Getting visitors to your website is only one part of your marketing efforts. All that work is for nothing if people don’t stay on your site and find the information they’re looking for.
When UX optimization improves your marketing return on investment by 100%, it pays to work on your design to ensure your site meets current standards.
If you want to improve your website’s marketing strategy, investing in heatmap software is a great way to get started. Keep reading to learn what a heatmap is and how it will benefit your website.
What Is a Heatmap?
Regular analytics software does a great job at telling you how your visitors navigate your website. They let you know where your visitors come from, the pages they visit, and how long they spend on each page.
Unfortunately, this functionality does have limits. While this is excellent information, it doesn’t tell you exactly what people do when they browse your content.
A heatmap helps in this situation. Heatmaps are visual representations of hot spots on your pages.
A heatmap shows your hotspots using colors. Red means that an area is a hot spot and popular, while blue means that part of your page isn’t getting much attention.
There are also several different types of heatmaps you can use to gather data. Below are the common ones you’ll see when collecting data.
Scroll Map
Your goal with your web content is to keep your readers engaged. You want them to read your whole article so they can get the information they’re looking for, and so you can potentially make a sale. A scroll map will fill you in on if this is happening.
Your scroll map will tell you how far down your users are scrolling down your content. If people are remaining at the top of your page, it’s a sign that your content isn’t engaging, and you have some work to do with engaging your visitors.
Click Map
A click map represents the actions your visitors take when on your website. Click maps will monitor all clickable elements on your website. These elements include navigation links, internal links, external links, images, and anything else you decide to track clicks for.
This data is useful for determining if your essential links are getting the attention they need. If you find a vital website link isn’t getting enough clicks, you can do more to help it stand out in your content.
Hover Map
You don’t only have the option to track direct interaction with your website. Heatmaps also provide you the ability to monitor where your visitors hover on your pages.
A hover map shows you the location of mouse movements on your site. Those elements will show up bright red on your heatmap if someone spends a long time hovering over them.
You can use this information to figure out which website elements are getting the most attention. If the wrong thing is getting attention, you know what design changes to make to de-emphasize certain design elements.
Benefits of Using a Heatmap
Now that you know what a heatmap is, you need to know what benefits this information will provide for your online marketing strategy. Below are four benefits you’ll see when investing in heatmap marketing tools.
1. Improve Conversion Rates
A website usually isn’t created just for show. Most people make their website intending to sell products or retain user attention. The primary way to gain subscribers and customers is to use a call to action to encourage people to take action.
A heatmap can show you if your call to action is getting the proper attention. Your CTA should be brightly lit on your heatmap if they’re working correctly. If they aren’t, you’ll need to work on making your CTA stand out more, which will improve the conversion rate of your marketing efforts.
2. Optimize Your Content Length
One of the biggest struggles with SEO is finding the correct article length for your blog posts. We always hear that more content is better. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to figure out how to create long, high-quality blog posts that aren’t full of fluff.
You can figure out if your content is resonating with your audience by using scroll maps to see where people are dropping off. If your visitors are only scrolling through a small portion of your articles, it’s a sign that you are filling your posts with fluff that doesn’t add value to your readers.
3. Analyze Specific Devices and Demographics
Not all your audience will interact with your website the same way. That’s why heatmaps provide the ability to filter your results based on the demographics of your audience. This feature allows you to drill down into your target audience more effectively so you can know for sure they’re getting the experience they deserve.
The same is also true for different device types. One heatmap won’t work well enough for all screen sizes. A heatmap allows you to dig down into the data for every device that accesses your website.
4. View Session Replays
A heatmap doesn’t only provide a visual overlay of your website activity. It also keeps track of what each person does on your site and allows you to view a replay of their activity.
If you have interactive parts of your website, a session replay is useful for watching how people interact with your website features. It allows you to find bottlenecks that prevent people from continuing with what they were doing.
Take forms, for instance, A session replay can show you where people drop off a specific part of your website form. If your web form is broken on particular devices, your session replay will show you the problem’s exact location.
Using a Heatmap With Your Marketing Strategy Is Worth It
The work to optimize your website isn’t finished once you complete your web design. You always need to watch what your visitors do when visiting your site, so you know if your web design is effective. Use heatmaps as part of your marketing strategy so you can change your site to meet your user’s needs.
Are you looking for more tips to improve how well you market your website? Read our blog to discover our best tips.