Heat maps are an excellent tool to visualize complex statistical data.

Heat maps are used by doctors, engineers, marketers, and sociologists to make data sets understandable and useful.

What is a heatmap? How do you create one?

Let’s look at how heat maps can be used to help you get started today.

What is a heat map?

A heatmap is data analysis software that uses color in the same way as a bar graph uses height/width: it’s used to visualize data.

A heat map is a visual representation of the areas that get the most attention on a website. It’s simple to understand and use to make decisions.

What does a Heat Map show?

Heat maps use a warm-to-cool color spectrum to show which pages receive the most attention.

A heat map shows you the data for your website: The CTA above the fold glows brightly orange or it doesn’t.

It may be worth moving it up the page if it does not. This will allow it to align with the areas where people are most interested.

Heat maps can be described as visual storytelling. A heat map allows you to instantly understand visitor behavior.

These pages also allow you to answer the crucial question “Where should the most important content be?”

What is a heatmap?

Heat mapping software collects data from web pages and displays it over the page.

Here’s how Kobe Digital does this.

We first take a snapshot of the URL you choose. Thanks to a small section of JavaScript that was embedded into your site’s code, the HTML page’s HTML is loaded.

We then create a map that includes all elements of your page, including everything that anyone might interact with. We use these elements, their tags, and their parent elements to create a map of user activity.

The activity data is then collected. We flag every time a user requests your website.

(We also use a bit of code to ensure that we know its unique users so no duplicates or multiple users are messing up with your figures.

Although many things are going on underneath the hood, the point of a heatmap is that you don’t necessarily need to know all the details to benefit from it.

Let’s say someone visits your page and clicks your CTA. We will record the click and add it as part of all other information about that page.

The dashboard will display the total of all the actions that each user took on the page.

Heat map analysis provides a visual overview of the clicks your visitors make on your pages. The more clicks you have, the more bright the area is. These is what we refer to as “hotspots.”

This allows you to quickly see what areas get the most action by looking at your heat map.

Other types of Heat Maps

You can also use heat maps to show where clicks originated, how many visitors scrolled, and other details.

Scroll map

Do you want to have more or less content?

Where should a CTA be placed?

You can see which proportion of your visitors scrolled to where before they bounced with a scroll map.

This is important because if your readers don’t read your lengthy blog posts, you might be better off creating other content.

The scroll map shows you the CTA sweet spot of your site: where most eyes see it. You can also see where your design isn’t quite right.

Visitors may notice sudden, dramatic color changes that are not related to the previous (called ‘logical endings ‘),” said Peep Laja, founder of Conversion XL. These are sharp drop-offs that are difficult to see using just Google Analytics.

Confetti Report

Confetti can be described as a very specific version of a heat map. This high-resolution view allows you to see individual clicks. Each click is represented by a colored circle on the report.

Why bother?

You’ll be amazed at all the strange things people click on, even non-clickable ones. This can provide you with unique insight into how visitors navigate your website.

Let’s take, for example, a page with a high bounce rate. According to the confetti click track report, people visit that page and click on many different items that aren’t clickable. Then they get frustrated and leave.

They just want to click through, but they don’t know how.

You now know what you need to do to convert the page.

The Confetti Report also has a great application: it can track custom parameters, such as whether someone visited your site from a paid advertising campaign or an email blast.

This article explains how tracking can be used to help businesses, especially ecommerce brands, figure out what happens between clicks and purchases (or why so many people leave a site that doesn’t add to their cart).

Overlay, List reports

The Overlay report shows you how many clicks your website has received per element. This allows you to see which elements are generating clicks.

As you can see, there are tiny plus signs at the bottom of the page.

Each one represents a page element. The color of each represents how many clicks they receive. Blue is the smallest, while red, green, orange, and red are progressively more clicks.

An Overlay report allows you to see the breakdown of clicks from your page visually.

It displays the percentage of clicks that each element has received about the total number of clicks on the webpage. You can drill down into demographics such as how many clicks were from mobile devices or whether they came as a returning or new visitor.

You can also see which elements were clicked even though they aren’t linked.

A List Report shows similar information but in graph format. This makes it easier to spot trends (like whether most-clicked elements aren’t linked)

What is the best time to use a heat map?

