What is a heat map and how does it work?
The heat map is a graphical instrument that exhibits the relationship between information and time. The patterns that appear on its chart, which represents the frequency of visitors’ clicks on a certain area of the site, provide valuable insights into how customers interact with your company’s web interface. These analytical tools help analyse users’ behaviour to improve their overall customer experience.
Using heat maps is one of the best ways to get feedback on your website. It will give you a better understanding of how users interact with it. The results are easy to understand and show what visitors like, dislike or find confusing about it. You can use this information for site development and optimization purposes, as they allow you to make quick decisions as well as adjustments that can increase your conversion rate.
The information found in the heat maps created from clickstream data is extremely valuable for you to understand how users react to different design options. This allows you to find some time to focus on eye-catching elements as well as those which require more attention and improvement. It will help analyse the overall user experience and provide insight into what pages users are exiting or entering on the site.
How to use a heat map to optimise your site’s UX
Use heat maps to measure user scroll distance
Heat maps help to find averages for where users typically scroll on mobile and desktop. Use these data points as guides to placing important elements, like CTAs (calls to action), in places they are likely to be seen by the majority of your audience.
This is important because not every visitor to your website will scroll all the way down a page before viewing it. Visitors may also access your site from different devices and browsers, so they may not see all information on the same part of the screen.
Find CTAs with the most as well as least amount of clicks
The click maps show which CTAs are driving the most clicks, and which are getting ignored by users. Calls to action are prompts for user interaction, ranging from links or buttons that can be designed to attract clicks. You may find elements in an area that is not attracting as many clicks or test a new CTA in a high-traffic area.
Find erroneous clicks
Heat maps are typically used to see how people interact with elements on your website. Sometimes users will click on parts of the site that they believe to be links but aren’t. So, by examining the clicks, you can tell which parts of the page are causing confusion and make alterations accordingly.
Use heat maps to display your best-performing designs
Heat maps can help you analyze how well your web design is performing and helping you with conversion rate and other desired events. This is because they’re graphical representations of where visitors click on your site. Thus, heat maps are an easy way to convey your work for use with non-designers.
The key to success with heat maps
When using a heat map, the key to success is to have clear goals for its implementation and application on your site. Unless it’s properly built from the beginning with proper consideration given to how it will be used, it will produce little more than random data that won’t help you make adjustments to your design or layout. The goal of using a heat map in this fashion is to make site changes based on data from the past.
