What is a Heatmap and Why Should I Be Using It?

Ever wondered why your users aren’t converting? How to get more visitors to take action? Well, a heatmap could help you answer those questions. A heatmap is a graphical representation of what users do on your webpage, giving you an at-a-glance view of where users click, tap, scroll and look.

Heatmaps show user behaviour

What do heatmaps show, you ask? Heatmaps visualise user behaviour. A heatmap uses a colour-coded overlay to highlight the areas of your site getting the most attention. Aggregating all interactions with your website, a heatmap uses colours on a spectrum from red (hot) to blue (cold). A heatmap presents complex data in an easy-to-analyse format, giving you a birds-eye view of your digital performance.

You Get a Birds-Eye View

Heatmap is an umbrella term for different heatmapping tools. Each one will help you investigate a slightly different aspect of your digital performance.

• A click heatmap reveals the user’s clicking (or tapping, on mobile) patterns.
• Movement heatmaps track mouse movements.
• Scroll heatmaps show the exact percentage of people scrolling down to any point on the page.
• Geo heatmaps reveal the locations where conversions are high, and where they are not.
• Desktop and mobile heatmaps compare the performance of your site on different devices.

When Should You Use a Heatmap?

1. If you want to provide a great experience to site visitors. Know that your users are moving through the conversion funnel in the way you want.
2. If you want to increase engagement. By being informed, you can improve bottom-line results, giving you greater ROI and lower bounce rates.
3. If you want your website to be used in the way you intended. Are users failing to use the page’s main links, content, buttons, opt-ins and call to actions?
4. If you want to know what’s distracting your user. Eg. non-clickable elements.
5. If you want to get team members and stakeholders on board easily when changes are needed.

How Do You Generate a Heatmap?

At Vine Design we use Lucky Orange, but you can generate a heatmap using a range of software – Hotjar and Crazy Egg are a few popular ones you can also try out.

How We Use Heatmaps at Vine Design

For anyone on the team involved with conversion optimisation, this tool is indispensable. For our designers and UX/UI specialists, it helps us better structure a page in a way where all the important information is going to be consumed. It allows us to make data-driven decisions, helping us test hypotheses and A/B testing. It helps us determine if updates or design revisions are needed.

So maybe we’ve made you aware of a heatmap’s benefits. If you’d like help interpreting heatmap data and think it could help you improve the user experience of your website, give us a call. We are experienced in drawing actionable insights from data, all to help you grow.

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