Why We Use Heat Mapping
Quick Summary At Avex, we use heat mapping to make data-driven designs. Heat mapping allows us to understand user behavior and therefore allows us to redesign sites most effectively. We break it down in this blog post.
What are Heat Maps?
A heat map is a visualization of movement or a behavior that shows frequency through color intensity. On web pages, areas with great engagement will be much darker or “hotter” while low attention areas will be lighter or “cooler.” Heat mapping is an effective, yet easy practice for collecting real usage data.
Data-Driven Design
Sure, all eCommerce sites have homepage, shop, and product pages but how a brand’s users browse the site can vary drastically. The best way to redesign an experience is to understand how people are currently using it. With heat maps, we can identify patterns and pain points in the purchase funnel, and use that knowledge to better design for a brand’s user.
Seeing the Whole Picture
Nothing occurs in a vacuum and rarely does one source tell the full story. Heat mapping is useful by itself, but can add insight to any significant findings in the client’s analytics. We can make stronger more informed decisions and we see heat maps as one component in our tool kit.
Enhanced A/B Testing
A/B testing is king when it comes to optimizing our ideas. While many testing tools can tell us which variation performed better, heat maps can help tell us why. We aren’t always the best judges at why we like something more. That’s why it helps to look at actions. Heat maps can also be a simple A/B testing tool by itself. Clients may be on board with testing, but their budget may not be. In those cases, we set up two heat maps that are forced to capture behavior on a particular variable. By reviewing the resulting visuals, we can get some idea of the better performing variant. Is this the best method? No, but some insight is better than none.
What are the Options?
- Hotjar
- Lucky Orange
- Crazy Egg
- Mouseflow
- Smartlook
- Fullstory
Many of these tools all offer robust heat maps, screen recordings, funnel reviews, and feedback collection. Our agency prefers Hotjar for its pricing, easy integration with Shopify, and has an amazing agency plan that makes it so easy to manage multiple clients in one place.
