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In the world of conversion optimisation, heat map analysis is very popular. Heat maps demonstrate user behaviour on specific pages and help create better hypotheses for A/B testing. It is a great tool to capture user data and utilise it to create efficient user experiences.
But there are various heat maps, and all the information can become confusing when viewed simultaneously. It becomes essential for marketers to understand how to do proper heat map analysis before buying a tool.
In this blog, I will explain all about heat map analysis and how you can use it to conduct efficient A/B testing.
Before going deeper into what you should look for in a heat map analysis, let’s understand what a heat map is and its types.
What is a Heat Map?
A heat map is a graphical representation of data that uses colour to represent values. Depending on the type of heat map, you will be able to analyse where visitors point their mouse the most and how their cursor moves while using the website or a landing page.
Heat maps show how users interact with your page and which parts of your page are under-optimised and less popular.
By the way, I have covered a separate blog covering “Why you should use Heat map, How Heat map Works, their Types, and how to install Heat map Tools”. You can check out the blog here-
Types of Heat Maps
There are many different heat maps present in the market. But some of them are extremely crucial for successful analysis, and the most popular tools will usually have all of these variations.
The most popular heat maps are:
- Click Map- This is the most popular heat map and will show you where visitors are clicking on a webpage.
- Scroll Map- This map represents how deeply a visitor scrolls on your page. It lets you learn where visitors are abandoning your page.
- Mouse Tracking- Mouse tracking maps or Hover maps are heat maps that show mouse cursor movements on a web page. These maps show popular hot spots on your page and how visitors interact.
Heat Map Analysis and Google Analytics
Before I start, I want to ensure that you understand the difference between analysing heat maps and Google analytics.
Heat maps will give you a great deal of info on what visitors are clicking on, how much time they take to click, how far they scroll the page and more.
However, Google analytics will tell you how much time they spent on the page, or their engagement rate and conversion rate etc.
Both these sets of data will help you to make better data-driven decisions.
So here is the juicy part now, let’s discuss how you can interpret heat maps and then come up with a set of actions.
How to Do a Heat Map Analysis
A heat map analysis must start off by asking some simple questions.
1. Check if users see the important content
You might be thinking the same thing.
You might be thinking the same thing. Whenever we build a landing page or a website, there is always an element that we want the users to notice. The first thing to check with heat map analysis is whether the essential content on the page is getting the predicted attention.
For example, the most important content for a typical landing page is its value proposition. Value proposition highlights why somebody should pick your product/service over your competitors. It in itself is a big topic, which I will cover in future blogs.
For now, let’s focus on the Product Value proposition.
Just like the main company value proposition, the product value proposition highlights why a customer should buy a product or service from you vs somebody else.
Let’s understand this point with the help of a heat map example from Instahop.
If we just focus on the Hero section, the headline has the text:
“Early Morning Cenote Swim”
The headline is good for creating relevancy as the visitor might be looking for Cenote Swimming experience. However, the headline doesn’t create any excitement and surely doesn’t bring out the value proposition.
Next up is the sub-heading.
Again, although the sub-heading creates some emotion, however, it still doesn’t focus on any value proposition. But when we scroll down, there is quite a lot of value that Instahop offers compared to others.
Now let’s head over to the heat map and see what visitors are doing on the page.
When checking the heat map, we can see only 57% of visitors are scrolling past the sections What included / What to expect, and only 33% of visitors check the main pricing difference, which is pretty huge.
So one hypothesis to test would be to change the Headline / Sub-heading to include the main Value Proposition of the product.
2. Find which non-clickable elements confuse users
One of my favourite reports in Crazy Egg is the Confetti report. It is better to understand it with the help of a heat map example.
After clicking on the confetti report option. Under confetti report, go to the left-hand side of the space and select dead clicks.
a. Dead Clicks
Dead clicks are related to elements many users are clicking on, but such elements don’t lead anywhere. User intent behind clicking such elements showcases that they wanted more information, a pop-up to come or go to a different page.
