Tracking Viewing Habits of Website Visitors

Question

Hello everyone! First time using this service for a question. I hope I am not asking something that has already been answered. I attempted to find an answer to my question with the search engine but i was unable to.

My question is as follows:

Using php, javascript, or anything actually, is it possible for me to track how my users are viewing the pages on my blog/website? Specifically, I want to track the time the user's browser spends reading specific sections of my content on the same page.

For example, it would answer questions such as: How much time did someone spend reading the introduction to my article vs the conclusion? (located on the same page)

Basically, tracking the "eyes" of a web visitor by looking at where the browser is currently scrolled down the page too.

I'm sorry if i'm a bit noob! Thanks for any help with my problem you can provide to me! ^_^

Answer 1

It would technically be possible by looking at the scroll position (which you can get with javascript) over time, but I think you find the data is extremely unreliable and doesn't actually correspond very well with what people are actually doing.

For example, when I open a new tab, it'll usually sit there in the new tab for several minutes until I start actually reading it. Then I might get half-way down and go and grab a cup of coffee. Then I finally get all the way to the bottom and close the window. That doesn't mean I spent more time reading the top & middle than I did reading the bottom, but that's what you would infer simply looking at the scroll position.

You might be able to get better information by looking at other events as well as just reading scroll position. For example, if you only record the scroll position in the 30 seconds before and after you detect a mousemove event, then you can be pretty sure that they were actually "on" your page during that interval. But it's never going to be a perfect statistic.