Having an online presence is crucial for businesses of all sizes to achieve sustainable growth. However, having a website is not enough to ensure the success of your online efforts. It’s also crucial to understand how your visitors interact with your website and what they are looking for. This is where heatmaps and click maps come into play. Let’s first understand what is a heatmap and click map.
What is a heatmap and click map
Heat maps and click maps are powerful tools that provide insights into your website’s user behaviour using tracking code. They provide graphical representation of data about how visitors interact with your website by tracking different data points like their clicks, taps, and scrolls. Heatmaps provide a bar graph that’s a colour-coded graphical representation of where visitors are clicking the most on your website, while click maps provide detailed information on individual clicks. Additionally, marketers should never ignore using heatmaps for mobile devices.
By using heat maps, you can gain visual context and valuable insights into how visitors navigate your website, which pages they find most engaging, and which elements users clicked that are driving conversions. This data analysis can help UX designers and marketers to optimise the website’s design, content marketing strategy, and functionality to improve user experience and drive business growth.
Heatmap data is particularly useful for identifying areas of your website that may be causing confusion or frustration for visitors. For example, if you notice that visitors click on non-clickable elements, this may indicate that the design of your website needs to be adjusted to make clickable elements more prominent. It is also a great help in deciding color schemes, creating color coded sections and understanding how people navigate your site. the more data points you can connect to a certain user behavior, the better conversion rate you will see.
How scroll maps are different from heat map and click map?
A scroll map tells how far down the visitors scrolled and how long they stay on each section. This differs from heatmaps and click maps, which focus on the most clicked elements and where they spend the most time on a page, respectively.
Why heat maps and click maps are essential
Visual representation of user behaviour
Do you know that the global market for data visualisation is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 10.2% to $19.20B by 2027? Therefore, heat maps are crucial tools for any business that wants to optimise its website using data visualization. One of the primary benefits of these tools is that they provide quantitative and qualitative data about user interactions. They identify user behavior through user clicks, taps, and user scrolling, and then present the data in a graphical format.
By analysing heat maps, digital marketer can visualize complex data patterns in a particular page and gain a better understanding of how users behave with their website. Similar to Google Analytics and other analytics tools, this can help to inform optimisation efforts, as businesses can identify areas of interest and make changes accordingly. For example, if a simple heat map shows that users click on a particular image or button repeatedly, a business can optimise that element to encourage even more clicks.
Identify hotspots and the most important content
One of the key benefits of heat maps is that they can identify hotspots, which are areas of the page that receive the most user attention. This statistical analysis can be used to optimise key areas of the page, such as the parent elements, headline, call-to-action, form, etc.
The areas with the highest intensity of user attention are indicated by the larger values or hottest colours, such as red or orange; while the other areas are given smaller values. These hotspots can be used to make changes to the same page that will drive greater engagement and conversions.
Experiment with the background color of your CTA button
For example, if a website heatmap shows that the headline is a hotspot page element, a business may want to test different variations of the headline to see how the users engage with that. By optimising the headline, the business can increase the likelihood of visitors staying on the page and taking the desired action, whether it’s making a purchase or filling out a form.
Similarly, if a heat map shows that the call-to-action area is a hotspot, a business may want to experiment with different variations of the call-to-action to see which one drives the most clicks. This can include changes to the wording, colour, placement, or size of the button.
In addition, heat maps can help businesses optimise form design by identifying areas of the form that receive the most user attention. By optimising the form design, businesses can reduce form abandonment rates and increase the number of form completions.
Track user journeys
These are one of the most efficient eye-tracking tools that can not only identify patterns and population density but also track visitor behaviour and user journeys, showing you the path users take through your website. This helps you to identify areas where users may be dropping off or encountering obstacles, allowing you to optimise the user experience.
For example, a click map may show that users are clicking on a particular image or link that leads them to a dead-end page or a page with poor content. This information can enhance the user experience by either removing the dead-end page or improving the content on the poor page.
In addition, you can identify areas where users may be encountering obstacles, such as confusing navigation, broken links, or slow page load times on a certain page. By identifying and addressing these obstacles, businesses can decrease the number of frustrated users and reduce bounce rates.
Optimise design for better user experience
A heat map can help marketers optimise the design of their website. This includes the placement of elements, such as the navigation menu, images, and text, to ensure a seamless user experience.
This information can be used to optimise the design of the page by placing important elements in areas that receive the most attention. For example, a heat map may show that users are spending more time on a particular section of the page, such as the headline or call-to-action button. This information can be used to optimise the design by placing important information in those areas.
Keep the customer in focus when designing websites
Moreover, according to a SuperOffice survey, they asked 1920 business professionals about their top business priorities for the next 5 years. The answer of 45.9% of respondents was “Customer experience.” Therefore, incorporating heat mapping and click mapping into an optimisation strategy is essential to get a competitive edge.
Besides that, click maps can also help businesses optimise the design of their website or landing page by showing where users are clicking on the page. This information can be used to optimise the placement of elements, such as images or links, to ensure a seamless user experience. For example, it may show that users are clicking on an image that is not linked to anything, indicating that the image should be linked to a relevant page.
Improve user engagement
By analysing heat maps, you can gain insights into what users find engaging and interesting. This information can inform a business’s content and design strategy, resulting in a more engaging experience for users.
