Before I launched this site I setup a free Crazy Egg account to track mouse clicks on the front page. For those who don’t know, Crazy Egg provides a service that tracks user’s mouse clicks on a particular page to “get a clear picture of where your visitors are clicking.”
The heat map is my favorite feature because it clearly shows where people are going on your site. My Mint stats tell a similar tale, but not as clearly as the heat map. Also, the data that Mint collects include a lot of my activity on the administration side of the site. I use it more for unique visitor count, referrals and recent activity (at which it does a superb job).
Currently about 350 clicks have been tracked, and as you can see in Figure 1 the majority (one-third) have been on the link to the Portfolio.
Figure 1: The “warmer” the color the more clicks in that region.
The second most clicked element, to my surprise, was the search button. I didn’t realize how heavily users rely on the search box to find content.
It is data like this that helps you shape your site to better serve your users. I now know not to regulate the search-results page to a last-minute task thrown together before the launch of a site, but to spend time designing the page to provide the user with clear results.
Commentary
If you’re trying to brand yourself as a web designer, I can’t understand why you would make a post like this that clearly shows you have virtually no experience… Not trying to be mean, quite the contrary… Just trying to help out.
Yann, I’m not necessarily trying to brand myself as a web designer. I am a web designer, that’s my trade.
This post was more about discovery through research, rather than highlighting the fact that I don’t have a comprehensive portfolio! I know that people judge your ability based on what you have previously accomplished (among other things). Hence a portfolio is a vital part of the business; it shows if you have the capabilities that you claim.
However, I don’t think that a portfolio is contained within a page or section labeled “portfolio”. This entire site is part of my portfolio: the page layouts, the blog entries, the tutorials, etc.
But of course I intend to add many more websites to the portfolio section once they are completed. The title was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. And I have been creating websites since 1998, but I don’t necessarily want to showcase all of them!
David, the fact that you take pride in your trade and spend your time improving (and helping the improvement of others) tells pretty much about your commitment, and I think these make you a better web designer.
A portfolio section is really important indeed, but I have the same problem as you… there are some of my early works that I just don’t want to show in my portfolio (the clients were of course satisfied with them, but I’m not that proud about them anymore… I have improved, my style changed, and I dropped tables for layout ;]).
Levente, yeah I’m with you. The clients were satisfied, but it was so long ago that they don’t accurately portray my current capabilities.
Not to mention my old Angelfire site!