I have been thinking lately. (Uh oh, I know!) I can create a site that can give a webmaster/tech support the ability to view people on their website live. Using AJAX, it will be a constantly updated list of where people are currently at, where they have been, and information that can be logged about that user including browser, resolution and other pertinant information. As well, the webmaster could pass additional information to the script, lets say a users account number or name that is specific to that person browsing their site. If a person is having trouble with a section of their site, a "click here for help" button can be clicked and will open up a chat window that will bring a representative to that specific page and can chat their. Also with the chat, have the ability to chat with other people that are currently on that page. Don't know, just throwing around some random thoughts. What do you guys/gals think?
i would love to have that add this to it : when someone submits a quote request, i should tell me the source/referrer of that visitor
sounds good - but it would depend on pricing etc as to whether id personally use it. any ideas? as a service on your own server, or as a script?
It would definately be a service. Remotely hosted. I would say pricing would depend upon how many visits the sites have, based on like an impression basis you know. As it is, the more visitors a site has, the more bandwidth of mine they will eat up. Nothing extreme though. It would probably be something like $9.95 per 100,000 impressions / month If I do create this, it would definately be something "fun" to watch, dont you think? Knowing exactly where everyone is on your site at every moment. Think of e-commerce sites. People are waiting on the checkout page and are not sure about something. They click on the "help me button" and a customer service rep could be right their helping them with their problem, able to see the same thing they are seeing. The only descrepancy would be that of only being able to see what would be unique to the user, not what hte user has (like items in a cart), since it is cookie based. HOWEVER, you could pass the items in the cart through the dynamic data part, yes no?
One of the dynamic features that I would think about doing is like I stated earlier to include the ability to pass your own information through the script. The script would then display the data you passed to it where a webmaster could then see it. For instance, you could pass an account username, or the person's name. That way when you are chatting with the person, you already have that information readily available without them having to repeat it.
umm it would be better if we can host it ourself, not comfortable with someone else know everything abt our sites.
No worries, the data will of course be encrypted. The only one who would have access to any of this information is whoever you grant access too, and maybe myself if I have to fix a potential problem. The information won't be publicly available, if that is what you are thinking. It is no different then google analytics, adspeed.com, statcounter.com etc who track information about your visitors. With the dynamic data part, I would not recomend things like credit card number, or a password of course. It is simply data that doesn't really matter whether it is readily available on the net (same type of security any other major company would deal with). This would be just as secure as any other piece of software out their. Think along the lines of remotely hosted analytics or advertising programs. Same concept with the data tracking HOWEVER, it would be much better bandwidth wise for me, yes no ? Don't know, just throwing around ideas. Thanks for the help with brainstorming though.
Then why should people pay you if they can get it for free? Whats your unique angle if you arent going to sell it as a script that they can run themselves?
The idea is the live preview of what is going on. You will physically on your screen watch as people move around your website, or whether they sit on a page and never return. It isn't an analytics per say. It's more of just seeing where/what everyone is doing.