4 Hacks to Improve Your Website's UX Using Heat Maps

Heat maps are an effective tool to facilitate a better understanding of your customers and their actions on your website. From where they click and how far they scroll down pages, right the way through to what they look at and what they ignore, this is vital information that you can’t afford to overlook.

When visualizing complex statistical data, you can’t go wrong with a heat map. Experts in many fields use them to make data sets comprehensible and actionable, and marketers should be doing the same.

Types of heat maps

Just like any tool you use for your marketing, it’s important to get the right one for the job. Not all heat maps are created equal and you need to understand the nuances of each type so you can use your heat map to its full potential.

Scroll maps

A scroll map concentrates on the proportion of visitors to your website that scrolled down the page before bouncing. This is important as it’ll inform the type of content you produce to ensure you’re putting your resources into the right areas.

For example, it can show whether your long-form content is being read, and if not, you could make shorter, punchier posts as an alternative. A scroll map will also tell you exactly where you should be placing your CTA so that it’s seen by as many users as possible.

Click maps

Using a click map lets you see which elements on your page are performing well. This is represented by a percentage of clicks per element on your website. Some click map tools even give color-coordinated results to show the highest performing elements at a glance.

Further information that can be ascertained through these maps includes demographics. For example, this allows you to see if the click came from a mobile device, or if the user was a new or returning website visitor.

Move maps

Research indicates there could be a direct correlation between the location of a cursor on a webpage and the place where the user is looking. This makes move maps, which track where the cursor has been positioned during a visit, potentially useful in showing the most looked at points on a page.

Desktop maps and mobile maps

These two types of map should be used in conjunction with each other, as they let you know how content is performing on different devices. It can help highlight whether positioning in a desktop layout and a mobile-optimized view impacts the number of interactions detected by a user. If it does, then you may wish to switch things up.

How to use heat maps to improve your website’s UX

Heat maps and user experience (UX) go hand-in-hand on your website, with the two influencing each other. Put the data you collect to good use with these hacks to improve your site’s overall UX:

Ascertain optimal length

While longer content can be better at engaging an audience, that doesn’t mean you should make posts that are thousands of words in length just for the sake of it. A heat map will help you to ascertain the optimal length for different areas of your site.

Experiment with page layouts

Where text, visuals and other assets are placed on a page has a big impact on how successful they are, with research suggesting the balance of text and images is particularly important. Heat maps give you the opportunity to try out different page layouts and get accurate data on which ones work better, as opposed to simply going off your instinct.

Discover hidden issues

As well as using heat maps for specific tasks, you can use them to identify when there’s a hidden problem with your pages. Collecting data in this way can help you see why it might be that assets aren’t getting clicks and then rectify the situation to improve your results.

Combine heat maps with traditional analytics tools

To turbocharge your heat map analytics, combine them with quantitative data points from traditional tools like Google Analytics. This will help explain everything from traffic sources and bounce rates, making your strategy soar going forward.