Newly launched MouseTrace offers website owners the ability to find out detailed activities of visitors. It "provides a complete view of how your visitors are using your website, recording every click, mouse movement," according to information provided on the product website: so website owners can see the exact paths that users take around their sites.

Declaring itself not a traditional 'web stats' company, MouseTrace works in collaboration with existing stats packages on a website, Google Analytics for example. It is able to monitor activity of an unlimited number of pages on a website, including secure (ssl) pages. It also monitors iPhone activity, providing information on page scrolling and zooming, as well as gestures and device rotation.

Tools already offering the same service include clicktale and mouseflow. Clicktale describes itself as being so detailed "as if you were looking over (the user's) shoulder." It also offers heatmaps, so you can "see how much attention a specific website area gets from your visitors. Find what content your visitors care about the most, what they read, and what they completely skip over." Mouseflow offers playbacks of the visitor's session, and "page analysis from the visitor's perspective."

As publishers look to improve their readers' experience on the web, a service such as MouseTrace offers a definite advantage for Internet editions of newspapers in helping them assess what users are interested in. However, even though there now exist so many new tools and gadgets to aid the media, editors have to remember that solid content remains the core of good journalism.

MouseTrace, clicktale and mouseflow are available both for free trials and for a range of prices, depending on what features are required.

Source: mousetrace.com, clicktale.com, mouseflow.com