ClickTale Review - cool, but not a necessity

Last month I touted ClickTale as "the coolest new piece of web software", so I was thrilled when SportsLizard was accepted into their BETA testing program last week. For those who haven't heard of ClickTale, it essentially records visitors to your site so you can go back and watch recordings of exactly what they typed, where they clicked, and how long they were there.

With the BETA testing program I got a sneak peek at how ClickTale plans to monetize this software. Right now, the BETA plan is free but only provides 40 recordings/day. Paid plans will be tiered based upon number of recordings, history storage (how long your recordings are available to watch), number of domains you can look at, and the ability to record login pages.

That last one was the one that really got me - I wanted to watch users interact with the price guide, but since it's behind a log-in I was only able to watch up to the point where they logged in. But I digress - installation was a breeze (copy and paste a few lines of code) and I couldn't wait to watch my first recording.

The next day I logged in and had a few recordings to watch. I clicked the play button not really knowing what to expect - it's not every day that you get to sit over the shoulder of your visitors to see how they interact. I THINK I know what they do, but I'm not sure.

However, once I got over the weirdness of watching someone else's mouse and keystrokes, I realized something: I already knew exactly what they were going to do. Why? Because I have set up extensive analytics that tell me far more about use behavior than watching a few people tool around on the site. And that's what I really think about ClickTale - it's pretty cool to watch people on your site, but far more information can be gathered by studying click through rates, entry and exit pages, goal conversion rates, and time spent on the site - all of that and then some can be had for free with the new Google Analytics.

ClickTale does sum all of the information up for you in a heatmap (below), but again - anyone with half a brain can tell where people are looking and clicking if they study their analytics correctly. So while interesting, ClickTale just doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Would I install it and use it for free? Of course. Would I pay $20/$50/$100 a month for it? No way, not with Analytics being free. Sorry guys.

Here's the ONLY scenario that I would pay for it: if I were BETA testing a new site/feature and wanted to watch how people reacted to it, particularly if the quantity of people testing is so small that I could 1) watch every recording in a reasonable amount of time, and 2) it was the kind of site that Analytics couldn't tell the whole story (although off hand I can't think of a site that fits that mold).

I guess I'm just not sure who ClickTale's target market is. The "typical" site owner isn't going to get enough out of this, so the only people I think might pay for it would be consumer/market research firms so that they have one more weapon in their evaluation arsenal - it's kind of like a one of those two-sided mirrors where you can watch kids play with your toy...except you're watching people play with your site.