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I have a website with pages that scroll very far with lots of images on them. Each user that logs in sees a different set of images.

I'd like to record how long the users stay on each portion of the page so I can see which images they're most interested in. For instance, "image 1 stayed visible for 10 seconds", "image 2 stayed visible for 15 seconds", then send these messages back to the server.

What's a good way to do this? Ideally the solution would be able to tell if the image is actually visible, not on a tab that's currently not in the foreground, etc.

Updated: would be great if this includes either a technique that could be used (a little javascript?) or a free tool.

OneSolitaryNoob
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If the page layout is static (images in the same order each time), have you considered a service like Crazy Egg? It has scroll mapping as well as mouse and click heatmapping if you're interested in users interacting with the images.

I don't think there's a way to detect whether the page is in a foreground tab or not, although correlating the scroll map with mouse events would give some idea whether the users were active or not.

Jon Armstrong
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  • None that I have any personal experience with. Sessioncam (http://www.sessioncam.com/) appears to have similar features and a limited free plan. There is also this (somewhat dated) article on alternatives to Crazy Egg: http://www.paulolyslager.com/heatmap-hot-or-not/ - most of which seem to be focused on click and mouse movement tracking. Honestly, though, I found CE to be worth the $9 per month. It's easy to set up and just works. I used it to test for a couple of months and then cancelled when I had gotten enough data. – Jon Armstrong Jul 27 '13 at 16:26
  • these are good leads. crazyegg is a little more and probably won't work for pages that are different for each user. – OneSolitaryNoob Jul 28 '13 at 06:51