But sometimes, users are just reading through the page and clicking randomly, so a dead click confetti report needs to be analysed properly. So on our heat map example, the report is normal, but when we take a closer look at the navigation bar, we can see some issues.
We can see instead of clicking directly on the text; the clicks are going random. So maybe the text size is small and needs to be increased.
b. Active Clicks
Another feature of the confetti report called active clicks helps determine page elements that visitors find important.
For example, active clicks can help examine which FAQs resonate with the visitors. If you have an FAQ section or page, filling it up with relevant questions is crucial to increase user engagement.
By going through picking the questions that have the highest active clicks, marketers can optimise their FAQs with the most popular ones at the top.
Many new opportunities for A/B testing get created through confetti reports; that’s why it is an essential part of every heat map analysis. Remember to document them in a place like Google Sheets, so you can later prioritise them based on the effort required and the impact.
c. Rage Clicks
One other report which I really like is Rage clicks under the Confetti report, you can find it and you can enable Rage clicks.
Rage clicks are basically those clicks that visitors are doing on your page, which means they are repeatedly clicking on something with the intention that they might be searching for or looking for more information.
And one of the ways you can improve it is either removing that element or adding more information whether it’s a button or pop-up. But again, this report will really help you understand where visitors are looking for more information.
So, for example, on this page I can see there are some Rage clicks happening here, especially in this section.
And then if I scroll down, there are more Rage clicks which are repeated taps or clicks on this section.
Again as a hypothesis, I can come up with a new variation, and maybe add more information if somebody clicks on this section.
Or I can remove some of the elements which are not really buttons or things. In this section, the graphic here has no value to any conversion. So I can replace this image with something which is flatter and doesn’t look like a button.
With the rage clicks, you can get more insights to improve your landing page and website.
3. Solving Issues Across Devices Through Heat Map Analysis
It’s likely that mobile and desktop consumers see your website differently. On a desktop, important content shows up immediately, but on mobile devices, it may be hidden way below the fold, where it is not seen by many users. On mobile devices, your page may appear more ordered and compact, while on desktops, it may appear empty and unorganized.
For this example, I will only use a scroll heat map but make sure you optimise your landing page by using other features offered by Crazy egg, including rage clicks, dead clicks, and confetti reports.
Scroll heat map lets you see the percentage of visitors who scrolled to certain parts of the page before bouncing. This data is important because it can help you determine crucial factors, such as the length of your content and the placement of your call-to-action buttons.
This heat map example is from our client, Instahop, and I analyse their landing for mobile and desktop devices.
The brightest sections have been viewed the most number of times and the darker sections have been viewed the least.
As you can see, with the help of a scroll map, we can easily find impressions on landing page sections with a popularity ratio. I noticed above the fold is the most popular and viewed in all the sections, meaning you should keep all your essential content above the fold.
And at the bottom, this landing page gets a good response than the middle section which tells me that visitors scroll the full page till the end. I need to add engaging content at the bottom to improve the conversion of this landing page or reduce its side to make it more compact so that all the essential info.
In the mobile version, you’ve noticed that only the above of fold section gets the most views and reasonable responses. And visitors end up scrolling the mobile page less than the desktop page. This data tells me that I need to improve this landing page for mobile devices and work on the areas that are barely scrolled.
So now you understand why it is important to use heat map tools that can analyze user behaviour on mobile and desktop. Observe the challenges users face across different devices and determine changes that need to be made to your landing page build-up.
Conclusion
All right, guys, there you have it.
I hope you now know how you can use heat maps to learn more about your users. Through heat map analysis, website and landing page optimisation becomes easier help. By skillfully using different heat maps like confetti reports, scroll maps, etc., marketers can create a better user experience and a constant flow of quality leads.
Related Posts:
5 Best Heat map Software Tools for Websites and Landing Pages
What is Intent-Based Marketing: Types and Benefits
