What is a Heat Map?

Ensuring that a website is easy and intuitive to use should be the number one aim of any web design strategy. Heat maps are in essence a visual tool to enable you to more effectively achieve this aim.

A heat map is a graphic interpretation of user behaviour, and can be generated using a variety of purpose-built applications, some free, some paid for.

The more basic applications will simply create a visualisation based on where users have been clicking on your website, with the graphical data overlaid over the webpage. More advanced heat map features include predicting the eyeline movement of web users, and where their attention is most likely to be drawn to on the screen.

Heat maps can be used to give you greater insight into the behaviour of web users, which you can use to your advantage.

What can a heat map tell me?

So what use is a heat map? When used during the design or re-design process of your site, it can help you to optimise the layout in a way which will generate the results you desire. For example, if your website is based around generating revenue from online ads, you might use the data displayed in a heat map to reposition your ads where they will get the most clicks.

If you’re managing an e-commerce website, you might use the data to judge where best to place your ‘special offers’ box.

There are a variety of heat map tools out there, with a variety of levels of functionality, and cost. If you want to try one out for free though, Google Analytics features a relatively simple type of heat map, which it refers to as In-page Analytics. What this does is take data generated through Google Analytics, such as which links have been clicked on most, and superimposes it over your website as you browse. You can find out more at http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/10/introducing-in-page-analytics-visual.html.

By using a heat map, in conjunction with other tools designed to interpret user behaviour, you can make your website not only more usable, but potentially more profitable.

If using a heat map is a little too technical for you, speak to your web design agency or SEO team and find out if they can assist you in setting up a heat map to interpret your users behaviour and optimise their experience on your website.