Managing and tracking your website’s lead can be challenging if you do not have the right tool to analyze the data. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to look at how the customers are interacting with your website so you know the areas that require improvement. Without a great user experience, you cannot have enough traffic to achieve your goals. One of the simplest ways to get an insider’s glimpse of your website and customer behavior is to use heatmap tools or software. These tools will analyze the data and provide you with a detailed and comprehensive report depicting what’s working and what’s not. Apart from conducting A/B testing and segmenting visitors, applying heatmap tools will streamline your sales funnel. If you are new to the term ‘heatmap tools, you must go through this article to understand what these are, what features should be in your heatmap tools, what benefits, and various available tools in the market. By the end of this article, you will be able to pick a heatmap tool for your business to improve your conversion rates. Let’s dive in.
What are Heatmap Tools?
Heatmap tools are very useful in getting valuable insights into your customer’s behavior and how they are reacting to your website’s elements. These tools will depict the activities, such as the mouse movements by the customers, where they are clicking, how far they have navigated the page, what element keeps them engaging, and other things. Once you get such details, it will be easier for you to know where you can make the required changes to engage the customers efficiently. Not only this, heatmaps are capable of recording user sessions so that the concerned team can play them for close monitoring. The ultimate goal of these heatmap tools is to keep customers engaged and improve conversion rates. With heatmap tools, you can find out the potential dropout points. E-commerce websites leverage these tools as it helps boost the ROI. Heatmaps work on actual gathered data and eliminate the dependency on assumption-based decision-making. Thus, you get positive results for your business.
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Benefits of Using Heatmap Tools
Below are some benefits that can help you to make your tracking of customers’ online behavior easier to gather the required information.
- Confetti and mouse tracking– Heatmap represents the static display of your website. It uses color coding to determine the areas that the customers mostly and frequently visit. The data are distinguished using different colors, where cold represents ‘few,’ and hot represents ‘many’. In addition, heatmaps also track the mouse movements, which is called tracking, and are displayed as lines across your website. You will get a detailed report of this, called the confetti report.
- Scroll maps– These are also another type of map that uses a different color-coding system to represent how far the customers have scrolled your website. The scroll map displays the red-hot color for the first page, as customers start from there and always spend some time there. But, once the customer starts scrolling, you will see the color change.
- Understand customers’ behavior- Session recording allows the website’s team to take a screen video of their visiting customers. You can re-watch those recordings to monitor and understand their behavior. It is beneficial to know your website’s and customers’ weak points, so you can work on them and make the experience better.
- Events- You can also see the events triggered by the customers. Different customers behave differently to your website. Watching events will help you understand your customers in a better way.
- Form and error analytics- Every website has some forms included that allow the customers to take some specified action, such as signing up for a form, taking a subscription, and others. While error analytics helps to understand the potential error and fix it. It helps the company understand where the customers stumble to take some action or leave the form without completing the task.
- A/B testing- To improve your website’s user experience, it is important to conduct A/B testing on every element to understand more effective generating leads. The heatmap tools come with the facility to conduct A/B testing to create a better version of the original website. You can do it by using the heatmap tool’s editor, allowing you to create different variants of the website. This work becomes easier due to the drag-and-drop feature of the heatmap tools.
Must-have Features of Heatmap Software Tools
If you start the search hunt for an outstanding heatmap tool, several options with different features will come across. When choosing the heatmap tool for tracking your website’s improvement, you must check if they have the below-mentioned features.
- Behavioral analytics- It allows businesses to make the desired changes or improvements to their websites to create a smooth user experience. With this feature, they will be able to gather and track all the mouse movements and users’ feedback. It is essential to know any deflection of the customers’ actions.
- Predictive analysis- It is one of the most important features of all. It uses AI technology to make predictions by analyzing historical data. It also uses machine learning to identify the potential risks and ROI opportunities for improving the productivity and efficiency of the website.
- Sales funnel analysis- To improve the overall website experience, it is necessary to understand the customer’s complete journey and identify the location where they spend time. With these insights, you can optimize the web pages by making the required changes. It will lead the users to take any action, such as purchasing a product, signing up for a subscription, etc. to improve the conversion rate.
- Available as an application- Staying updated is necessary, and it is only possible if people can gather and track the users’ behavior while on the go. For that, your chosen heatmap tool must be available as an app to be accessed by mobile users.
- Surveying- Your heatmap tool should allow the facility to gather feedback from their customers to know the areas that need improvement. In such a way, the company knows what element of its website is not contributing to generating more sales.
- Real-time monitoring- This feature allows the company to track the activities of its customers in real time. It helps the company take immediate action and improve its experience within no time.
Best Heatmap Tools
Below is the list of the topmost heatmap tools of all time. You should go through the list and decide which will suit your website’s requirements.
