The main goals of website optimization are to make your website more attractive to visitors, improve user experience, and increase conversion rates. But when it comes to optimization, the main problem is knowing where to start. This problem leads to more, such as knowing what to change and what to keep the same.
This line of thinking can lead us further down the spiral of inaction and confusion. This is where heatmaps come in as a heroic savior. Let’s look at what heatmaps are, how they can speed up website optimization, and what problems you can expect during a heatmap-driven optimization process.
What are heatmaps?
You’ve probably heard about heatmaps before, and you know that they have something to do with website optimization. In fact, heatmaps are used to show how website visitors interact with each web page on your website. And, while we’re at it, heatmaps are the most effective method to help you with that.
If you use heatmap software, you can see in detail where your visitors' clicks are. You can also identify the web pages and elements on those pages that are not receiving clicks.
Heatmaps can also help you see what visitors architects email lists uk are looking at on your website. This is because heatmap software tracks the movements of your visitors’ mouse. It’s like having a GPS tracker attached to each visitor’s mouse, constantly recording their behavior.
By using colors, heatmap software generates a visual report that represents the activity of website visitors. These reports are very easy to read. The most commonly used colors are red, orange, green, and blue. Reds and oranges are used to mark areas that users interact with frequently, while greens and blues are used to highlight areas or elements with the least potential for interaction.
It's no coincidence that website optimization experts refer to heatmaps as a form of visual storytelling.
How do heatmaps work?
Heatmapping is not a new method in data processing and representation. It is an old statistical analysis technique that dates back to the 19th century. They are well suited for representing complex data because heatmaps are easy to read and understand, unlike graphs and tables.
The first step in creating a visual representation of analytical data is to create maps. The web pages you want to capture are divided into elements that can be interacted with. Elements are grouped by their tags and larger elements that contain them, called parent elements.
Once mapping is complete, the heatmap software begins tracking and recording the activity of your website visitors. Each visitor’s activity is flagged and stored in the database. This software ensures that it only tracks the activity of unique visitors, so you get the most accurate data.
Activity is recorded in real time, and reports are generated in the same way. Every time you view the report, you’ll be able to see the most recent data, which makes heatmaps an incredibly valuable tool for tracking the effectiveness of website changes and tweaks.
Types of heatmaps
In addition to the classic heatmaps, they only show visitor activity in terms of clicks and mouse movements. There are other heatmaps available.
Scroll Map – Have you ever wondered whether you should use shorter or longer content? Where should you place your call to action (CTA)? Well, a scroll map can help you with that. Scroll map reports show you the proportion of scrolling done by visitors before they decide to leave your web page or website.
Scroll maps can help you identify the perfect length of content or the space reserved for your CTA. Scroll map reports also include colors. A sudden change in color indicates that the visitor has reached a logical end—a section of the site where they no longer see a logical reason to continue scrolling.
Confetti Map (Click) – The confetti map is an advanced version of the regular heat map. The confetti map report is generated in high resolution. This is because it contains individual clicks from website visitors. These clicks are represented by colored dots.
With a confetti map, you can identify non-clickable elements that users still click on. These elements are the ones that frustrate visitors, causing them to leave your site. With this data, you can improve your site navigation and give users what they want.
Overlay Map: In the Overlay Map report, you can see click percentages per element on your website. The Overlay Map shows how each element is performing individually. These reports provide quick insights. They are very useful if you want to quickly check how different elements are performing after making subtle changes to your website.
Hover Maps – Hover maps are a representation of mouse movement data. They highlight the areas of a web page that a visitor’s mouse has hovered over. Hover maps will help you see how visitors read your web pages.
Attention Maps – If you want to see which elements on your page are the most engaging to your visitors and therefore get the most attention, attention map reports can help you. The metrics that go into the equation are: Most viewed web page elements, distance traveled by users, and time spent on the page. If you want to optimize your website with your visitors in mind, attention maps are designed to be your perfect guide.
Benefits of Using Heatmaps
Every website generates traffic, and every element of your website contributes to generating traffic. If you want to see which elements are working as expected and identify those that are underperforming, heatmaps are your best friend.
By improving the performance of individual elements, you improve the performance of your site as a whole – driving more traffic, improving conversion rates, and increasing the time users spend on your site.
Here are the main benefits of using heatmaps:
Website Usability Testing – With heatmaps, you can see which functions of your website visitors use the most and which ones are obsolete. If you improve the functionality of frequently used elements on your website, you will automatically increase the usability of your website and improve the overall user experience.
Elements that don’t grab your visitors’ attention can be removed to clean up your site’s layout and improve site loading speed, or revised and made more appealing. For example, if you identify an element with no functionality that is being clicked on, consider adding some functionality to it and remove elements that don’t generate attention.
Ad placement and optimization – Attention maps are great for identifying the most engaging elements of your website. If you want to display ads on your site, place them in the sections of your layout that catch your visitors’ attention.
This is extremely important if you are in the affiliate marketing business. By using attention maps, you can increase your conversion rates and return on investment (ROI). On the other hand, if you notice that your ads are exactly where they need to be but are still not getting attention, you should optimize them. Consider changing the image and text of your ad to fit the theme of your website.
Link Placement – Want to get more clicks on the links you’ve placed in your blog post? You won’t get any if they’re beyond their logical purpose on your web pages and blog posts. Use scroll and hover maps to see if visitors are even considering clicking on the links. Relocate them and change the anchor text to improve link performance.
CTA Placement – CTA placement is one of the most overlooked practices in website optimization. However, once you’ve dutifully followed best practices, review your heatmaps to see what’s happening with your website visitors and your CTA. You may still need to make small adjustments to meet your audience’s expectations.
You can use confetti (click) and overlay maps to identify distracting clicks. You need to ensure that visitors are focused on a clear CTA. By removing distracting elements from the image, you will increase the performance of your CTA.
If you haven’t used a CTA before, you can find the sweet spot by reviewing attention maps. Identify the element that attracts the most attention and place your CTA text and button directly below or above it.