Being a work-at-home mum is challenging. Being a work-at-home mum that uses the internet to make money is even more challenging.
How do you know if your visitors like what you’re offering? Are your potential customers leaving your website before buying anything? What does your website look like to a first time visitor?
You can answer all of these questions by using a heat map for your website. Unlike traditional site metrics like Google Analytics or JetPack for WordPress, a heat map measures how visitors interact with your website.
Areas of your website that receive the most clicks, hovers, or mouse movement appear in bright red. Areas of your website that don’t receive as much attention appear in blue. This lets you easily see what your visitors care about.
You can see one of my recent heat maps that was gathered from the home page of my website below:
There are several advantages to using a heat map on your website. Here are just five that I’ve discovered:
Track where users click. Which links in the body of your web page get the most clicks? I was surprised to find the link that got the most attention was the link to my content writing services. I thought visitors cared about more about my writing samples. A heat map will show you which pages visitors want to see.
Show what visitors don’t care about. After viewing my heat map, it was obvious that readers were ignoring the last line of text on my home page. I removed it since it was just a reference to another page that could easily be found on my website. Using a heat map can help you trim the fat from your website.
Draw attention to the right areas. I want to put an opt-in form on my website but I know from viewing my heat map that the best place to position it will be in the body of my webpage and not the sidebar.
By studying your heat map, you can learn what areas of your website visitors are drawn to and you can place products or sign up buttons where they’ll get the most notice from visitors.
Arrange your navigation. My heat map revealed that my most clicked on page was ‘services’. Since it was already in optimal placement, I didn’t move it. But if there’s a page you want visitors to click on, then a good heat map tool will show you where the best placement would be.
Tip: A prime position in your navigation is the second link, directly after the link to your home page.
Study your headlines. After reviewing my heat map, I saw that my headline was too long and wasn’t holding my visitor’s interest. I tweaked it and now I’m waiting to see the results. Since most visitors just scan your website text anyway, it’s important to track their response to your headlines and see where you can shorten it.
If want to get your own heat map, there are several popular options.
Click Tale. Click Tale offers a free and paid account option. The website doesn’t give the price of paid account but I did like their free account. My only caution is that installing the code in WordPress might be difficult for some beginning users.
Crazy Egg. Crazy egg has a variety of plans and pricing with their basic plan starting at €7 or $9 USD a month. But you can test drive their service for free for thirty days. I haven’t tried it out myself but I’ve heard their service is fantastic.
Mouseflow. Mouseflow offers four different plans with their basic plan costing €10 or $13 USD. I haven’t tried out Mouseflow yet either but they do have a very cool demo page that’s worth a look.
What analytics tools have helped you the most with your website? Will you be adding a heat map to your online toolbox?
