Wouldn’t it be useful if you knew the reason why your website visitors engage with a particular call to action and not the other?
Or maybe you’d also find it helpful if you could evaluate the way they behave so you can more effectively identify design faults or other problems?
Well, seeing information in a new light is always beneficial, and data visualization has been around for decades.
So today, we’ll be introducing you to the power of heatmaps and how they can bring your website to the next level.
In essence, a heatmap is a tool for data visualization that uses color to show you which parts of your website are receiving the most interest and engagement. These maps assist you in visually tracking and understanding how people interact with your site, allowing you to see:
You’ll find that these maps make use of a cool to warm color range. The colder end of the range indicates less activity, while the warmer end shows a lot of activity.
And, because heatmaps provide an excellent visualization of how people engage and interact on your website, you can take advantage of this by putting the most important content on your page in locations where your web visitors are the most.
So, by now it should be clear that heatmaps are a wonderful tool for evaluating how users browse (or fail to browse) your pages. By understanding and seeing how people think and behave, you’ll be several steps closer to your goals!
Now that you know what heatmaps are, let’s take a look at the three major types.
Scroll maps display how far down users have traveled on a webpage, and the areas where they stopped and engaged in the most.
These types of heatmaps are crucial for instances where you’d like to determine how consumers engage on long-form sites or lengthier landing pages. And, by finding out where most people spend time on your website, you can strategically place your CTAs there to get those extra conversions.
The greatest approach to figuring out how visitors move around and interact with your website is through mouse tracking heatmaps. Basically, it shows you how people navigate your website with their mouse cursors. It displays which designs, messages, and contents received the most hovers.
Although this heatmap type gets used a lot, it’s pretty difficult to assume how people behave through mouse movements alone since some people park their mouse in one area even when they glance elsewhere.
Luckily, you can still take advantage of this by identifying which parts visitors stick around most often and then add key details, important CTA, necessary adverts, and more in those sections.
The easiest approach to understanding how people interact with your web page is through the use of click heatmaps. This heatmap will show you the different items on your website that people click on—even non-interactive elements! You’ll be able to see how many clicks an element got and which ones are more popular than others.
So, for those running eCommerce stores, this heatmap is usually the ideal one to use. It’ll help you understand which products piqued people’s interest and which one’s didn’t.
So, now that you understand what heatmaps are, you’re probably itching to know how to create one for your website. Fortunately, you’ll find that there’s a plethora of tools that can help you, and a lot of them are super easy to use.
For our example, we’ll be using Zyro’s heatmap tool. Although this website builder’s tool is very simple and straightforward, it already shows a lot about the information you need for a heatmap.
Now, let’s get started.
That’s it! Thanks to Zyro’s easy-to-use tool, you were able to easily create a heatmap for your website.
By the way, Zyro is owned by one of the best web hosts on the market, Hostinger. If you’re looking to get set up on a fast and speedy web host, Hostinger is one of our top picks to look into.
Though heatmaps are capable of offering insightful data, some case studies reveal just how heatmaps can be deceiving or misused. So, before you interpret one, there are a few drawbacks you should remember. Let’s quickly tackle some of them below:
With that said, heatmaps are super easy to understand. But, if you try to analyze one without understanding its limitations, it won’t be as useful and might bring you more harm than good.
Building a strategy that encourages people to hang around, read a blog, and eventually convert, usually involves understanding how people engage with the content, structure, and on-page components of your site.
Fortunately, heatmaps are a great place to start. It’ll help you spot general issues that cause inconvenience as well as fresh ways to increase traffic and conversions. Giving people what they want, such as more website accessibility, more engaging content, and overall just a better customer experience, will give you the boost that you’ve been looking for.
So, as you start your journey of improving your website, a heatmap along with other analytics tools will give you an upper hand over your competitors.
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