Heat map analysis is coming of age as a tool in the Internet marketer’s toolkit. Heat map analysis creates a visual display of mouse movement or click activity over a web page. The idea is that where the mouse moves to, human eyes are following. Where the mouse sits on the screen, “heat” is displayed. The hotter (more red) the area of the screen, the more that part of the screen is looked at. Or the more clicks an area of the screen gets, the hotter it is.
Why would you need to know this? Because where people are looking and clicking on your web page, that’s where you need to place your most important marketing message or your device to capture the visitor’s email address. If you know what plot of real estate people are drawn to, you know where to focus your marketing.
At one time, heat map analysis was voodoo magic (as are many things associated with online marketing) beyond the use of everyday marketers, and it was very expensive. But now there are several options for generating free or low cost heat analyses for your own web site. Here are a couple of options:
www.crazyegg.com. This service, which is based on clicks, is free for users tracking less than 5,000 page views per month, and who are tracking four pages or less. Beyond that, they have pay plans that range from $9 to $99 per month.
www.clickdensity.com. This click tracking service is also free for analysis of less than 5,000 clicks per month, although it is limited to a single page. One interesting feature of some of their paid plans is the ability to do web page split-testing.
www.fusestats.com. This is a more complete analytics package that includes heat maps. Their free service is limited to 15,000 monthly page views and 15 heat maps per month, and it is based on clicks. This package can be used for paid search conversion tracking as well.
www.opencube.com. This company sells a product called Mouse Trends, which is JavaScript code that runs on your site. It allows for true mouse movement-based heat map creation, as opposed to just clicks. The cost is $149.
Spend an hour or so examining where people are looking and where people are clicking on your site. The information may be quite surprising, and could trigger some ideas on how to better present the information on your web site. The more you know, the better job you can do of crafting your marketing presentation.
If you need some help generating data for your web site to help you make better decisions, contact Work Media today at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.