Heatmap | Better Understand Your Customer Behaviour

Is my content up to the mark? This one question often triggers a lot of marketers and creators. And often, it is unanswered. Marketing is not as simple as it seems. And not as complex as some marketers feel. It is all about hitting the bull’s eye. The bull’s eye, in this case, is the users or target audience.

The online platforms are saturated with content. But, not saturated with good and quality content. And that is where you have the chance. However, how do you know whether the content is what the customers expect? There are numerous tools on the web that help you understand your site, the content, and user behaviour.

While many tools help you optimize the start and endpoint of customer behaviour with the site, the heatmap is different. But how, is the main question? They help you to identify and understand the user journey. 

What is a heatmap?

In the early 1990s, software designer Cormac Kinney created a tool for graphical representation of the real-time financial market information and was termed as a heatmap. This offline representation has now been transformed into an online platform.

The heatmaps are all about increasing the heat on the page. They provide a comprehensive overview of customer behaviour through visual representation. You can understand the interaction of the user with the site at a glance.

The heatmaps are color-coded, with the color being denser on the most interacted regions, and lighter accordingly. In the present day, they are the most effective tool for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). The heatmaps allow you to do the following:

• Make better and informed decisions: With accurate data, you can understand where the major focus lies.
• Data-based decisions with A/B testing: A lot of marketers rely on market research and testing to implement their strategies. So, the integration of A/B testing with heatmaps is sure to provide you with some big numbers.
• Updating or revamping the website: If you feel that you lack in the design or content, do not change it completely. Try bringing updates and revamp it. Then, see how the users respond. This is one of the effective keys to constantly upgrade your site with heatmaps.

You can’t argue with a heatmap. And these are sure to keep you at the win-win situation whatsoever. Just grasp well onto this tool.

Considerations While Using Heatmaps

You cannot implement all strategies across all platforms. Every tool has its potential pitfalls. You need to understand the market psychology and strategy for every technique. And so, to avoid wasting your energy and efforts on the heatmap, here is a list of considerations to make:

• It is important to have a large amount of data for accurate analysis and to avoid any anomalies. The lesser the traffic, the more difficult it will be to understand heatmap customer behaviour and find a pattern.
• Heatmaps can mislead analysts to make several assumptions. They provide only the number and not the reason for the actions taken on the page.

Advantages of Heatmap as a Diagnostic Tool

A heatmap is a diagnostic tool that allows you to sit back at home and gather data from a large number of users in a few clicks. The heatmaps allow marketers to integrate user behaviour with other tools. They have a list of advantages to offer. These include:

• Provide an instant overview of performance on the web. They accelerate the movement of the problem-solver journey. The types of heatmaps for understanding the behaviour include:
  • Scroll heatmaps
  • Click heatmaps
  • Movement heatmaps
  • Geo heatmaps
• A picture is a cut above the words, and a heatmap is a cut above the numbers and statistics. After all, the marketers will undoubtedly choose a visual representation over those numerous rows and columns of the spreadsheet.
• Easier learning from the heatmaps to create a better web design. You need just 50 milliseconds for an impressive first impression. It allows you to track till what region the users scroll, and how they interact with CTA. This further helps in revamping the placement of CTA buttons and the various sections on the site.
• When we fill out forms and surveys, many times, our words don’t justify our actions. But, heatmaps provide an understanding of the navigational pattern. Heatmaps provide raw feedback on customer behaviour.

How to Work with Heatmaps?

Undoubtedly, heatmaps provide you with a lot of information. But, it is important to streamline all the data and put it to the right use. These are one of the well-proven strategies to optimize your website and for conversion rate optimization. Here is how you can work with heatmaps:

• Analyze the user flow on your site
• Have an experience of your own website
• Understand the driving channels to your site
• Heatmaps are like spying on your users
• Bring the CTA (call-to-action) into the ‘line of fire’, i.e., where the most attention is.
• Figure out what people are looking for. Give them a guided path on what actions they can take once they land on the site.
• Remove the potential barriers and potential pitfalls that make the customers back off.

Customer Behaviour and Its Types

After knowing how to work with heatmaps, one thing we know for sure is that without knowing the heatmap customer behaviour, all our efforts go in vain. After all, the main motive is customer acquisition, especially in the case of e-commerce platforms.

Among all the tactics, an important one is marketing psychology and an essential part of it is customer behaviour. Studying heatmap customer behaviour allows us to fill in the market gap. It further helps to understand the presentation of products and to maximize the impact of the website.

Understanding the buyer persona, customer behaviour and marketing psychology are some essential factors for conversion rate optimization (CRO). 

There are mainly four types of consumer behaviour, which include:

1. Complex-buying customer behaviour:

The customers exhibit this behaviour while making an infrequent and expensive purchase. In this scenario, the consumers highly research the market before making an investment. For e.g., while buying a house, or a car. They look for competitive prices, deals, and much more.

2. Dissonance-reducing customer behaviour:

In this, the customer behaviour the complexity of choices among the brands. They worry about regretting their choice to purchase later.

3. Habitual-buying customer behaviour:

It is not about brand loyalty or liking towards the product. Rather, it is about the habit of frequent purchase of a product.

4. Variety-seeking customer behaviour:

Under this, the customer exhibits the behaviour of experimenting and trying new products. It is not about dissatisfaction with older products but just seeking to buy new ones for the cause of variation.

Conclusion

To summarize, the heatmap does not cover all the data that you need. But, it surely gives you a fair idea of customer engagement with the site. It is like working at the backend of the implementation of the marketing strategies.

The only drawback of heatmaps is that they are not at all effective with fewer data. Therefore, it is one of the most powerful tools in the marketer’s arsenal. To get an even better picture, you can easily integrate it with A/B testing methods and tools.

They allow you to direct your efforts and strategies to the right location of the page. So, why not give the users what they expect even before they know it. It is not always possible to be perfect. However, it is possible to be constant.

Also Read:

• Real-Time Data Visualization With Heatmaps
• How to Optimize UX with Heatmap Software?
• Heatmap: To Optimize Website Conversion Rate
• 5 Tips to Build Trust in eCommerce With Heatmaps
• 11 Heatmap Statistics to Shaping Business
• Improve Email Customer Retention Using Heatmap