What Is Heat Mapping?
Similarly to AB testing, heatmapping is a type of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO). A heatmap is a graphical representation of data which gives you an instant feel for an area by visually displaying the density. The darker the colour is, the higher the density is. If you are using eye-tracking technology, this is the amount that people looked at that area, and if you have used cursor tracking technology it is the amount that the cursor has stayed in that area and the frequency of clicks. Eye-tracking is expensive and probably too inconvenient for all but the very biggest businesses. It will give you results of up to 100{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} accuracy. Cursor tracking is cheaper and gets you data from your actual visitors in their usual environment. However it is less accurate: around 85 – 90{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6}. It tracks clicks and cursor movement. There is also click tracking, the most basic form of heatmapping. It shows your entire website in blue. Each time a user clicks on a page, that spot shifts from blue to green to yellow to orange to red. Google Analytics also has a click tracker tool, which is not graphical in the same way: Heat maps are a very useful tool for conversion rate optimisation because you can analyse them and find out how to improve your pages. For example, if the heat map shows that people are scanning your text and not properly reading it, maybe you should break it down using bullet points and short sentences. If the colours are darkest over images (and they probably will be) then review your page. Do you have relevant images? Are they near to your call to action buttons? It is very likely that any content you have “beneath the fold”, i.e. the user needs to scroll down to reach it, will be a very light colour on the heat map or blank altogether. Studies have found that only roughly 50{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} of users bother to scroll down when visiting a page. Another study has found that although people do scroll, their attention decreases by as much as 80{06e29518e582b1cc2da09f8f2ea316dadc41c520023bcca83a4deb5e6ad0a3c6} when doing so. You should make sure that important content is above the fold, and that your page doesn't require much scrolling. Several heat mapping services also provide statistics on exactly how long it takes someone to do preset tasks (e.g. finding certain content). As you can see, heatmap testing will help you to find areas for development on your site pages, rather than relying on the opinions of staff, focus groups or yourself. Having a solid, provable hypothesis not only means your data is correct but that bosses and fellow colleagues are likely to believe you when you suggest areas for improvement! Of course, once you've got your hypothesis you should test it using AB testing. You all remember how to do that, right? Thanks for reading What Is Heat Map Testing? Please let us know your opinions on the article, or on Heat Map testing as a whole. What has or hasn’t worked for you? What is Heat Mapping? is the last part of our “What Is …?” series. This series has given the reader a brief introduction to the basics of digital marketing. Check out the rest of the series for information on SEO, PPC, CRO, ORM, SMO, and digital marketing and AB testing Thank you ever so much for reading these posts. Please feel free to contact us below with any questions (or corrections!) and we hope you'll join us next week for our "How To?" series. Error: Contact form not found.