Heat maps are one of the most underrated tools that help you understand user conversion on websites. But without them, you may as well plan your website design blindfolded.
Analytics tools, like website traffic monitoring and pay-per-click dashboards provide a great overview of the traffic that come to your website. These metrics are, today, at the core of data driven marketing. Where users are referred from, and how they navigate before clicking that call-to-action are important for building websites that covert. However, these tools provide only a macro picture of the user-website interaction.
A prominent call-to-action is enough, right?
For the sake of brevity, no! Neither are reams of text, nor are over-saturated pictures of kittens!
To really delve into the mind of the user – to see what it is on the page that catches their attention – you need heat maps. A heat map tool, like Hotjar, provides a visual representation of how a user moves and behaves within a webpage. Heat maps can track scrolling behavior (important for mobile website design); gather behavioral data from mouse movement, and; highlight sections of interest through click tracking.
Like other analytics tools, heat maps are helping you understand the user journey, but on a much more micro level. Such an understanding is quintessential if you want to truly know what elements are most effective at generating and attracting interest, and then incorporate them into subsequent pages.
“I have websites that convert. I don’t need HotJar to get heat maps, right?”
If you want your success to be repeatable, heat maps are vital to understanding your audience’s preferences. And replicating success in subsequent pages and ad campaigns will certainly require and understanding as to what ‘clicked’ with the user.
B2B websites often face this dilemma. What is it that drew a website visitor to convert? Remember, these websites are catering to business visitors who, typically, have a reasonably formed picture of their needs. Prominently placed prices, phone numbers or the small testimonial towards a neglected corner of the page: which was it that met or exceeded true visitor’s expectations and urged them into sending a business enquiry.
Heat maps are always a source of unexpected insight. As the illustration above mentions, testimonials are an extremely effective tool at building confidence. Especially in a B2B scenario, where your user may know what he or she wants to procure but is uncertain of the quality of your offering. Testimonials address that directly.
Assessing heat map data is essential for building websites that convert consistently. There is a wealth of data to be had on the nuances of user interaction with websites. And a failure to recognize heat maps as a crucial insight tool is simply negligent.