7 Tips for Analyzing and Interpreting Heat Maps

Heat maps: According to one study, it only takes 50 milliseconds for people to form an opinion about your website.

But how do you know what people think about your website? You can use heat maps to analyze how people interact with your website, which can also give you hints on how to redesign it if you need to!

So how do you read and analyze heat maps? Keep reading to find out!

What Does a Heat Map Show?

Before you can start analyzing a heat map, you need to figure out what they show you.

A heat map scales things on a warm and cool colour spectrum. For example, if a section on the heat map is red or orange, many visitors have gone there. A blue or purple area means not many people have visited.

However, the heat map can also tell you how far people scrolled on your page and if they clicked on any links.

A heat map is just a visual way of analyzing data from visitors to your website. It will help you better understand your audience’s behaviour, which means that you can design your website to cater to their behaviour.

1. Are Your Users Clicking on What You Want Them Too?

You can use a heat map to figure out if they’re clicking on the page where you want them to.

You probably have many links and information on your site, but how do you make sure that people see it?

When you’re learning how to read heat maps for clickability, you should look for red or orange areas around your call-to-action, links, or shopping buttons.

Are people using these marketing techniques that intend to draw people in more? If they’re not, you might want to rethink how your website is operating.

2. How Is Your Engagement?

When learning how to interpret heat maps, you should also consider how well your engagement is.

It includes checking to see if your call-to-actions are working and if people are clicking on your links. But you also want to know if they’re interacting with your website.

It includes exploring it, contacting you, or searching around your products or services. It will help give you insight on how to keep your customers but also gain new ones!

3. Do People Get Distracted?

Sometimes a website can be too distracting for people. If this is the case, your heat map will likely have all kinds of different colours on it.

When you look at your heat map data, look to see what the cursor activity is. Is it all spread over the page? Or is it generally focused on the areas that you want them to be?

You want it to be on contact or call-to-action buttons. If you have cursors all over the page and clicking on random stuff, your site might not organize enough for customers to find what they’re looking.

Also Read: Why Data Mapping is Critical to Your Company’s Success with Analytics

4. Are People Having Issues?

A heat map will also be able to tell you if people are having issues. One common area of a problem is when people visit your site on a computer versus their phone.

Your content should all look the same, but some of the ratios could get thrown out of proportion if your website set up correctly.

Because of this, it’s essential to check the heat map for both options. If there are huge differences between the plans, you may want to revisit how your website looks on both configurations.

5. What Pages Do They Engage With Most?

You should also see data on which pages people visit the most. Having a few landing pages on your website is essential for ranking in SEO, but your users shouldn’t spend too much time on there other than to find what they’re looking.

Your most visited pages should be ones that either has a call-to-action or sends them to shop or view for your products.

6. Do You Need to Redesign Your Website?

Once you know how to read a heat map effectively, you can figure out if you need to redesign your website.

But a heat map may let you know that you only have to redesign a few key areas rather than do an extensive overhaul of your entire website.

To save you time, you should try and run a few heat map simulations before launching your website.

Also Read: A Detailed Look at Cocoa Futures Market Analysis for 2020

7. Are They Reading Your Content?

Lastly, make sure that your audience is reading the content that you want them to.

You can look at how many people viewed your page, but a heat map will tell you if people are ingesting your content on the page.

To check if they’re reading your content, you should check the scrolling map. It will let you know how fast are scrolling. If immediately scroll to the bottom, likely didn’t read it.

However, if they only scroll halfway before getting to the call-to-action, you may need to change up your content to make it more engaging and exciting.

Learn More About Heat Maps Here

These are only a few things to know about heat maps, but there is much more information on using them out there!

We know that designing a popular website can be difficult initially, but you don’t have to figure it out all on your own. We’re here to help you out!

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