What Is a Heat Map, And What Is It For?

What is a heat map or heat map? What is it for? How can it help the navigation of a website? Find out all the details in this article.

The Heat Map is a very important weapon for understanding user behavior on a web page. It is a tool used by CROs and by those who want to improve the user experience to increase conversions, especially on e-commerce sites.

What is a heat map, and what is it for

A Heat Map, literally ” heat map, “is a visual representation of user behavior within a website. Specifically, it is a graph in which the values ​​are represented by colors and which serves to identify which elements of a web page are capable of attracting the attention of the user who browses within it.

In web page heatmaps, warmer colors (such as yellow, orange, and red) generally indicate increased activity, while cooler colors (such as blue, light blue, and green) indicate greater activity. The term “activity,” in this case, is understood as the greater interest of users.

Why the heat map is important

Specifically, a Heat Map can show:

• mouse movements ( Hover Map )
• clicks ( Click Map )
• the scroll of users ( Scroll Map )
• taps made on mobile devices ( Tap Map )

The Hover Map tracks the movement of the mouse on the screen, based on the assumption that users are following with the mouse what most attracts their attention.

The Click Map highlights the points on the page where users click, regardless of whether they perform this action on clickable elements or not. This map can provide various indications: for example, it can be used to find out if a call to action has been placed at the most visible point of the page or it can suggest inserting a link on an image of the page particularly clicked by users.

The Scroll Map shows how users scroll the page, which parts of it they focus their attention on and how far they scroll.

The Tap Map analyzes mobile behavior and indicates where users touch the mobile screen with their fingers.

What are the benefits of a heat map?

Here are the advantages of a Heat Map:

• Modify the text or insert a link or a call to action based on user indications. A heat map’s, in fact, is able to highlight in which precise part of the text users usually abandon reading or, on the contrary, in which area of ​​the page their attention is focused more.
• Monitor which are the topics that most interest users and, based on this, deepen them with new pages.
• More easily observe the results of an A / B test. The Heat Map’s allows you to check the effectiveness of a new element within the page and clearly shows which of the two different versions of the page is best received by users.

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