Every day!

No, really. Heat maps, as absurd as they may sound, are so helpful and intuitive that you should have one at all times and make sure to check it frequently.

Here are some examples of heat map data that can be used to help you make faster marketing decisions.

Redesign of website

A website redesign can be expensive and time-consuming. A redesign that isn’t better than the original is not what you want.

Heat mapping tools can be used by UX professionals and graphic designers to analyze how user behavior is affected by graphic elements such as color, contrast, or placement. This will help websites convert better.

Graphic designers are already familiar with all of this information in principle. Different audiences respond differently to different websites.

It’s possible to avoid making a mistake when redesigning a website. You could end up designing a site that isn’t conversion-friendly or difficult for your audience.

A/B Testing

This is what you’re doing, right? A/B testing can make a big difference in your business’s growth and survival.

Heat maps give you immediate, useful insights into what visitors do on different versions of your landing pages, blog posts, or home pages.

You can test whether the CTA buttons are moved, changed the copy, or altered the images to see the conversion rate of the page and determine why it converts better than others. (Hopefully, the test converts better!

A heat map allows you to see how conversions are different. You might find that a longer page converts better so let’s make them all longer. It makes sense.

What if the longer page had a different purpose? Perhaps it contained a more compelling copy that was above the fold. That’s what would make the difference.

A heat map allows you to see exactly where people scroll and click so that you are never lost.

Content marketing

Most content is still written. It’s just words on a webpage.

Are your site visitors reading your content and engaging with it?

Scroll maps allow you to see how far your users have scrolled down a page so that you can determine if they are reading your content. You can find out which CTAs are most popular with click maps.

Let’s take Michael, for example, who writes an in-depth blog about using DocuLoc’s product to protect documents.

He documents the use cases and explains why they are important.

He can be very promotional and spammy about it. But he knows this, so the post is mainly about the challenges facing the security landscape and not the product.

The piece is posted to his blog and shared on Twitter and Facebook. It receives decent traffic.

So far, so good.

He then checks his visitor reports every week.

The scroll map shows that about one-fifth to twenty percent of his readers make it to the end of each post. Michael thinks so. Perhaps 7,000 words are too many. It seems that no one wants to read it.

He’s an old man so he also checks other reports. The Confetti report shows that almost all of those who read the entire post is clicking on his CTA.

Michael doesn’t have a piece of content that isn’t performing well; he has a lead generation machine that disqualifies unsuitable prospects before they even reach him.

All he needs to do is take a few minutes and consult the data. This gives him more time for his next 7,000-word opus.

UX and Usability Testing

It makes sense to test UX/usability, given all the opportunities to track where visitors click and scroll.

Let’s suppose you are an online retailer and have noticed that many people add items to their shopping carts, but then abandon their carts at the last moment.

You can now do some UX testing and see what’s happening.

Heat maps and overlays can be used to determine where people click — and where they get stuck.

Are your checkout buttons looking too blue? You could have a problem with the visibility of your checkout button. You might try something brighter or higher up the page.

Is it possible that shoppers are clicking on things that aren’t clickable? Perhaps they are distracted by the nav bars?

Take out distractions from one page, then test both pages to determine which converts more customers.

Conversion Funnel

You can also improve the flow of potential customers down the conversion funnel by testing UX and usability as well as your content marketing efforts.

We mentioned that if a few people read a piece of content but sign up for an email list, it will improve the quality of leads for your sales staff.

Scroll maps and confetti maps can show you all this.

However, if you notice a lot of people visiting your landing page but not many are clicking on your coupon or giving their email, check your heat map to see which areas they are clicking.

It might be time to A/B-test a few pages to improve usability, and eliminate distractions that may be keeping visitors stuck.

A Heat Map: What Can You Learn From It?

You can quickly see what heat map data can do for you:

• What headlines grab attention and get people to click?

• You’d be amazed at how many people try to click on unlinked images.

• Visitors are often distracted from your core content by the heat map. Many first-time users are surprised at how differently their users navigate the site to their expectations.

• How visitors see your opt-in email box. Low opt-ins or click-throughs could be caused by opt-in boxes which don’t stand out. This is easily fixed with heat maps.

