
Clixpy is recording your actions right now - mariorz
http://clixpy.com/demo
======
cte
Clixpy is a decent clone of clicktale.com, userfly.com, and exactostats.com,
but doesn't seem to have a "shtick" that differentiates it from the other
offerings. With userfly.com, we tried to make everything dead simple, and much
cheaper than clicktale. We also focus on capturing quality user sessions (lots
of page views, lots of actions fired per page, bounced users don't count
against your quota).

However, at the end of the day, watching individual user sessions, one after
another, doesn't really scale; you need a way to aggregate the data to
identify trends that may suggest pain points for the end user, and we haven't
really cracked that nut (and neither have our competitors).

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makeee
Testing this now. One issue for me is that I get a lot of traffic from reddit,
stumbleupon, etc.. these users don't stick around for more than 5 secs and
they are going to use up my captures quickly. I would suggest only counting
captures that have clicks.

Another suggestion: I'd love to be able to see how users browse a particular
page, but i might have to wade through a ton of captures to do so. Would be
cool if you captured every user session and I could then search to find some
that include that page, then unlock those session by using some of my
purchased credits.

EDIT: One problem I'm seeing is that when the user goes to a new page the
timer freezes and it takes about 10 seconds to start playing again, but it
jumps 10 seconds ahead, so you miss some activity there. Looks like th is is
because my website takes awhile to finish loading (lots of images below the
fold).

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mrtron
Great demo as soon as you arrive.

~~~
patio11
That is, hands down, the best demo I have ever seen on HN. I just showed it to
my Japanese coworkers and I didn't even need to tell them what it was doing.

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eli
Be nice if I could see how much it costs before I give it my email address :/

~~~
kirubakaran
This what I found on registering:

You get 10 free captures on signup.

After that, plans vary from '$5 for 100 captures' to '$30 for 1000 captures'.

[edit #1]

I added this to one of my websites. Holy Shit, it is good! I've bought 100
captures for now, for $5.

[I shamefully admit that this is one of the ideas I had but didn't execute
all. These guys have done an _amazing_ job.]

[edit #2]

Thanks to paraschopra's comment, I checked out userfly too. I am going to try
that too. Clixpy didn't detect keystrokes correctly on one of my websites.
Lemme see how userfly fares for the same test case.

    
    
      Note to self : Competition is good. 
      ------------
    

It is like a neighborhood coffee shop getting _more_ traffic because of a
Starbucks opening nearby, contrary to the tiny shop's fears. I wouldn't have
become a user of userfly today without clixpy.

[edit #3]

( Userfly dude rambles for quite a while in the demo :-) )

Notes on Userfly:

Userfly's performance can be better. Hmm. Definitely. But I like it too.

I wish Google released a product that has this functionality. I don't trust
userfly or clixpy completely, since they didn't replay my test drive properly.
But I'll definitely be using them until something more robust comes along.

~~~
aj
I hope to god Google does not (though I would not be surprised if they
_already_ do this internally)

Google already has a LOT of information about it's users. No more please

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kirubakaran
Google will get the data if it wants. Do you think that sharing that with us
webapp creators makes it worse? Also, I don't necessarily want it to be only
from Google... just want a solid tool that you can rely on. Google is the only
company that came to mind when I thought who can deliver that.

~~~
aj
No doubt. As I mentioned, in all probability, Google already does it. And
sharing it with webapp creators does not make it worse. Heh.. I used to create
web applications and am a developer for a MORPG.

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Tichy
Didn't work for me - perhaps it needs Flash or Java?

In any case I thought stuff like that has been done for years? There are apps
that draw you a heatmap of your site based on mouse movements, too?

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nopassrecover
Wow very nice. I wonder how it handles different browser renderings though?
For instance the clicks and stuff could seem off.

~~~
endtwist
I have a lot of experience with motion-recording web apps like this (built one
and launched it a couple years back, and it worked exactly as this one does).
Rendering issues can become a major problem with some pages, as well as things
like Javascript executing "on page load" (while the recording has already
started playing), or an element changing size/position, that can throw off an
entire recording.

This is not to mention the fact that if you change the page (unless Clixpy has
some provision for this), your old recordings are entirely useless.

With regards to accuracy, ignoring the aforementioned problems: a script like
this can be fairly accurate, and the actual "recording technology" behind this
is fairly simple (albeit still interesting). The data can be useful, provided
you enjoy wading through many, many very unhelpful recordings.

The real challenge, and what I believe is more useful, is extracting and
distilling the data into heatmaps, graphs, and the like. This would provide
someone with more of an overview based on the recoded data (think CrazyEgg,
but even more in depth). This is something which I am working to solve, as is
-- as someone else mentioned -- ClickTale.

Regardless, I commend Clixpy for diving into this space.

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paraschopra
There was a similar app by HNer I remember: userfly.com

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hellweaver666
I tried userfly on a site I operate and it really wasn't much use because it
was incapable of recording the advanced AJAX stuff the site does. It also
sends requests back to the original server on playback which would have caused
me some problems.

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aj
Very cool and extremely well implemented.

But somehow my paranoia bubbles to the surface on viewing that demo. This is
in a way scary, getting even more information on the users.

It's probably just me but I'm getting increasingly paranoid of the amount of
information that is being collected on the Internet (and a LOT of it without
disclosure)

~~~
furyg3
NoScript is your friend.

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mikeryan
Very cool, but in itself not very useful? Can you add some metrics for
tracking how users use the site? (If this is already there plz ignore)

What would help me is seeing the aggregation of use across several users
instead of the mouse movements of one.

~~~
profgubler
I think the concept is similar to Clicktale and even simple User testing. But
instead of asking users to perform tasks you get to watch real users using
your site.

Something quantifiable is nice, but after watching a few of these videos of
your users, you will quickly find some of the big problems your site faces.
You likely won't notice the small ones, but you should be able to see some of
the big ones, which are the ones that need your greatest attention anyway.

I also would like to see their price before giving them an email.

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dpcan
This is completely terrifying.

You don't know who Clixpy is. You put this on your site, a user types in their
password and so far we just have their word that they are not recording it -
has anyone looked closely at the JS?

~~~
kingsley_20
Yes, but that's true of _any_ widget/Javascript you include. Why is this
particularly scary?

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ryanwaggoner
Looks great...another site like this that I've been using lately is Clicktale.
You get 100 free captures per week on one domain, or 20,000 per month for $99.
One of the nice features that Clicktale has is scrolling heatmaps, so you can
see what percentage of users scroll to different parts of your page, where
they spend the most time, etc. Useful for landing pages.

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lionheart
This looks amazing. I've been wanting something like this but I didn't realize
it was possible.

This is going on my website tonight.

[EDIT]

Looks cool, but still has some bugs in it. In particular, some of the
Javascript that is on your site seems to activate while you watch the replays.

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mjr578
I thought perhaps it would work with the iPhone but that does not seem to be
the case. Looks pretty neat and simple. As others have said similar to
userfly.com.

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ComputerGuru
The text I typed into the "AJAX" tab along with the Google results did _not_
show up in the re-played demo w/ Safari 4 on OS X.

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rufo
It seemed to double-click the checkboxes - selecting them and deselecting
them.

Safari 4 final on Leopard, if it helps at all.

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asmosoinio
Not working for me -- after playback it shows just empty gray page.

Using Google Chrome 2.0.172.31 on Vista.

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icey
Does anyone know if this will work behind logins? Or does the site have to be
visible from clixpy.com?

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s3graham
Didn't do anything on Chromium/Ubu.

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ralph
"Clixpy`s Demo" -- wrong quote.

