Back in town

Posted on 10/09/2007 by admin

It’s been a while since I haven’t posted a single line here (also my Flickr photo stream deserve a better treatment) but I’ve been travelling through vacations and busy days (and the deadline for my “Achivieng real business growth through Second Life” hasn’t helped).

But now I’m back with a whole lot of things to says and experiences to be told. And, again, with so few time available to write them down.

So, let’s go with a Powerpoint style bullet list of important things happened meanwhile

I’ve been interviewed on the next phases of the Gabetti presence in Second Life (interview in Italian, here’s an automatic translation)
I’ve spent 3 whole weeks on holiday (the last time I had so much vacation I was 17). Photo to be uploaded soon.
My sister Marianna got married. She’s now enjoying her honeymoon in Polynesia.
Leeander published a video interview with yours truly (again, in Italian) about the Virtual Assistant that’s now managing Gabetti first line IT helpdesk. More on this soon.

That’s all for now.

Is clicktracking the new eyetracking?

Posted on 27/08/2007 by admin

A couple of months ago I wrote a post to point out my personal view on what was considered the low cost alternative to eyetracking: clickrtracking, via a web 2.0 application called Crazy Egg.

My post raised some buzz that eventually lent to an invitation from the Crazy Egg crew to their private beta program. I was happy to accept since I was so curious on the effectiveness of the results.

To summarize my position (disclaimer: the company I work for sells Eye-tracking services):

You should care of what your users sees MORE then of what they click (otherwise you won’t be able to figure out why they haven’t clicked on certain links);
The users interactions with a web site/interface shouldn’t be summarized to just their clicks;
Crazy Egg is a cool app for zero-budget websites who care fo some more information on their users’ activity;
Even though Crazy Egg disappears when compared to Eye Tracking technology it totally stands over all the other log analyzer softwares.

After joining the beta testers group I tried Crazy Egg first on this site (too few clicks) and then on the HOTMC.COM web site homepage, collecting a total amount of 3432 clicks in 10 days.

Have I changed my mind? IS click-tracking the NEW eye-tracking?

Well. no.

As you can see from the above pictures (click on them to zoom in) the results on click hot areas reported (on the left) are completely different from gaze hot areas.

Questions such as:

Is my logo placement effective (e.g. Is my logo seen/perceived)?
Is the top-left menu perceived as the main navigation widget?
Is the design of the central (main) column effective?

remain sadly unanswered in the left image but find some anwers on the right one (the eye tracking one, so to say).

You can also see how click behaviours differ from sight behaviours: you don’t click everything you’ve seen and – interestingly – one of the least seen elements on the page (the Hotboard link nearly the base of the right most column) is the MOST clicked (I can give explanation on this if interested, just leave a note in the comments).

To conclude I’ll say that – where affordable – eye tracking remains the best way to user/reality check you designs (as said before Tobii eye tracking systems record the clicks too) but Crazy Egg is probably the best statistic visualization tool I’ve ever seen (a whole lot more then Webtrends) and let you discover some interesting data on your users’ click behaviours (in the above case we discovered that our users used the HOTMC.COM site to access our community forums).

Gabetti recruits virtual agents for Second Life

Posted on 27/07/2007 by admin

Gabetti wants you! Gabetti (disclaimer: the company I work for) has released today a job opening to recruit virtual real estate agents for it’s Second Life project.

We’re looking for skilled avatars eager to make some money working directly in Second Life; we can offer a pay in Linden Dollars, an office on the Gabetti Island and the possibility to work in the most cutting edge project of a real life Estate company inside Second Life.

You can take a look at the job opening on our site (Italian only, sorry), Monster (again, Italian only) or send your CV at SLrecruiting[at]gabetti.it; we’re closing the offer during September, so don’t loose this opportunity.”;”Gabetti recruits virtual agents for Second Life