Will this exclude the clicks the admin does by him-/herself? Would make some distortion to the data, especially during testing sessions and so on.
Open up wp-click.php, find line 44, and edit:
if (!is_admin()){
to say
if (!is_admin() && !current_user_can(‘level_10′)){
That will exclude clicks from admin user
Wow…that was simple to install! Very well made plugin!
Wow, Great plugin and it really works ! Thanks !
)
Thanks for making this, I love the web and checking to see if there are things I wish for. Glad there are awesome code monkeys like yourself making the world a better place!
Thanks,
Rob
gosh dang this is cool.
Just what I was after! cheers mate.
Wow! Great plugin! Thank you Roger!
Your blog is amazing, i first landed to another post but then get interested and thought, i will just look a little more arround to see what else i can find out about best plugins arround.
Great Plugin. Amazing work. Its so simple & user friendly. I am loving it.
I Love wordpress