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Digital marketing is a complex field, with conversion rate optimization being one of its most problematic elements for any business trying to prepare for the digital age.
A conversion rate shows how many website visitors complete the desired goal, and conversion rate optimization aims to increase this number. By optimizing your conversion rate, you can increase revenue per visitor as well as business affordability and ultimately help your business grow.
Tracking what visitors are doing on a page to increase conversions is far from simple, but a heatmap can make this task easier. Let’s learn more about this handy tool and how you can use heatmaps to increase your conversions.
What is a heatmap?
A heatmap is an easy to use tool that shows how your visitors are behaving as they navigate your website. There are many other conversion optimization tools, but heatmaps are among the most affordable and efficient options.
Similar to Google Analytics, they help you decide what steps to take to get more conversions and how to optimize your site to engage your visitors.
In comparison to Google Analytics, heatmaps provide a more visual overview of user interactions with your webpage. They are graphical representations of user activity, and the colors represent the frequency of clicks. For example, the color red signifies the highest click frequency, while green means the opposite – the lowest frequency. Once you have obtained the required data and seen which part of your page gets high/low attention, you can use heatmaps to increase your conversions.
In essence, heatmaps show how user experience, design, and layout impact conversions. After performing an analytical review, a heatmap can help you identify problems that affect conversions and what can be done to increase your conversion rate.
Different types of heatmaps
The term heatmap is used for heat mapping tools called click maps, moving maps, and scroll maps. These maps help you learn everything you need to know about your site’s visitors, and each type lets you inspect a different aspect of your site’s performance.
Click maps
Click maps display where your site visitors click their mouse when using desktop computers or tap on mobile devices. Click maps for touch screens are called touch heatmaps. These color-coded maps pinpoint which parts of a page are clicked/tapped the most frequently. The colors of the map are green, yellow, orange, and red (from lowest to highest frequency).
Interestingly, click maps can help you see when visitors are clicking on something that is no longer clickable. You can also identify various elements that get very few clicks because they are not attractive to site visitors. When you know where most of your visitors click on a specific web page, you can eliminate page distractions and further improve user experience on your site.
Move maps
Move maps practically give you an idea of what people may be searching for on your web page. They are suitable if your targeted visitors are desktop users, and they keep track of where site visitors move their cursor on the screen while they are on a page. The move maps’ hotspots show where on your web page visitors often pause. If the mouse does not move for a long time, that spot will get hotter.
Research has revealed a correlation between what part of the screen people are looking at and where their mouse is at that moment. So, with the help of a moving map, you’ll know approximately what your visitors may be looking at while they are on your page and for how long.
Scroll maps
With a scroll map, you can locate the exact entry and exit points of a webpage. You can find out where site visitors scroll down and where they leave the page. An area gets redder the more people see it.
By analyzing the data that scroll maps provide, you can determine when people start losing interest and whether they use the site as expected. If not, you’ll know what changes to make to optimize conversion rates.
A scroll map is the best choice for extensive web pages like long blog posts. By utilizing a scroll map on your blog, you can learn more about your readers’ interests and interactions. With this data, you can optimize, grow, and build your blogs, thus improving on-page SEO.
Ways to use heatmaps to increase your conversions
Heatmaps gather very accurate data on user interests and interactions with your website. They enable you to collect information from large numbers of visitors without having to invest in focus groups.
Heatmaps show whether or not clear points of friction exist. For instance, when page elements seem clickable but are actually not. They also show which areas get the most attention from users and which page elements prevent them from converting. In addition, they show how users interact with CTAs.
- With the information heatmaps provide, you can reduce shopping cart abandonment. If you are not getting the desired results from your checkout page, heatmaps can help you detect the problem and fix it. Some of these problems are very easy to fix; for example, the checkout button may not be apparent. Another example is when visitors get distracted by a promotional banner, so they don’t pay attention to the checkout button on the shopping cart page.
- You can use heatmaps to boost your conversions by identifying dead elements. A heatmap identifies aspects that many people disregard or rarely notice. After obtaining the relevant data, you will know which features to keep and which ones to remove.
- As heatmaps show precisely where people click on a page, you will know whether they follow your CTA’s directive. This is one of the best ways to use heatmaps to increase your conversions. Since heatmaps use eye movement and focus tracking, they can locate the areas that draw people’s attention. With this data, you can adjust your page design by strategically placing the calls to action in the areas that get the most attention.
Author bio
Monica Andrews is a digital marketer currently collaborating with digitaldot.us. As a writer, Monica aims to deliver practical pieces of advice to help new businesses successfully navigate the digital world.