Data-Driven Website Design: Using Heat Maps and Click Analysis to Optimize User Experience
In this episode of Process to Profitability, I dive into the world of heat mapping software and how it can help you optimize your websites for better user experience and business results. I discuss the how you can gather and use data from heat maps, click maps, and website recordings to make decisions about your website design. Whether you're looking to improve navigation, rearrange important information, or optimize call to action buttons, heat mapping software can provide the data-driven solutions you need. Tune in to learn how to leverage heat maps to improve user experience and drive conversions for your business.
Timestamps:
[00:00:28] What a heatmap is
[00:01:58] Other types of data you can gather using heat mapping software
[00:03:42] What you can learn from heat maps
[00:10:05] Make decisions based on the accumulation of data
[00:11:02] Heat mapping resources
[00:12:36] Access my new Homepage Writer today
Key Takeaways:
Introduction to heat mapping software
Understanding user behavior through user session recordings and click data analysis
Making the best next step clear and easy for user engagement and conversion
Using data on user behavior to inform decision-making on wording and design choices
Importance of placing important information in prominent positions on the website
Using heat maps to analyze user behavior and scroll patterns
Analyzing user behavior to determine necessary website rearrangements
Insights provided by heat maps, such as popular viewing areas and unlinked spots
Resources:
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: If you want a way to see a lot of detailed information about how people are actually using your website, without digging into all of the analytics and other kinds of data, I am going to be sharing a tool that I like to use for that exact purpose. Today we are talking about heat maps and how you can use those to make data driven decisions in your business.
What a heatmap is
[00:00:28] Samantha Mabe: Let's start by talking about what a heat map actually is. So a heat map is a shot of your website that includes overlaid data that tells you how people are interacting with your site.
[00:00:45] So for a heat map specifically, it is going to use colors to show you exactly how much time someone is spending on your site. So the hottest colors, red, orange, yellow, are going to be the most viewed parts of your site, and then the cooler colors. Once you get down to greens and blues, that means less people have viewed that part of your site.
[00:01:11] What you're gonna notice in any time you look at a heat map is always at the top of the page is going to be the most viewed because that's what people see first. And then you can see how they scroll down the page. Do people actually stick around? Which sections do they read the most?
[00:01:26] And it gives you a visual way to understand that data in a way that is a lot more detailed than just, which page did they come to? This is going to be on that page that they visited, what did they actually do? What did they spend time looking at?
[00:01:43] And what's so cool about the heat mapping software that you can use in your business is that it gives you those types of information, but it also gives you a couple of other types that can be really informative for your business.
Other types of data you can gather using heat mapping software
[00:01:58] Samantha Mabe: The second option is recordings. So you actually get to see someone navigate through your website from the time that they land on it to the time that they close it out, and what do they do? How much time are they spending?
[00:02:15] And the third thing you could look at is a click map. So it will show you how people are actually clicking on your website, either as an individual or over time. In a window of time when people come to your site, what are they clicking on? And it will make the clicks that are the most popular will have the largest kind of indicator. The clicks that are least popular, maybe only one person clicked on it, it's gonna have a smaller indicator.
[00:02:42] So you can see when somebody glances on my website, what actions are they taking? What are they looking at? What are they spending time on? What might be confusing? Which pages are they navigating to from their first initial landing? Maybe you find out that people are landing on your site reading a little bit, and then they are not doing anything. So they've gone off to some other tab on their browser or they've walked away from the computer.
How that data from heat mapping is different from other analytics
[00:03:08] Samantha Mabe: So the data you can gather from heat mapping software is a lot more specific to individual pages on your website than something that you're gonna get from Google Analytics or Fathom Analytics or some kind of other analytics software that is just giving you the hard numbers of how many people are landing and potentially what journey they're taking. So they click on this page, then this page, then this page. This is gonna actually show you what that looks like.
What you can learn from heat maps
[00:03:42] Samantha Mabe: So I wanna talk about why heat maps can be so helpful when you're making decisions and what kind of insights you can gain from them. And then I'm gonna share a couple of my heat mapping softwares that I have used and that I recommend.
Find out where people are spending time on each page of your site
[00:03:59] Samantha Mabe: The first insight that you can get is what parts of your page are people actually spending time looking at? So this is going to be more from the heat map itself, where you're looking at those, that color overlay.
[00:04:12] You will see as you scroll down that in most cases, less people are going to be looking at the footer of your website than are looking at the top of your website. And that makes sense. A lot of people do not spend their time scrolling through and reading an entire page, and that's why it's important to have things like headers, to make sure information that's important is right at the top.
[00:04:34] But what you can do with this information is look at the sections that are the most popular and think about putting a call to action button there. So if you have a sales page, for example, and everybody is taking some time to look at the modules of your course or the parts of your process, and they're spending a lot of time there, you can see it because it's red or it's orange. You can see they've spent a lot of time looking at that. That would be a great place to make sure that you have a call to action button to then purchase your course or apply to work with you because you know people are already taking the time to look. You wanna put the next step right in front of them, make it super easy.
[00:05:20] It can also give you information as to whether or not you need to rearrange things on your website. So if you have important information about your service, And it's towards the bottom of your site. And maybe you get a lot of questions about the specific thing that's answered on your website, but people still seem to be asking that maybe an indication that it needs to be moved up further on the page because people aren't actually getting there when they scroll, and it's clearly something that is an objection that they have.
