What are heat maps and what do they bring? - Part 1 of the series heatmap

Today I want to start a little series on heat maps.

In the first part I clarify, what does that mean and why they are useful.

In addition, I refers to the way one can use heat maps and should.

In the other two parts of this series I put up some heat map providers before accurate and I show how I self-optimized network using heat maps.

What are heat maps?

Heat maps have been around a long time.Before they were used on the Web, you use heat maps for all sorts of purposes.

Originally derives its name from the visualization of temperature differences from (source: Wikipedia ).

But for us, the heat maps are interesting, with which one can visualize the behavior of website visitors.

But you have to distinguish between different versions, which are all commonly summarized under the title heat map:

• Heat map
  The heat map is similar to the classical representation of temperature differences. One analyzes typically via JavaScript the clicks you make website visitors to a web site and place the more clicks in a given area, the more "hot" is this area.
  Blue refers to are areas with relatively few clicks. The color spectrum is then usually about green, yellow and red.Very often clicked areas are white.
  Thus, a heat map makes it possible to quickly recognize which areas (mostly links, but otherwise much is clicked) are often clicked and which not.
• Mouse Movement Heat map
  is somewhat different function Mouse Movement heat maps. This is not the clicks, but the movements of the mouse are recorded.
  Now ask one or the other, what to do with the mouse movement?
  It's very simple. A lot of website visitors move with your mouse from the areas that they're watching Read /. This means that one with such a heat map at least can understand about what looked at the visitors and what content they have seen.
  This is certainly not a full replacement for expensive eye-tracking analysis, but it comes closest.
• Click map
  On a Clickmap the clicks are not modeled in the abstract, but every single click.
  Example, there are so-called Confetti maps that show each click. The different colors indicate different types of visitors here. Thus, with the seller that I use, for example, have different colors for different referrer (home pages) or as new vs. returning visitors.
  I find such Confetti Maps often more interesting than normal heat maps.
  Another variant is click maps that show for individual links, how many times it was clicked. This is a very analytic type of evaluation, but that you also get exact percentages and absolute number of clicks.
  Interestingly, among other things, Google Analytic offers such a form of Click map to which will discuss in Part 2 of this series then more precisely.
• Scroll map
  Another variation is called Scroll map.
  This indicates which areas of the site by how many visitors have seen. White is the area that is viewed most or has been scrolled to the most often.
  The colder the colors (to red, green to blue), the less readers have scrolled up there.
  They allow you to easily see which areas be perceived by the majority of readers.

One must certainly use all heat map variants.However often result from a combination of information for best results.

Why are they useful?

Attention is an important factor on websites. One would like to incorporate the key elements of a site as possible so that they are perceived by most readers.

However, it is in spite of best practices often not as clear whether certain elements are built well and make an impact. Moreover, the various elements influence each other.

So you should not have to guess or assume what perceive the visitors, but you should test it.And for that there is the heat map to (including their various versions).

In a shop, it is as important that the reader immediately to the "basket" - and see the "Checkout" button. This can be analyzed with a heat map very good (even if eye tracking would be better for it). But also a Scroll map is in this case a good analysis capability. Perhaps the most visitors see not at all important button.

But even in normal websites and blogs as it is very interesting to see, how they interact with visitors to the site and which areas to take this as strong or click them. The order in which the individual contents are perceived is often very important. This can be analyzed with the Mouse Movement Heatmap.

Landing pages are often structured so that the reader will be guided in a certain order to the order button (or something similar). This should be analyzed with the aid of a heat map and then really improve.

I used the heat map example to analyze and optimize my navigation. But could the contents of each structure (important) so I optimize pages.

Other possibilities are for example the increase in the residence, reducing bounce rate, increasing the number of hits on a particular page, or the perception of Sub-sharing buttons, optimizing the structure of articles, and more.

With the increase in revenue can help such a heat map also by placing eg affiliate links or banners so that more readers click on it. A heat map is here often very good evidence.

As indicated above, one can go in analyzing much detail. So I can look at, for example, where visitors clicked that came from a particular search engine or a website. This allows you, for example for certain groups of visitors locate the important elements better.

How should you use?

The possibilities are endless, but there are a few rules that you should keep and things that do have to consider.

• enough traffic
  Firstly, you should know that you need enough traffic to allow heat maps are meaningful.With 20 visitors a day you will be able to generate barely truly relevant heat maps. Even for me it needs according to the page that I analyzed, a few weeks were collected by reliable data.
  When in doubt it can just run longer, with you at this time should not make changes to the page.
• vs. dynamic. static pages
  is an important point that a heat map actually really only makes sense for static pages. If you have a page, change to the ever in content, it makes little sense to measure about 2 weeks, the clicks. These will then be distributed everywhere.
  This concerns for example the blog home page, where every time a new article appears, at least in the content area changes. Nevertheless, I have analyzed my home, because there is also static yes there are areas, such as. The header or sidebar
• Split-testing
  split testing you can connect well with heat maps. However, the different elements are successively and not tested alternately. So one week and after 1 week Banner A banner B. Most Heat map tools can filter in time so that you can then analyze that particular week and compare separately.
• individual changes
  one finds on the basis of the heat map for optimization, so you should only change one element and then see what happens to the heat map.
  If, however, changed several elements, one can end up hard to tell which of these changes is responsible for the effect.
• structured procedure
  one should proceed with heat maps structured. I have defined several pages that I wanted to analyze you. Then I created these test cases and waited a couple of weeks.
  Then I evaluated these heat maps and drawn my conclusions. After the changes, I then re-created heat maps of these sites and then wait a few weeks.

Heat maps are a useful and interesting thing, but you should keep a few things here necessarily.

Limitations of online services Heat map

In the context of this article series, I'll adjust a few online services and Heat map to mention one in particular.

However, I would previously come to the drawbacks and limitations of such online heat maps to talk.

Sun clicks alone are not the whole truth. Just because many visitors clicked on a particular link, it does not have to be all right. And thus you see no reference to a heat map where, although many people click on a link, but then add on this page, it is not what they expected and the blog then maybe leave immediately.

This means that you should link a heat map with other data. In the example, so you should look how high is the bounce rate and time spent on the linked page.

One should also be aware that heat maps can not replace eye tracking. With the mouse movements you can indeed adjust the eye movement almost, but it's just not the same thing. In addition, you can right in eye tracking studies also provide feedback and define such specific tasks.

It is very important also that a heat map itself still not saying much. It is only the interpretation of the heat map data, which is crucial.
Here lies the crux. It is always said that you can measure anything on the web so well, but that's only half the story. Most data must be interpreted to obtain meaningful and useful results.

This raises the question as to why such a large proportion of the readers clicked on a particular link. Is it the color, the label that position or something else?

These points show that heat maps are not automatic. Instead, you have to deal with it, gain experience, and a lot of testing. But they can be very useful.