Using heat map analysis to improve your website performance

As the name suggests, heat maps show you the ‘hot spots’ and cool (or dead) areas on your website when it comes to visitor attention and activity. As the example below demonstrates, the red area is where most visitors and spending time and clicking links, green is where the least activity happens. Colour variations between show warm and cooler areas.

The example above of a Google search shows what is called The Golden Triangle. You can see the triangle clearly and it is a very common pattern on all web pages including search results, business websites and landing pages.

Of course within this general behavioural trend (that people’s attention tends to focus on the top centre and left hand side of the screen) will be the behaviour specific to visitors at your site. The more you can see about where people look and what actions they take, the faster you can improve:

• Website usability
• Conversion rates
• Visitor experience

How heat map technology acts as an objective outside eye

You may have a beautifully designed website, quality content and valuable offers. Loyal customers may give you positive feedback about your site. The beauty of heat map tracking is that it is not based on opinions, it is a factual graphing exercise that literally shows you if your website is getting people to do what you want.

As with every aspect of online marketing strategy, heat map tracking is most useful when you have very clear goals about your website. Do you want people to buy directly from your site? Sign up for your newsletter? Forward information to a friend? Tweet about you or ‘like’ you on Facebook?

Heat map technology has evolved and sophisticated services now offer options including recording visits and playing them back as a movie file, analysing links and monitoring your site in real time.

What actions are visitors taking:

• Are people looking at your ads and calls to action
• If not, where are they looking
• Is this the same for all pages
• Where might calls to action, ads and other crucial information be better placed
• Which specific words are getting clicked on within a headline (eg: Great quality fashion shoes at low prices – is it ‘fashion’, ‘shoes’ or ‘low prices’?)
• Are people clicking on images or graphics, expecting to be taken somewhere or something to happen

Find out where people are coming from:

• What keyword they’ve used to find you and then where they click
• What operating system they’re using
• Window size (are they looking on a desk top, lap top, or mobile?) – this is important if you have designed your website for a certain size you may be excluding a large number of prospects

How do they behave on your site:

• How long it takes people to click on different parts of your site
• Measure mouse moves, clicks, keystrokes, scrolling patterns
• Do you have form fields that are too hard or take too long answer?
• Why do people leave – errors, can’t find what they want, leave shopping cart before finalising purchase

Heat map and behaviour tracking platforms

Google Analytics provides heat map analysis, but you can also try a range of free and paid services such as:

• Crazy Egg
• Click Density
• Click Heat
• Click Tale

Most paid services offer a free trial. The platforms are quick to install, easy to use and won’t jeopardise the performance or speed of your website.

If you’d like help with setting up heat map analysis, or making sense of what you learn and incorporating findings into your digital strategy, iQuantum can assist.