Mouseflow Renewal Evaluation 2022

https://victoriauniversity.atlassian.net/browse/DE-9874

 

 

The Mouseflow admin interface is available via

https://us.mouseflow.com/websites/4a7ff1cf-f5b8-4dd8-95da-13bfe4f4e580

Account details via

https://us.mouseflow.com/account/billing

With login credentials online-services@vuw.ac.nz, password available from Developers upon request.

 

What does Mouseflow currently track

Currently set up to track three sites: http://www.wgtn.ac.nz, intranet.wgtn.ac.nz and http://go.wgtn.ac.nz (although go.wgtn shows no recording available)

 Mouseflow will track 75% of views, set to ensure we don’t go over our 150,000 per month limit. This is easily tailorable if we need to reduce the sessions we track per month. We can also limit Mouseflow to only fire on specific pages or areas of the site to further limit the usage.

Mouseflow is also currently not tracking any users with the IP address 130.195.* - I believe this is removing all on-campus users, but would have to double check whether it is filtering out only staff or all users on campus.

Where are Mouseflow results being used

Mouseflow was primarily being used by Shirley Wang and Bernadette McNaught, both of who have since left the Universe. As such it is difficult to gauge exactly how it was in use and how it will be missed moving forward. Mike has been in contact with Shirley who responded

If the business users asked, I shared the Mouseflow shareable link to them.

I think International team and marketing team are the primary users, usually asked for this.

Can't remember other specific users. If they asked, I usually put a shareable link on their dashboard.

 

Unfortunately I don’t have access to the dashboards so cannot confirm where if they contain mouseflow content.

I am not sure how we can list what shareable links have been created, but did manage to find one ‘funnel’ available for the Rethink USA campaign: https://us.mouseflow.com/websites/4a7ff1cf-f5b8-4dd8-95da-13bfe4f4e580/funnels/I-U6qoV8VEmZ2jQ5OI_ssQ?fromdate=2022-06-12&todate=2022-12-12

The heatmaps page also shows the ‘shared’ icon for a number of sites, which could give us another avenue to find who is using the reports: https://us.mouseflow.com/websites/4a7ff1cf-f5b8-4dd8-95da-13bfe4f4e580/click-heatmaps?fromdate=2022-06-12&todate=2022-12-12

 

There are a few tickets that mention mouseflow. For example https://victoriauniversity.atlassian.net/browse/DE-4012

But the linked documents (google dashboard and Word) don’t make it clear where this information is coming from.

The majority of tickets for the last year seem to be around implementing or bugfixing the mouseflow code.

https://victoriauniversity.atlassian.net/issues/?jql=text ~ "mouseflow" AND updatedDate >%3D 2020-01-01 ORDER BY updated DESC

 

Jira link for Mouseflow tickets assigned to Shirley (5d6dc0e3b605d80dc0149c2a) or Bernadette (557058:1f5edcf7-5689-4651-835b-4fc3728f942f)
https://victoriauniversity.atlassian.net/issues/?jql=text ~ "mouseflow" AND (assignee %3D 5d6dc0e3b605d80dc0149c2a OR assignee %3D 557058%3A1f5edcf7-5689-4651-835b-4fc3728f942f) ORDER BY updated DESC

 

Moving ahead we should see if there is someone from the International or Marketing team who would be good to contact to understand where/if they are using Mouseflow reports.

What is the current cost

All currency here is listed in US dollars.

 

More information about each of the plans can be found here: https://mouseflow.com/pricing/#features

 

We are currently on the Pro plan, paying $3588 per annum. (equiv. of $299 per month)

This will increase to the new cost of $4788 per annum (equiv. of $399 per month) if we make no changes to our subscription. Please note, the change will have to be made before the billing date of 14 Dec 2022. Any changes made before then will be applied to the next billing cycle.