1. Mouseflow
This heatmap tool is all about improving and enhancing your conversion rates by working on your customer’s pain points. You can replay the sessions using this tool, displaying all the mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling activities. Not only this, you can see other details of customers, such as location, duration, and source. It also improves the sales funnel by describing the customer’s journey throughout their visit. You can also extract a detailed report on all these activities. Mouseflow allows you to create surveys to get feedback from your customers and to understand their views. Mouseflow comes with a free plan. This tool is best suited for startups, large businesses, session recording, etc. The starter plan is $24 per month, supporting only one website. Larger plans are $79, $159, and $299 per month.
2. Crazy Egg
This tool has a fantastic name justifying it, as it will provide you access to several hidden and valuable data for making the required changes. It takes screenshots (heatmaps, confetti, list reports, etc.) and records the screen while customers visit your website. You will get essential data, such as where the customer is accessing your website, which device they are using, mouse movements, the most clicked element of the website, and where the customer stops while scrolling. You can also get the total time spent by the customer. You can get information by grouping the customers based on their interests, activities, etc. You will get an A/B testing feature with an editor to make instant changes. You can integrate third parties, such as Shopify, WordPress, etc. The basic plan is $24 per month, billed annually. It grows with 30,000 page views, 25 snapshots, and 100 recordings. You can go for their premium packages at $9, $99, and $249 per month billed annually to increase these limits.
3. Clicktale
You can avail of this tool on desktop and mobile devices. It is a superb analytics platform combining the powers of both human and machine intelligence. You can use it to track mouse movements and clicks. It comes with an attention heatmap that will tell you where people are focusing and what they are skipping. Another feature is scroll mapping, allowing you to know how far they have scrolled your website. It can also record customers’ activities. To know its prices, you need to connect with their team. It is well-suited for large companies, enterprises, analytics, etc.
4. Hotjar
This tool comes with an easy interface with a simple look. It is a great tool that helps you understand your customers’ experience. You can get all the valuable data without being overloaded with huge numbers. It also offers some additional tools for improving the digital experience for your customers. You will get heatmaps for various activities performed by the customers, such as clicking, mouse movement, scrolling, and others. You can even download and share heat maps. It allows you to record the customer sessions and add notes for different timestamps. You can create surveys to get valuable feedback from your customers and work on making a better experience. You can avail of its basic free plan for personal use. Its plus version is $39 per month. For business, you will get more custom pricing. It is well-suited for freelancers and individual users.
5. Lucky Orange
With Lucky orange, you can track and see all the activities of your customers in real time. You can use it to track the clicks, mouse movements, and how far the customers have scrolled down the website. You can also analyze the customers’ behavior by grouping them based on their interests. You can record complete sessions of the customers from the beginning till they leave the site. You can even replay those recordings to closely monitor their behavior, where they stopped, which CTA they prefer, and others. You will get real-time data that is being shared among each team member. It also helps you manage the funnel to understand the customers’ pain points and act accordingly. Also, you will get accurate analytics to make your decision better. You will get four different pricing buckets for Lucky Orange. They are $9, $18, $45, and $90 per month. For a large enterprise, you need to contact them via their website.
6. Inspectlet
This tool is an all-rounder ensuring guaranteed results for increasing conversion rates. It might not have a modern interface, but it has everything that can help you to optimize your website and generate more leads. It has a fantastic feature: eye-tracking based on the fact that eyes move with the mouse cursor. It has a session recording feature to let you replay it later for more details. You can also get the details, such as visit duration, navigation path, etc. You can even tag the users to edit the metadata of the session. You can conduct A/B testing and use its editor to make the required changes. You can leverage its form analytics and error logging tracking. You can avail of this tool for free, but many paid versions also start at $39 per month.
7. FullStory
This tool is fantastic and has overcome the problems of thrashing mice and rage clicks. This tool is not limited to heatmaps and session recording but provides you with many other benefits you have never expected. It is an outstanding tool providing you with a detailed report on user behavior. Not only this, you will get an analytics report on why the website visitors are not converting. It helps you to take necessary actions that let you improve the user experience. You can get heatmaps, scroll maps, and click maps. You can prioritize those tasks to increase your chances of getting success. It improves team collaboration. FullStory comes with a free plan providing 1,000 sessions per month. Contact their sales department if you are a large business for prices.
8. Smartlook
With an intelligent look, you can leverage the combined benefits of website analytics for both desktop and mobile applications. You can track the customer’s behavior on any mobile app, website, or landing page. You can apply various filters more than 30 to find the specific factors impacting the user experience. You can use this tool for tagging visitors. It allows you to add the timestamp to the recordings and share them among team members. You do not have to go through the entire recording, as it allows you to view only a specific event, saving a lot of time. It provides you with event analytics, proving to be a better option for funnels and conversions. It comes with some tools to find the customers’ pain points to make the required changes. Smartlook also has a free plan, but it’s light. Paid plans are $39 and $79 per month.
