Heatmap

Analytics tools like Google Analytics and Site Catalyst are great at providing data on which pages users visit, but they don't tell you much about how visitors interact with those pages. Heatmaps can show exactly what users are doing once they reach a page — what actions they take, how many times they view certain pages, and how long they stay on a page.

Heatmaps are a fantastic way of seeing where your website visitors are browsing, so you can make changes to improve the effectiveness of your website.

Things To Consider

Heatmaps are a useful tool for marketers who want to understand how visitors interact with a site. The amount of data needed to look at heatmaps for a website can vary widely, so it is important to have a sufficient amount of data before analysing the results.

When used incorrectly, heatmaps can be misleading. They can encourage analysts to make assumptions that may not be correct. It is important to remember that, as with other forms of quantitative data, heatmaps can tell you what has happened on a page, but cannot tell you why that happened.

It's vital to understand the limitations of heat mapping and how it can be misinterpreted. For example, a heat map of a form might show that users are clicking on the first field, but it could mean that they either skipped several fields or didn't fill them out completely. A heat map of an online shopper enlists clicks on the "Buy Now" button, but it doesn't tell us if users really intended to buy, or just wanted to find out more about the product.

This could suggest that users are quickly filling out the first field. However, it is likely that users are tabbing between fields rather than just clicking on them. Form analytics tools can be used to accurately measure the time spent within each field, and not just the number of clicks.

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