Using heat maps when creating the user experience for your website will give you insight on how users behave. Understanding your users is key in creating a user experience that will result in high engagement and strong conversion rates.
What is a Heat Map?
A heat map is a way of tracking a users mouse pointer while engaging with your website. The data collected from the tracking is then presented using colours to highlight where a users mouse is located most frequently on the page. When viewing a heat map you will see an image of the page on your website you want to analyze. On top of that you will see a colour range located on different areas of the page. Each colour will indicate just how often a users mouse pointer is on that area of the page.
How can we use Heat Maps to Improve User Experience?
Heat maps gives us insights into a users behaviour and just how the majority of users interact with your website. Understanding which features of your website are most important to your users can help you improve the experience you are delivering them. If users are interacting more with a less featured area of your site, more than a prominent area of your website this can give you data to make improvements.
As an example let’s say your homepage features a main banner area with a button users can click to book an appointment. In the top right hand corner of your site there is a search bar users can use to search for information they are looking for on your site. When you look at your heat map you see there is high engagement with your search bar and low engagement with your appointment button. We could use this data to then make an improvement to the user experience by moving the search bar into the main banner and moving the book an appointment button to a less prominent area of the homepage.
If your heat map data is telling you your users like to use the search bar, then you know new visitors to your site will be looking for the same feature. Instead of tucking it away make it more prominent so users don’t leave your site if they can’t locate its most engaging features.
Using heat maps is a great way to learn about how users interact with all of your websites components including navigation, layout, content, buttons and images. This will help you learn things so as which call-to-actions are being clicked the most and how their location affect that. They can tell you what content is being read, if you find users are only reading portions of your content this can help you break it into more digestible chunks. If you are experiencing a high bounce rate heat maps can help you analyze how users are interacting with your navigation of and if it is easy to use.
There are many ways you can use heat mapping to improve a wide variety of elements on your website. Learning about your users behaviour can go a long way in promoting higher engagement and driving more sales or leads.
Need Help with Heat Mapping?
Understanding heat mapping or even installing a heat mapping tool on your website can be complicated. The UX experts at Konstruct Interactive have the knowledge and experience to help with any heat mapping requests you may have. If you need help with heat mapping on your website please contact us.
