How To Use Heat Maps To Boost Your Website’s Conversion Potential – Multiple tools are used in the best digital marketing strategies to determine what works best on a website and the greatest impact on the conversion rate. Heat maps are among the most effective tools available, and they range from online polls to user testing. This article will look at some heat map examples and how you can use this information to improve your conversion rate.
What are heat maps?
Heat maps are two-dimensional (2D) data visualizations in which colors represent values. In the context of a website, a heat map is a visual overlay on website data that allows you to track how visitors interact with a page. A heat map’s color variations represent the website’s parts with high and low levels of activity.
Unlike quantitative analysis, which only tells you which web page is performing poorly, heat maps (visual analysis) tell you which elements on a web page need to be adjusted (and how) to maximize conversion.
Different examples of heat maps
Click-tracking software converts the user’s cursor movement and mouse clicks into a 2D, color-coded overlay visual used to create heat maps.
Eye-tracking and mouse-tracking are the two most common types of heat maps.
Mouse tracking, on the other hand, is more widely used due to the lower costs involved. Here are four common heat map examples, each of which is intended to track different data types.
Click-tracking heat maps
This is the most widely used of all the heat maps. Click maps show where visitors are clicking on your website, allowing you to identify and remove distracting links. These are ideal for drawing visitors’ attention to call-to-action buttons (CTAs).
Mouse-movement heat maps
The pattern of how users navigate and read a page is depicted in this heat map. It draws attention to the areas where users hover their mouse the most. A mouse-movement heat map can help you figure out which parts of your website get the most attention.
Scroll-tracking heat maps
The point at which visitors leave a website as they scroll through the content is depicted in a scroll map.
According to the Nielson Norman Group, visitors spend 80% of their time above the fold. This means that if your CTA is near the bottom of the page, you should reconsider your strategy.
Eye-tracking heat maps
To determine visitor eye movement, eye-tracking heat maps use the entire subset of visitors’ interactions with a website.
This heat map depicts the exact location of a visitor’s gaze on your website.
Because of the technology and software involved, these heat maps are more difficult (and more expensive) to create. Due to the high cost, it’s also challenging to create eye-tracking heat maps for larger groups.
Why are heat maps important?
Heat maps provide incredible insights that marketers can use to improve conversion rates. They can identify the following using the information provided by these tools:
- Which elements of a website should be made clickable.
- Where should essential information be placed on a page?
- What’s working on a page and what isn’t.
- If the visitors easily identify CTAs.
- If the instructions are clear enough to lead a user to sales and conversion.
- Which elements of a page are distracting and should be eliminated.
You don’t have to guess how a specific graphic layout or user experience design will work for your landing page when you use a heat map. Instead, you can quickly test and tweak the design in real-time to increase conversions.
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Heat maps will show you which parts of your website receive the most traffic (and generate the most clicks). This allows you to determine whether or not a particular website design is providing optimal conversion rates.
Five (5) ways to use heat maps to increase conversion
Optimize the placement of calls to action.
Improve content and readability.
Streamline the page design.
Maximize the effectiveness of images.
Reduce abandoned carts.
Marketers can learn a lot about user behavior by using heat maps. Different heat maps provide a wealth of quantitative and qualitative data to help you figure out how to improve conversion rates. We can get real-life data from heat maps, such as what users pay attention to and how they react to a website’s CTA.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can use heat maps to improve your website’s conversion rate.
1. Optimize the placement of calls to action.
The number of users who click on a CTA indicates its effectiveness. For example, your visitors may be clicking on a web page item or element that isn’t clickable.
The location of user clicks on your landing page is shown in a click heat map.
A click heat map can help you understand how to improve the performance of different user-experience elements. Combining A/B split testing with a click heat map to improve the CTA placement and the design of the CTA button to maximize conversion rate is another good strategy.
The CTA movement is exemplified in the image on the left.
Visitors pay the most attention to the left-hand column of a web page, according to a VWO case study of Dennis Publishing. Recognizing this, the company moved their Google ad to the website’s left-hand pane. As a result, their click-through rate (CTR) increased by 44%, while their revenue per 1,000 ad impressions (RPM) increased by 48%.
2. Improve content and readability.
Scroll-tracking heat maps provide us with some interesting information about whether your website’s content is being read or ignored. While most internet users are no longer affected by the “above the fold” rule, it plays an important role in website design.
