How to Utilise Heat Maps for E-commerce Success

Heat maps are a great little tool for anyone running an e-commerce site. They allow owners to determine which areas of the webpage customers are focusing on the most, as well as revealing the elements that visitors are going out of their way to avoid – or even missing completely. If you’ve not tried heat maps yet, why not?

In this blog post, we’ll share are few handy little tips on how to understand, implement and utilise heat maps on your e-commerce site to maximise conversion rates and keep customers happy.

“Hovering” = Uncertainty

A mouse-movement heat map can show you exactly where users have been moving their cursors around your page, and can tell you a lot about your e-commerce site as a result. If these maps reveal that customers have been “hovering” their cursor over a particular element, this suggests they are deeply uncertain about this area of your webpage. These areas will need tidying up and simplifying in order to make them more appealing and “click-friendly” to the customer.

Are Your Customers Clicking In The Right Places?

Click heat maps reveal the links that your customers have been clicking the most and also the ones they haven’t been drawn to. Some buttons – such as “add to basket” and “checkout” –  are more important than others, and if your heat map shows that these are being clicked very rarely, there’s a chance that there may be a design flaw lurking somewhere in your site.

You can use click maps to reposition different buttons on your webpage and prevent the less important ones from taking poll position over the buttons that require clicks. Your CTA (call to action) should appear bright red on a click heat map – indicating that it frequently attracts attention – so you’ll need to make this brighter and bolder (as well moving to a new location) if it isn’t attracting a healthy amount of activity from users. The same goes for your “basket” and “checkout” options.

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Checkout Problems

A lot of customers abandon their carts when shopping online – but this isn’t always because their grand total has tipped into the three-figure region. Sometimes it can be a simple case of a checkout form being far too complicated for their liking.

Form testing maps reveal exactly which parts of a checkout form customers have been able to complete comfortably without fuss, and also the parts they had trouble with. If visitors have been spending a great deal of time on your checkout page, it may suggest the font style is difficult to read or the form is too long and time-consuming. Examining the results of form testing maps will allow you to trim and redesign your checkout form accordingly. Ultimately, this should lead to increased conversions and a great deal fewer customers hurriedly abandoning their carts.