In the latest SEO trends, Heat Maps play the crucial role. Based on daily traffic website users clicking positions need to change the designs and button positions. before going this topic do you know what is heatmap?

What’s a Heat Map?

Heat mapping is the determination of the localities within a page where the user movies their cursor or touches their phones. This shows where the user would be intended to place their respective cursor or finger while browsing through. It also lets us determine the localities within the screen that the human brain prompts to go to the most.

Heat Maps

Although it has been a while since the heat maps have been introduced. These have been overlooked for quite some time since it has been founded by Cormac Kinney in the mid-90’s. There hasn’t been a serious thought put in it. But with the inception of data science do you think the heat maps might find its way into the regular metrics? I think so and maybe you would too after understanding its true worth. Here’s how you can add the heatmaps and gauge it yourself.

The Heat maps are usually gauged in three different ways:

  • Hover maps (mouse or finger movement tracking)
  • Scroll maps
  • Click maps

Hover maps provide the basic movements of cursors or fingers across the screen. The heat map is registered in such a way that the areas where the movement is more, a dark red patch can be viewed and in the sections where there isn’t a great deal of activity, green patches can be seen. The same goes for the rest of the maps as well. The only difference is the pattern that these give out. Scrolling and clicking have a different way of appearing on the screen.

If you’d like to read more about each of these briefly, then do visit here.

How can Heat maps help change the mobile websites and the phone UI?

Heat maps help in determining where a user moves their finger or cursor the most. It not only shows the important sections the users browse for but also how the user moves his cursor around involuntarily. So let’s look at the fields these heat maps could impact the most.

Source: digital marketing glossary

Advertisements:

This is the first and foremost thing every website seeks to concentrate upon. The basis of any advertisement driven websites is their efficiency of reach. This can be very well be optimized to reach a wider audience. Still wondering how? Let me tell you.

The section where the heat map is intense is the place one needs to avoid. As this would be the place the user puts their finger on and this obstructs the proper display of the advertisement. The areas at which the screen is being touched or the cursor is moved changes from person to person, especially with respect to their age. A certain section of age might have a different way of moving their fingers. This way, the different ways of using the devices can be categorized accordingly. These specific categories can later be displayed for the advertisements that are more relevant to their ages.

Change in UI:

The user interface can be upgraded in such a manner so as to help the users find it easier to surf through. The designers can make sure they place the appropriate sections in the appropriate locations so as to offer an easy navigation throughout the sections of the page.

For instance, let’s take the advertisement section into consideration. For a left-handed guy, the advertisements displayed on the left section of the pages are harder to see. Whereas the same side would be easier for a right-handed guy. You think how it makes a difference? It makes all the difference in the world as if you’re making an investment, you need to be sure it’s an efficient one! Hence, one needs to make sure that the UI is developed in a way to help the users better.

Accessibility:

The same thing applies to the accessibility part as well. If you can figure out the data for the touch patterns and the sections that are harder to reach, the change in the positioning of these would help in a better accessibility altogether. How can data science help here?

If you observe closely, the touch patterns of the users vary according to the convenience of their finger’s reachability. If the finger doesn’t reach quite well, then there wouldn’t be a full fingerprint over the screen. The partial use of finger shows that the reachability is relatively low. This can go a long way in understanding the positioning of functions. Once these patterns are understood, the data can later be utilized for a better accessibility.

Concentration upon higher ROI sections:

The different parts of a website or the phone’s UI carry a different significance. There are certain sections on the screen that carry a higher importance in terms of generating the revenue. When it comes to the service-providing-website, one needs to make sure all their services are highlighted and displayed to the viewer so as to attract more conversions. For E-Commerce websites, the website needs to place the higher revenue generating products on the more visible and easily navigated sections of the page. Hence, allowing the users enough time to think about the product rather than just wiping down looking at the price.

If you’d like to know how to generate a better ROI, do visit here to get a brief idea.

Predict user behavior:

The heat map helps in understanding the user behaviour and tells us which section and pages to work on. This way the underperforming pages can be concentrated more upon to make them function better. Also, the parts that people have been ignoring on the screen can be noted. Also, there could be a good understanding on which pages the user prefers scrolling down or clicks and proceeds ahead.

Take Away:

Although this hasn’t picked up the pace yet, heat maps are expected to go a long way in customizing the websites. Clubbing up with the appropriate data, patterns can be figured and evaluated to suit the web and user needs in a more efficient manner. With a drastic increase in the number of users day after day, it’s quite important for organizations to count on these statistics for a better performance.

Siva saikumar

Working as Digital Marketing Manager at Softscripts