[00:05:58] So you can take the information that you get based on what people are actually looking at and what they're taking the time to read and make decisions about what information should go near there or what, how the page should be laid out in order to give them the most important information that they need and answer their objections so that they are ready to take action.
Find out how people are navigating your website
[00:06:20] Samantha Mabe: The second thing that you can learn from all of this is how people are navigating your site. So if you've ever watched a recording of somebody using your website or if you've sat next to somebody using your website, it's going to give you all kinds of information because it will show you their scroll, but it will also track how their mouse is moving on the screen.
[00:06:44] So are they all over the place in a blog post? Are they scrolling up and down and up and down? Maybe that means that you have information that's missing or that doesn't make sense in the order that it's laid out.
[00:06:57] Are they getting lost? So they're clicking on one link and then realizing that's not where they wanna go, so they're moving back to the previous page to try to figure out what they are actually looking for. Do they know where to go next? So if they are clicking on something, if there are multiple options, do they understand the journey that they need to take through your website to get the answers that they're looking for?
[00:07:21] You can also find out what pages people visit and what in what order. So your recordings will tell you what page they start out on that's gonna give you information about what are the most popular pages on your website, but then what are they doing once they're on that page, and where are they going next?
[00:07:40] So if you've got a blog post that's really popular and you watch somebody read through that, what action are they actually taking? Are they then bouncing off your site?
[00:07:51] You might have been able to get that information from an analytics software, but what if they're clicking on another page and which page are they clicking on? How are they moving through your site? And does it reflect something that makes sense or are there links that you need to add or things that you need to take away?
[00:08:11] And really what we're looking for here is are you making the best next step clear and easy? So on your blog posts, are you giving them a call to action that makes sense? Maybe that's adding related posts. Maybe it's signing up for your service or your newsletter, but are you giving them the information that they need to make a decision and then making that next step really easy and obvious so that they will stay on your site longer, but they're moving in the direction of working towards you.
Find out what people are clicking on
[00:08:45] Samantha Mabe: The third insight that this kind of software is going to give you is what people are clicking on. So you will notice as you look at the clicks which call to action buttons are the most popular, which links are the most popular, where are people clicking?
[00:09:02] And that can be really helpful if you're trying to review which types of call to action copy are the most helpful. Is it better to have something really simple like 'learn more'? Or do you want something with a little bit more personality, like, 'let's jump on a call' or 'join me on Zoom' based on what people are actually choosing to take action on and clicking on. You will be able to have data to support how you want to word that.
[00:09:34] The other thing you can look at is, are there spots that people click that aren't actually links? And I've seen this on my own website and on other people's websites as well, that there are places that people will click multiple people that are not actually links, they don't go anywhere. And so that tells me as a designer, that either that should be linked because people think that it should lead somewhere else or that I need to make it clear that it's not going to go anywhere else.
Make decisions based on the accumulation of data
[00:10:05] Samantha Mabe: The one thing I will say when you're looking at information like that is never make one of those decisions based off of just one person's data, of just one recording or one click. Make your decisions based off of the accumulation of data. That might not be a thousand people, it might be 10 people clicked on this thing that's not a link, that could be enough to take action on. But doing something just because one person tried to click on it, could just be an anomaly and it's not something you necessarily have to work at.
[00:10:40] What you're trying to do is gather enough data, To say, okay, this is how people are using my website. This is the things they're trying to do that might be missing. How can I make this user experience better for them so that it improves their experience and ultimately my results in my business?
Heat mapping resources
[00:11:02] Samantha Mabe: A couple of resources for you. I am currently using Hotjar as a heat mapping software on my website. I have the free version and it records about 35% of my website visits, which is enough for me right now because I'm don't need to see what everybody is doing. I'm just interested in getting enough information to take a look at things.
[00:11:26] I have also used Crazy Egg, which has a free trial, but then is a paid software. So it has a lot of information you can dig into, but it is more of an investment.
[00:11:38] So if you don't have any heat mapping software right now, I recommend starting with something like Hot Jar that has the free version that you can use and take a look at how people are making choices on your website. And then you can decide if you need more data to upgrade to something else.
Take action by setting up a heat map on your website
[00:12:02] Samantha Mabe: As I'm wrapping up this quick episode today, I want you to start by installing a heat mapping software on your website. Sign up for an account, install it on your website, and then let it sit. They will usually email you when you have your first recording or your first amount of data that's gathered, but you can just let that sit for about 30 days before you actually take any time to review it, because that's going to give you enough time to actually get enough visitors to your site to see data that you can make decisions on.
Access my new Homepage Writer today
[00:12:36] Samantha Mabe: If you have been working on your website and you think that you might want to update some of the copy to get people to keep scrolling, to grab their attention, to keep them on the website, to get them to click on that call to action, I actually created a new free resource called the Homepage Writer. So this is an AI powered app that allows you to answer just two simple questions about your business, and then it will generate some headline, subheading and call to action options. It will write an introduction to your business for you and give you an SEO description for your homepage, and you can access and try that out at lemonandthesea.com/magic.
[00:13:21] It is really cool and it's a really quick and easy way to get some ideas for copy that is going to engage people and keep them on your site longer so that they can then take action towards working with you and you can continue to grow your business.