According to Nielson Norman Group statistics, visitors to a website spend more than 80% of their time above the fold (that is, without scrolling the screen), while only 20% of their attention is focused below the fold.
The Nielson Norman Group found that web users spend 69 percent of their time looking at content on the left half of a web page, while only 31 percent of their time is spent looking at content on the right half, according to an eye-tracking heat map.
This means that a traditional design is more likely to increase the profitability of a website.
These figures show that your content’s keywords and CTAs should be placed above the fold on the left half of the page for maximum effectiveness. To figure out which parts of your website draw users’ attention, use scroll-tracking and eye-tracking heat maps.
You want to make sure that visitors to your website get to the CTA before leaving the page. If your website’s scroll-tracking heat maps show that users don’t scroll to the bottom of your landing page, you should consider moving your CTA above the fold.
3. Streamline the page design.
“Dead weights” refer to elements on a web page that receive little to no attention. If a component isn’t contributing to the user experience or conversion rate, and visitors aren’t paying attention to it, it should be removed.
These elements divert attention away from conversion-oriented CTAs.
To increase the chances of conversion, look at removing elements that aren’t attracting attention and replacing them with engaging content or elements based on the heat map results.
The couple, which is now known as Pair, had a simple landing page with a call to action asking visitors to download the app. There were navigation options for going to the Blog, Help, and Job pages in addition to the CTA buttons.
On the other hand, a click heat map revealed that the CTAs were getting too little attention, while other irrelevant elements on the page were distracting visitors. Recognizing this, the company decided to use click heat maps and A/B split testing to test new designs. Pair’s landing page design was streamlined by removing the “Download for Free” text above the CTA buttons, resulting in a 10% increase in conversion rate. The conversion rate was also improved by 12% by moving the navigation menu from the top of the page to the bottom.
Pair’s homepage with click mapping enabled is shown above.
Heat maps can be used to identify, remove, and replace areas of your landing page that are preventing conversions.
Three important lessons for increasing conversion can be learned from the Pair example:
- Clear up clutter around CTA buttons.
- Social proof is an important part of your landing page.
- Be open to testing different menu locations.
Examine your heat maps and analytics to see if moving the menu to a different location will increase conversions.
4. Maximize the effectiveness of images.
The proper placement of an image on a website can draw the user’s attention away from the content and CTA buttons. A poorly placed image, on the other hand, can detract from the visitor’s attention.
Remember that you don’t want your visitors to spend all of their time clicking on or staring at the image.
An eye-tracking heat map can be used to determine whether an image is properly placed on your website. If the image itself attracts too much attention from users, you should re-align or re-locate it to your website to focus on your call to action. Take a look at the left’s image; the child’s face grabs the audience’s attention (as denoted by the red coloring in the heat map).
As shown in the image to the right, a minor change was made by angling the child’s face toward the web page’s content. The outcomes spoke for themselves. The majority of the user’s attention was now focused on the content (and subsequent CTA), increasing the likelihood of conversion.
5. Reduce abandoned carts.
A poorly placed checkout button can also cause low conversion rates on the shopping cart page. If the checkout button is difficult to find or a promotional banner or ad is placed near the checkout button, a potential buyer may abandon their shopping cart.
According to a case study conducted by The North Face, a simple change in the checkout button’s location can dramatically increase conversion. The business noticed that while their shopping cart received a lot of traffic, the checkout button was not being used as much.
When they used a heat map to look into it, they discovered that a promotional banner above the checkout button attracted far more attention than the button itself (Version A below). They noticed a 21 percent increase in clicks on their shopping cart page after repositioning the checkout button above the banner (Version B below).
Click maps can be used to determine whether or not visitors are clicking on the checkout button. When deciding whether or not to use a heat map, ask yourself the following questions:
- Was it easy for visitors to find the checkout button?
- If they didn’t go to the checkout page, what were the visitors clicking on?
- Is an element other than the checkout button attracting too much attention from the user? Is it possible to reposition or remove it if the answer is yes?
Conclusion
Heat maps are a digital marketing tool that can help you improve your website’s conversion rate. Instead of relying on assumptions and hunches, you can use heat map data to track how users interact with your website.
You can gather actual data about which elements on your website attract the most attention using the various types of heat maps available. You can optimize your website design for excellent conversion with this data and techniques like A/B split testing.