By Lilia Guan

 

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) wants to better understand the behaviours of visitors to its Internet site.

 

DAFF has purchased PicNet's Mouse Eye Tracking software with a 24 month support package and is using the hosted version of the analytics service to better understand the behaviour of visitors to its website and intranet.

 

A media spokesperson at DAFF told Government News the department chose PicNet because to its knowledge no other Australian company offered mouse eye tracking software.

 

"The technology is used to view and report on the areas of a web site that visitors are viewing and clicking," she said.

 

The spokesperson said PicNet's Mouse Eye Tracking software in combination with other web analytic tools enables DAFF to make evidence based decisions for improving website design and navigation.

 

"This gives a better website user experience and reduces the time a user needs to spend at the web site to find the information he or she requires," she said.

 

Marco Tapia, managing director of PicNet said Mouse Eye Tracking gives users a visual representation of what is happening on their page, by viewing a heat map of a session you can see where actual mouse-clicks took place.

 

He told Government News, Mouse Eye Tracking provides information about how each visitor and the majority of visitors together, have been reading each page of a website.

 

"This enables users to understand which areas of their webpage or website are of most interest through the high viewing statistics, rather than the webpage areas users assume are of interest," Mr Tapia said.

 

"The service also reveals the flow of visitor navigation across their entire website, providing insights on how to best design the site to allow visitors to most easily reach their goals."

 

PicNEt's software development manager, Guido Tapia said the web team initially trialled Mouse Eye Tracking's free service to check for accuracy and effectiveness.

 

"DAFF then installed a self-hosted (appliance) version of the solution on its own servers in order to record higher numbers of sessions," he said.

 

"The process installation took an hour over the phone with their Web team."

 

A spokesperson at DAFF said the cost of PicNet's software was "well under that which necessitates an open approach to market."