- September 2024 (1)
- August 2024 (2)
- July 2024 (2)
- May 2024 (2)
- April 2024 (2)
- February 2024 (2)
- April 2023 (1)
- March 2023 (2)
- September 2022 (1)
- February 2022 (1)
- November 2021 (1)
- March 2021 (1)
- February 2021 (2)
- August 2019 (1)
- November 2018 (1)
- May 2017 (1)
- December 2016 (1)
- April 2016 (1)
- August 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (1)
- August 2014 (1)
- March 2014 (1)
- December 2013 (1)
- October 2013 (3)
- September 2013 (4)
- August 2013 (2)
- July 2013 (1)
- June 2013 (1)
- February 2013 (1)
- October 2012 (1)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (1)
- April 2012 (1)
- February 2012 (1)
- October 2011 (1)
- June 2011 (1)
- May 2011 (1)
- April 2011 (1)
- March 2011 (1)
- February 2011 (1)
- January 2011 (1)
- December 2010 (3)
- November 2010 (1)
- October 2010 (1)
- September 2010 (1)
- August 2010 (1)
- July 2010 (1)
- May 2010 (3)
- April 2010 (1)
- March 2010 (2)
- February 2010 (3)
- January 2010 (4)
- December 2009 (2)
- November 2009 (5)
- October 2009 (2)
- September 2009 (2)
- August 2009 (3)
- July 2009 (1)
- May 2009 (1)
- April 2009 (1)
- March 2009 (5)
- February 2009 (5)
- January 2009 (5)
- December 2008 (3)
- November 2008 (7)
- October 2008 (4)
- September 2008 (2)
- August 2008 (1)
- July 2008 (1)
- June 2008 (1)
- May 2008 (1)
- April 2008 (1)
- January 2008 (5)
- December 2007 (3)
- March 2007 (3)
- February 2007 (1)
- January 2007 (2)
- December 2006 (4)
- November 2006 (18)
- 3D (5)
- AI (14)
- Admin (3)
- Blogging (5)
- Business of Software (9)
- Copyright (1)
- Dirigible (3)
- Django (1)
- Eee (3)
- Finance (6)
- Funny (11)
- GPU Computing (2)
- Gadgets (8)
- JavaScript (1)
- Linux (13)
- Memes (2)
- Meta (7)
- Music (4)
- NSLU2 offsite backup project (13)
- OLPC XO (2)
- Oddities (4)
- Personal (3)
- Politics (3)
- Programming (61)
- Python (36)
- PythonAnywhere (12)
- Quick links (2)
- Rants (4)
- Raspberry Pi (1)
- Resolver One (22)
- Resolver Systems (18)
- Robotics (8)
- Space (2)
- Talks (3)
- Uncategorized (5)
- VoIP (2)
- Website design (4)
Clicking the tabs from left to right
It looks like visitors to the Resolver Systems website are predisposed to clicking through the tabs at the top of the page, from left to right. Does anyone else see this kind of thing?
The figures I'm using are from Google Analytics, which is based on JavaScript embedded in the page and run in the browser, so I don't think it's caused by bots/crawlers just clicking each of the tabs in turn because they appear in the page source code in that order -- and in addition, if it were a result of automated systems, you'd expect a consistent bias, whereas it's actually quite variable.
Here's the full dataset. Each line below shows a Google Analytics overlay, which tells you for each selected tab what percentage of people clicked on each of the other tabs during July 2009:
It looks like we managed to break tracking of access to our "About us" page for that month, so I put the results for that tab aside and did a bit of simple statistical analysis (in Resolver One, naturally) on the remaining data. The results:
The "from" tab is top to bottom, the "to" tab is left to right -- so, the chance of someone who is currently on the "Buy" tab clicking "Download" is 29%. The average chance of someone clicking on a given tab across all sources, and the standard deviation of those figures, are summarised at the bottom. Each cell is coloured based on how many standard deviations from the average it lies -- if it's more popular than it normally is, it appears red, if it's less popular it's green. The intensity of the red/green is based on how much more/less popular it is.
I think there's a very clear pattern -- the line of red starting at the "Home tab to Buy tab" cell, and going down and to the right to the "Screencasts tab to Get help tab" cell. That indicates that people are significantly more likely to click on a tab when it's the one to the right of the one they're currently looking at.
You can download the analysis spreadsheet from here, and if you don't already
have a copy of Resolver One to run it on (shame on you ;-), you can get an eval
version here.
This is interesting -- is it just our visitors, or have other people seen similar results?