9. Ptengine
As per Ptengine, using only Google Analytics will not do the wonder that you are expecting to improve the conversion rates for your website. You need something that brings better features to your website. Ptengine is one of those tools, providing the digital experience tool that offers you detailed insights into why visitors are leaving your website. So you can determine the pain points and act accordingly to bring them back. The Ptengine platform is versatile, allowing you to manage things smoothly, as it divides the platform into three sections — insights, engage, and data platform modules. Insight consists of different types of heatmap tools and visitor segmentation. It lets you dive into the details, such as where the visitors are coming from and where they leave the website. Engage takes things a step further and provides valuable insights that push potential visitors through your funnel. This tool improves team collaboration. It also allows you to conduct the A/B testing. The data platform can be integrated seamlessly with the company’s CRM and other apps. Ptengine provides you with a free version but limited features. The prices on the site are listed in Yuan. For more plans, you need to contact the company itself for customization.
10. VWO
VWO is another all-rounder heatmaps tools option, offering a complete suite of website optimization tools. It finds the customers’ pain points who bounced back and acts immediately and tries to bring those customers back. It comes with an excellent visual funnel feature that helps you find out your customers’ drop-off points. Also, you can record sessions of your customers that you can play later to understand their behavior closely. You can get all updated behavioral data in real time. You can leverage the features of form analytics and surveys. You can use its visual editor. It also offers ready-to-use widgets, such as CTAs. You can also get various A/B, split, and multivariate testing tools to improve your website. VWO comes with complete visitor segmentation. You can even customize the overall analytics and reporting. VWO Engage provides you with a Facebook Messenger tool and one for managing cart abandonment campaigns. Each tool comes with an additional price. VWO Insights is $169 per month. VWO Testing is $199 per month.
Conclusion
Heatmap tools are a great option to get detailed information on how a customer behaves once they visit your website. Understanding customers’ behavior is essential as each sale depends on their behavior. Making the necessary and immediate changes for your potential customers is essential to improving conversion rates. Many companies are using heatmap tools that help them to identify the pain points, so they can act accordingly using testing. Once you get the detailed report, you can make a better decision that is always in favor of the success of your website. You can choose any of the heatmap tools mentioned above to suit your business requirement. So, ensure to choose the right and efficient heatmap tool that will benefit you with less effort.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are heat mapping tools?
Heat mapping tools are behavior analytics tools that are used to study and understand how visitors interact with individual website pages.
2. What is a heat map image?
A heat map (or heatmap) is a data visualization technique that depicts the magnitude of a phenomenon as color in two dimensions. The variation in color may be by hue or intensity, giving clear visual indications to the reader about how the phenomenon is clustered or varies over space.
3. Which of the heat mapping tools can be used for heatmap generation?
Crazyegg is one of the best heatmap tools to analyze user interaction for various pages of a website through scroll maps, heatmaps, and many other visual reports that represent how customers are responding to a website.
4. What can be used instead of a heatmap?
A grouped bar chart is the best alternative to a heatmap to show users’ behavior data on a website.
5. Does Google Analytics have a heat map?
Google now has released Heatmap that you can create using Google Analytics data through a Chrome extension called page analytics. Heat maps are the visual representation of the individual values on a metric. A heatmap gives you a graphical representation of your site data.
6. How do I create a heat map in Excel?
- Select the heat map.
- Press Ctrl + 1 to open the Format Cells dialog.
- On the Number tab, under Category, select Custom.
- In the Type box, type 3 semicolons (;;;).
- Click OK to apply the custom number format.
7. How can I create a heat map in PowerPoint?
- Click Home >Layer Pane.
- On the Field List tab, click Heat Map.
Notes: When you switch to a heat map, the Height field changes to Value. You may want to zoom in or rotate the chart to get a better view of the heat map. You can’t add annotations to heat maps.
8. How do I add a heat map to the tableau?
- Add Measure Profit.
- Add Measure to the Rows section.
- Add Dimension field.
- Select Density Mark.
- Set Intensity and Opacity.
- Set Size of Tableau Heat Map.
- Create Final Tableau Heat Map.
9. What is a heatmap for a website?
A website heatmap is a visual representation of how visitors interact with each element on your website. It depicts which sections get more clicks and grab your visitor’s attention.
My name is Vijay Singh Khatri, and I enjoy meeting new people and finding ways to help them have an uplifting experience. I have had a variety of customer service opportunities, through which I was able to have fewer returned products and increased repeat customers when compared with co-workers.