A heat map can be used to determine:

• How well your navigation works (Do users even know it exists?)
• It is easier for people to find search options.
• This is an important use case for scroll maps!

You can see the results if you drill deeper

• The content to be placed is the most important for your visitor’s goals. (A recent study by ConversionXL revealed that the user’s viewing time was almost exactly in line with the Pareto principle. It was 80% above and 20% below the fold. ( What is the fold?

• The top and left are the most popular places to look at a page. People tend to read web pages in an F or Z pattern. Many sites are designed to allow this. However, image-based content can often be read horizontally.

• There is a difference in what men and women want, as well as between younger and older audiences and people living in different locations.

• How users interact with the images and which images are most popular are discussed.

This all adds up to an easy method to spot conversion issues and an easy way for you to optimize your fixes.

It’s almost like having x-ray vision for your website.

Understanding heat maps 

It is quicker and easier to read heat maps than trying to find useful information from columns of figures. They still need to be understood.

How to read a Heat Map

Let’s take a look at some real-time heat maps. This is how Khan Academy used a Heat mapping tool to understand how users interacted with their site.

Heat Map shows the Khan Academy homepage and displays the percentage of people who clicked on each item.

What does this tell us? Users are clicking on the top menu a lot, but they’re not clicking on “Watch,” Practice,” Coach, and “Coach”. “Contribute” isn’t getting much attention.

“Search” receives a lot of attention, the video is played a lot and the CTAs under the first header also get a lot.

It is also evident that the social media links at the top right-hand side of the image don’t get any attention.

Simply by looking at the click locations on the page, you can see if any images need to be moved, and make the correct course of action easier and clearer for your visitors.

There’s more.

Scroll Map also shows that the center of the screen is where the most attention is concentrated, above the fold.

That’s normal. Scroll down to Khan Academy’s extensive collection of links that lead you to particular pieces of content. 

Again, that’s normal. You can compare what you get with the Scroll Map report to the list view.

This table shows how many people clicked on each hyperlink. It is not proportional to the number of visitors.

The Scroll Map report showed a similar long tail of link clicks in List View to the one we saw in Scroll Map. While few people scroll this far, most click on one of these links. This tells us that these links are likely in the right place and well worth keeping.

To get a better view of visitor behavior, you can combine Heat Map and Scroll Map.

As you can see, the majority of attention is directed to the CTA for recurring donations on the right side.

This page has two purposes. The second goal is to encourage people to sign up for translator training.

We can also see why so few people click on the Scroll Map link when we flip the page to the Scroll Map.

About half of the visitors to the site scroll down. What if you moved the CTA? Give it its page.

Is the copy too persuasive to keep people reading? To find out, check the color changes.

It looks like “Count Me In” is where people stop looking. The first paragraph under “Help translate this content into other languages!” doesn’t grab readers or hold them.

The Scroll Map can be used to determine where attention is lost and the Heat Map to identify where actions are changing. This will give you a better understanding of how people act. This gives you all the information you need to make decisions that will lead to growth and conversions.

Let’s now get to work on your heat map.

Conclusion

A heat map is essential for any CRO (conversion rate optimization). A heat map is a powerful tool that’s often overlooked.

Heat maps can give you an easy way to see what your visitors do on your website. It is easy to quickly determine if anyone has seen your copy or clicked on images instead.

You can also track where your visitors come from. Keep an eye on pageview-to-click conversion rates and other metrics.

Heat maps are a better way to understand what is happening by identifying which elements have been clicked or ignored.

We have seen heat maps used to understand conversion behavior and optimize the sales funnel .

A heat map can be used to see which conversion elements visitors are clicking on and what they are clicking on.

It is almost always unexpected.

It allows you to answer a question that no amount of bounce statistics can answer: Why are people leaving your website?

It’s possible to design better copy and convert more people if you have a deeper understanding of user behavior than just what you imagine.

Scroll Maps and Confetti data allow you to identify user behavior more effectively while still keeping heat map analysis as simple as looking at the screen.

Cross-referencing Overlay and List reports, as well as User Session Records, allows you to see exactly where attention is heading and who is clicking where.

Segmenting traffic by source and activity can help you avoid “mis-optimizing” the pages. This can help you keep your content fresh!

This simple and versatile tool is hard to beat for optimizing pages or entire websites.