In addition to improving user engagement, heat maps can also help businesses understand why users are engaging with certain elements on a web page. For example, a heatmap may show that users are spending more time on a product image than on other elements on the page. This could indicate that the product image is particularly engaging, but it could also indicate that users are having difficulty understanding the product description or other information on the page. By analysing user behaviour, businesses can identify these issues and make improvements to the page’s content or design to improve customer experience.
By using heat maps, digital marketers can create a more enjoyable and meaningful experience for their users. This can lead to increased customer loyalty, higher conversion rates, and improved brand perception. Furthermore, by regularly analysing these maps, businesses can stay up-to-date on changing user behaviour and preferences, allowing them to make data-driven decisions.
Reduce bounce rates
Bounce rates refer to the percentage of visitors who leave a website after visiting only one page. High bounce rates can indicate that a website’s design or content is not meeting users’ needs or expectations. By using heat maps and click maps to analyse user behaviour, businesses can identify areas of their website that are causing high bounce rates and take steps to optimise those areas.
Heat maps and click maps can help data analysts identify areas of a web page that are receiving little to no engagement. For example, a heat map may show that users are not engaging with a particular section of the page, such as a sidebar or footer. By analysing this data, you can optimise these sections to improve engagement and reduce bounce rates. This could include removing or repositioning weird stuff people click on or adding more engaging content to these areas.
A high bounce rate impacts your organic postioning
Moreover, it can also be used to reduce bounce rates by identifying areas of the page where users are clicking but not converting. For example, a click map may show that users are clicking on a particular link or button but are not following through with a purchase or other desired action. This could indicate that the link or button is misleading or not functioning correctly.
Lastly, by using heat maps and click maps to reduce bounce rates, marketers can improve their website’s overall performance and achieve better business outcomes. A website with a low bounce rate is more likely to attract and retain customers, leading to increased revenue and higher conversion rates.
Along with heat maps and click maps, digital analysts should also integrate AI marketing into their overall digital marketing strategy. Here’s our ultimate guide to the top benefits of AI marketing.
A/B testing should not be underestimated
A/B testing is an essential part of any optimisation strategy, and heat maps and click maps can provide actionable insights to inform these tests. By analysing heat and click maps, marketers can identify areas of the page that are underperforming and need improvement.
Heat maps and clickmaps can also help in identifying user behaviour patterns that can inform A/B testing. For example, you may note that the audience is clicking on a picture that’s not clickable. This may indicate that users expect the image to lead to a specific page or action, and you can create a new version of the image that links to that page or action.
Moreover, you may want to test the impact of a new headline on the conversion rate. By using heat and click maps, you can track the performance of the new headline and compare it to the performance of the original headline. This allows for determining whether the new headline is having a positive impact on conversion rates.
Free and premium tools for heat maps and click maps
There are several free tools available for heat maps and clickmaps that you can use to improve your website’s user experience and optimise your conversion rates. Below are a few top free options:
Hotjar
Hotjar is a popular all-in-one analytics tool that includes heat maps, click maps and more. The free version includes up to 35 daily sessions and allows you to create unlimited heat maps and recordings.
Nelio
Nelio is another top WordPress plugin that provides various optimisation and marketing tools for WordPress websites. It offers a suite of features like heat maps, content analysis, A/B testing, etc. that help website owners and marketers to improve their website’s performance, engagement, and conversion rates
ClickHeat
ClickHeat is a free open-source heatmap tool that allows you to see where users are clicking on your website. It’s easy to install and provides valuable insights into user behaviour.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is another popular heat map tool that offers a free 30-day trial. The tool provides a click map, scroll map, and heat map, allowing you to see how users interact with your website.
Lucky Orange
Lucky Orange offers a free plan that has a free 7-day trial and includes up to 500 page views per month. The tool also includes real-time analytics, chat, and conversion tracking.
Mouseflow
Mouseflow offers a free plan that includes up to 500 recordings per month. The tool provides heat maps, session replay, and form analytics, allowing you to see how users interact with your website.
Inspectlet
Inspectlet offers a free plan that includes up to 2500 recorded sessions. The tool also provides session replay, form analytics, and conversion tracking.
These free tools can provide valuable insights into user behaviour and help you optimise your website for better engagement and conversion rates. While some of the features may be limited in the free versions, they can still offer valuable insights to improve your website’s user experience.
Learn how growth marketing along with these tools can help businesses reach new heights. Click here to get a growth marketing guide for sales companies.
BONUS: What are mouse-tracking heat maps and eye-tracking heat maps?
Mouse-tracking heat maps are analytics tools tool that provide quantitative data about all the elements where users move their mouse cursor on a webpage. These heat maps are created by collecting data values on the movements of the mouse pointer as users navigate through a webpage, and then aggregating and visualising that data in the form of a heat map.
An eye-tracking heat map is a tool that collects and presents information on the web page sections and elements that attract or lose the most attention. It records the number of times visitors focus on particular elements and the duration of their fixation, which is then plotted as a heatmap to visualise the data.
Heat maps and click maps are serious business
The heat maps and click maps help marketers visualise density. In the case of website analysis and design, it helps visualise how far audiences scroll on the website, where they click and what they’re looking for. This is vital information for marketers to gauge how to lay out the website, where to place images and CTAs and how to create it as user-friendly as possible.
So, it’s high time for marketing managers to get ready with the landing page or website heatmaps and begin tracking your progress to a successful establishment.
