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Conversion rate optimization is one of the most complex tasks in marketing, and there are many reasons for that. For one, there’s no magic bullet so optimization can work for every page. Furthermore, it is difficult to track how users actually interact within a website. One tool that makes it easy to see what people are doing on your site is heatmaps.
In this post, I explain how to use heatmaps to increase conversions. Let’s start.
Table of Contents
What is a heat map?
A heat map is a graphical representation of how web users are interacting with digital content and page elements.
Heatmaps were originally used to display real-time financial market data to assist traders in making decisions. In CRO and web design, heat maps are used to track, quantify, and display user clicks and mouse movements.
Heat maps are used to visualize visitor interactions with the graphical and informational elements displayed on web pages, thereby providing insights into how the user experience is designed and laid out. influence user actions and conversions.
How can heatmaps help you increase conversions?
Heatmaps provide a wealth of information about a visitor’s browsing actions.
- They indicate whether or not obvious points of friction exist. For example, web page elements that appear to be clickable are actually static.
- The heat map shows how visitors interact with the call to action.
- They show which areas visitors engage with the most, as well as which page elements prevent them from following the conversion path.
What’s more, thanks to color coding, all this insight is pretty easy to grasp.
I love this example of a heatmap showing user interactions with Google and Bing SERPs from Conversionxl .
Heatmap example showing user interactions with Google and Bing SERPs. Source: Conversionxl
Heatmaps are also handy in capturing data from large numbers of users without having to leave your office (or invest in focus groups).
Heatmap data is very accurate and represents a large group of users who are likely to become your ideal customers, and customers who interact with your website organically.
Types of heat maps
The heat map is a general term used for heat generators: move the map, click on the map and scroll the map.
It would be helpful to know the difference, as the different categories will help you investigate different aspects of website performance:
Move the map
Movement maps track where desktop users move and pause their mouse while navigating a page. The hotspots in the moving map show where the mouse paused.
Research shows a correlation between the user’s mouse position and where they are actually looking. This means the moving map will give you an idea of where people can look while they’re on your site .
Click on the map
Click map showing where visitors click on desktop or tap on mobile . The mobile click map is known as touch heatmap.
The map is color-coded to show the elements or areas that have been pressed or clicked the most (from least to most clicked, the colors are green, yellow, orange, and red).
Image source: digitaleagles.com.au
Scroll Map
A scroll map shows the number of visitors scrolling down to a specific point on the page. The higher the number of visitors who viewed an area, the redder the area becomes.
Once you have the heat map data in place, you’ll be able to determine if the visitor is actually using the site as you didn’t intend it to. This will help you make any required changes to optimize conversion rates.
Many communication has all kinds of heat map features, as well as some WordPress plugins integrate heatmaps into your A/B testing service.
Here are three ways you can use heatmaps to increase conversion rates.
1. Reduce shopping cart abandonment
If your checkout page isn’t converting visitors as expected, heatmap data can help determine where they’re actually clicking. They may be moving the mouse around the page because the location of the checkout button is unknown.
In this example below, The North Face website team used a heat map to detect that a visitor was being distracted by an advertising banner on the checkout page.
Image source: UXmag.com .
Visitors focused so much on the promotional banner above the checkout button, which invited them to become a rewards member, that they didn’t notice the checkout button on the cart page. Fortunately, this type of problem is easy to fix once it’s been identified.
2. Optimize Call-to-Action
Heatmaps show exactly where visitors click on the website. This means knowing if a visitor is really follow CTA directives? .
Heatmaps also track eye movements. This is useful for determining which areas attract attention. Once you have this information, you can streamline the page design by placing the CTA in the area where the visitor’s eye is drawn.
3 . Determination of dead factors
If there are any elements that visitors often overlook or overlook, the heat map will identify this.
This will help you make informed decisions about moving, removing, or keeping an element.
Heatmaps are just one of many conversion optimization tools, but they are also some of the most effective and inexpensive tools we use. Are you using heat maps to create landing pages that convert better? Let’s discuss!
