Heat Mapping to Maximize your Site’s Success

One easy, effective tool to maximize your web site’s success and enhance your user’s experience is to  perform a heat map on your existing website.  Heat mapping is a software program that displays the most frequently visited (and least frequently visited) areas on your website based on the movements of the user’s mouse cursor.

A developer or tech specialist can easily download the program for you and embed the html code onto your site in minutes. These programs have costs attached to them but are typically minimal ($10-$500/month average) for the value it holds. Analyzing the results are an upgrade to the service and is typically done by a professional SEO consultant and can range anywhere from $500 to several thousand depending on the level of service you are requesting. Results can be examined within a few short weeks or months and many suggest continuing the service year round for the best results as some businesses are seasonal.

Detailed heat mapping reports will show visitor patterns, areas where users are clicking most or least and help you determine each sections value on your site for advertising and content.  The true value in the mapping is to help you develop content that keep your users coming back. Imagine you are a restaurant owner and you knew based on sales reports that less than 50 people per month ordered duck and more than 500 ordered chicken. Based on those results, you would naturally create more chicken dishes to please your customers and increase your sales. And, the duck you would either evaluate your recipe and make changes to it accordingly or you would remove it from your menu altogether. Heat mapping works the same. It tells you what your users want and saves you time and money guessing. It can increase your user’s experience and it can increase your sales.

On a website, if the heat mapping results conclude that you have a news section on your home page that no one is visiting and you have a video gallery on that same page that a high percentage of users are clicking on, you could determine that your time and budget is better spent enhancing the video gallery and replacing or moving the news section to an area that is either more visible (if this area is important to you) or less visible (if this area is secondary to your other site features).  By keeping the service year round you are able to make small changes to the design of the site and  continue to improve your site’s performance each month based on what you learn.

Developers and internet marketing specialists often recommend heat mapping for clients that have an existing website and are looking to redesign or track the success of their existing site. That team uses the results to determine exactly what features are important to the users and what needs to  be continued onto the new site.  This data also translates into valuable advertising for high traffic sections and how a department spends their money creating content for their site.

For more on heat mapping, visit these sites:

http://www.crazyegg.com/

http://www.clicktale.com/default_b?a_aid=7a38f72a&a_bid=36c545f2

http://www.clickdensity.com/

http://www.seevolution.com/website-heatmaps?gclid=COSz-e_TgrACFbFa7Aodri-zVg

Have you tried heat mapping? Do you have a service you would like to recommend? Would you like help heat mapping your website? Contact us today service@rightbrainmedia.com.

Written by: Erika Raia, Right Brain Media