 

It is worth noting the confluence page https://victoriauniversity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/WT/pages/176914442 previously stated we were on a plan of $99 per year. I believe this is in reference to the plan we were on in 2017, which was $99 per month. The history of payments can be seen in the following expandable section:

Invoices

Invoice #

Date

Amount

Status

262869

15 Dec 2021

$3588.00

Completed

224283

14 Dec 2020

$3588.00

Completed

191718

12 Dec 2019

$3588.00

Completed

155385

27 Nov 2018

$3588.00

Completed

121069

26 Nov 2017

$3588.00

Completed

120700

22 Nov 2017

$99.00

Completed

120428

20 Nov 2017

$99.00

Completed

117819

22 Oct 2017

$99.00

Completed

117028

13 Oct 2017

$99.00

Completed

115154

22 Sep 2017

$99.00

Completed

112548

22 Aug 2017

$99.00

Completed

112522

22 Aug 2017

$99.00

Completed

109972

22 Jul 2017

$99.00

Completed

109592

17 Jul 2017

$99.00

Completed

107431

22 Jun 2017

$99.00

Completed

104940

22 May 2017

$99.00

Completed

104909

21 May 2017

$99.00

Completed

102432

22 Apr 2017

$99.00

Completed

99934

22 Mar 2017

$99.00

Completed

97490

22 Feb 2017

$99.00

Completed

95136

22 Jan 2017

$99.00

Completed

92875

22 Dec 2016

$99.00

Completed

90622

23 Nov 2016

$399.00

Completed

87736

15 Oct 2016

$399.00

Completed

85493

15 Sep 2016

$399.00

Completed

83148

15 Aug 2016

$399.00

Completed

81310

21 Jul 2016

$79.00

Completed

78974

21 Jun 2016

$79.00

Completed

76558

21 May 2016

$79.00

Completed

74080

21 Apr 2016

$79.00

Completed

71412

21 Mar 2016

$79.00

Completed

68744

21 Feb 2016

$79.00

Completed

66474

21 Jan 2016

$79.00

Completed

64584

21 Dec 2015

$79.00

Completed

62723

21 Nov 2015

$79.00

Completed

60923

21 Oct 2015

$79.00

Completed

59196

21 Sep 2015

$79.00

Completed

What are our options

 

I would advise retaining the Mouseflow services in at least the ‘Growth’ ($109 per month) category. The primary reason for this is being able to do a before/after comparison of the site when the new design is in place. However, if there is no need for this, we could feel comfortable cancelling or halting the Mouseflow service until the need arises for it’s usage in future. However, if we are to cancel the service now I believe the previous 12 months records will be lost and we will have no historic data to compare with.

The Pro plan (what we’re on currently) allows for 150,000 recordings per month. We appear to reach just over 140,000 recordings in a month, while tracking 75% of all visits to the entire site. It also retains 12 months of historical data.

The Business plan provides 50,000 recording per month with 12 months of historical data, same as the Pro plan. The Growth plan provides 15,000 recordings per month with 6 months of historical data. With more restrictive placement of mouseflow over specific areas of the site, and reducing the recordings to 50% of the site this should not be a huge issue. The more recordings are nice, but not a necessity. We can also buy extra month of credits o any plan by going to ‘Billing>Refill now’. (Ignore the ‘Get Credits’ button in the sidebar. This just goes to the ‘Refer a friend’ page, and links to the sales team to sell you a better plan).

I would advise one of the following options:

  1. Reduce to the Business plan on a monthly billing ($259 per month, $3108 per annum unless we decide to cancel earlier), and add filters so only certain pages/recordings are tracked. This will allow us to retain all previous recorded sessions/information (up to 12 months), and can be useful for looking at comparisons with the upcoming design change. Once the new design is in place (and has a month or so of user data) Mouseflow can be re-evaluated to determine its’ usefulness, hopefully once the position of data analyst has been brought on board. This should save us approximately $140 per month, and if the service is only retained for another couple of months we do not end up paying for the rest of the year.

  2. Reduce to the Growth plan on yearly billing ($129 per month, $1308 per annum). If we are unable to move to monthly billing, the Growth plan seems the best compromise of cost ($1308 per annum) while still retaining 6 months of previously recorded sessions. This will give us the ability to utilise mouseflow for the upcoming design change, while still giving us a few months of recordings with which to compare. Moving to this plan should save us $290 per month/$3480 per annum, but will not allow us to cancel the service early if we no longer require it.

 

Hotjar alternative

I have not had the chance to do a comparison between Horjar or Mouseflow at this point. But felt it worthwhile to add to the conversation earlier this morning that Mouseflow is able to create feedback popups similar to Hotjar. More information on it can be found here:
https://help.mouseflow.com/en/articles/4291376-create-a-feedback-campaign