We’ve all seen the videos of police using heat maps to look for the heat from secret cannabis farms in a suspect’s attic. But did you know heat maps are not just for detecting body heat?
Thermal maps are used to make data sets understandable and actionable, and they are a valuable tool for visualizing complex statistical data.
Heat maps, however, can be used in a variety of ways, such as for data visualization, data analysis, or as a means to make a data set understandable or capable of action. They’ve been around since as early as the 19th Century, when they were used to track cholera outbreaks.
Here’s everything you need to know about how to read a heat map.
Websites
If you are looking at a website and want to know which area is getting the most attention, a thermal map can visually display it. It’s easy to assimilate, and it helps make decisions.
Heat maps are data analysis software that uses colors as bar charts, using the warm and cool color spectrum. Thermal maps show the parts of a page that get the most attention by using height and width as a data visualization tool.
For example, a thermal map shows how far a visitor has scrolled down a page and how much he is scrolling. With thermal maps on a website, the data is exactly there for you: the temperature of the page and the number of visitors to the page.
One can imagine a thermal map as a form of visual storytelling, but creating a thermal map helps you to understand a visitor’s behavior immediately.
Special Softwares
The thermal mapping software collects data and displays it on the website itself so that the creation of thermal maps helps to understand visitor behavior immediately.
We use tags and their parent elements to create maps of user activity on a website, and then we create a hot map that anyone can interact with. This is the answer to questions such as “Why are heat maps important?” and “What do heat maps measure?”
First, we take a snapshot of the website with the URL we choose; then, we collect activity data. We then create an interactive heat map with a heat map on top, with links to all our hot maps and a link back to the original page so that everyone can interact.
Every time a user does something on the site, we highlight it, but there’s a lot that happens under the hood to achieve this. The point of a thermal camera is that you have to be familiar with it to use it.
Where Clicks Come From
In the case of heat maps, there are several reports showing where the clicks come from and how far the visitor scrolled.
The heat map analysis gives us an idea of where visitors click on the page and create so-called hotspots. This means that you can see on a thermal map in which areas of the sites a lot is going on and in which areas there is not, and what will continue.
This is important because most visitors do not read entire blog posts, and therefore, there is no need to create other types of content.
It also tells you where the CTA sweet spot is on your website and where your design is not quite on the nose. This is a perfect tool for improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
A scroll map shows where some of the visitors scroll after the jump and shows the places where most eyeballs will see them.
Maps Vs. Analytics
There is a high-resolution view that allows you to see the colored dots in the report, representing the number of clicks and clicks per minute and the percentage of people clicked.
You will be surprised at what people click on, even non-clickable items. Confetti is one of the most popular Google Maps apps for Android and iOS and can allow you to navigate your website with much more precision.
For example, suppose a particular page has a high bounce rate, and you want to improve your click-through rate, but you can’t figure out how. Now you know you need to change what this page converts; you now know what needs to be changed to convert it. It shows you the number of people who have visited the page and tried to click on various items that are not clickable, and then got frustrated and left.
The Value Of Confetti Reports
The point of a confetti report is to track the number of visits to your website during a paid advertising campaign and to track what happens after the click to buy.
This allows you to see exactly which individual elements have created the click, and the overlay report breaks down clicks on your website by a percentage of each element. You can see in the thumbnail above that there is a small sign on the page, but what about the rest of the page?
Each page represents a page element, and its color indicates how many clicks it has received. Blue is the least, while green, orange, and red represent more and more clicks.
This overlay report allows you to see the breakdown of clicks per page visually and shows how many percent of clicks each item received has compared to the total number of pages clicked. This allows you to find out how many clicks came from mobile devices and whether the clicks came from new or returning visitors.
This list report displays similar information in a graph format, which makes it easy to find out which of your most frequently clicked items are actually not links. It also shows you the percentage of clicks you clicked on that actually link nothing, as well as the number of links that did it.
Always Use Thermal Imaging
As superficial as it sounds, thermal imaging is so useful that you should always turn it on and check it regularly. Here’s when to use thermal cards: Rebuilding a website can be an expensive and time-consuming undertaking, and the last thing you want is a redesign that doesn’t work better than the original.
Of course, graphic designers know these things already in principle, but different target groups behave differently on different websites. Graphic designers and UX professionals can use heat mapping tools to understand what a website ultimately converts more effectively.
Creating a heat map before you design and launch a website could save you from missing the target and ending up with websites that are not converting or difficult for your target audience to navigate.
Conversion Rates
If you move the CTA key, change the copy there, or change your image there, you will see the conversion rates for each page and understand why one page converts better than another.
A longer page may be better, but it must have the same conversion rate as a shorter page, or maybe not at all. It’s up to you to make the difference, so let’s make this page longer, and maybe it will make a difference in terms of conversion rates for the rest of the page.
Most of the content is already written, so it’s never dark, and if there are no words on a page, you can’t see where people are scrolling or clicking.
A scroll map shows how far a user has scrolled down a page while reading the content, so visitors can better read it even when they are just a few clicks away. In other words, they are a great way to engage visitors with your content while they read it.
Not sure what metrics to monitor? Here’s everything you need to know about customer experience metrics for your e-commerce business.
Heat Maps Can Be Great for Your Business
So, what do heat maps measure? Heat maps can be a great way of tracking conversion rates and other statistics for websites.
If you are interested in learning more about how to improve your business, be sure to check out the rest of our site.
