How to analyze heat maps in HotJar
HotJar is a tool that allows you to find out what users are doing on your website. The resulting data and analysis is an excellent support for site management. This will allow you to better tailor your site to your customers’ expectations and needs, and thus translate into better sales and profits.
What is a heat map?
Heatmaps are graphical representations of data about the areas users click on on a specific subpage of your site. The smallest number of clicks is indicated by blue and green colors, higher by colors such as yellow, orange up to red (the places with the highest interest).
The heat map can apply to any subpage: product tab, home page, shopping cart, etc.
What elements can you analyze using the HotJar heat map?
The following are the key information you can get by using this tool. The data collected is an invaluable aid in monitoring and improving the website.
- Gather data.
Don’t expect full reports and analysis right after installing the tool. You need to give it some time to collect data on users so that the information collected is translated into reality. The more information you collect, the more accurate the results will be. - Select a site for analysis.
HotJar allows you to select a specific page for analysis. You can focus on the home page or on the product page or contact form. It all depends on what you need. - Select the type of heat map.
– Analyze clicks.
You can learn about and analyze the areas that users are most likely to click on. This shows very well the elements they are most interested in
– Analyze mouse movement.
While on the surface it seems like unimportant information, the mouse movement will help you identify sites that attract users’ attention (even if they don’t click on them). Maybe it’s worth changing something in that case to encourage them to click?
– Analyze scrolling.
Scroll maps show how long users stay on a page and where they scroll. Such a map shows the point at which users lose interest and stop scrolling the site, or even leave. - Analyze data and identify problems.
On the heat map, you can easily spot areas that users find unattractive or problematic. If a site is clicked on frequently, but doesn’t lead to the desired result, then you need to ask yourself: why? And so, for example, many people enter the contact form, but don’t fill it out, or give up halfway through. The reason for this could be that the amount of data you require is too large, or there is a problem with the page loading. The same is true for sites that are poorly clickable. You can think about how you should improve their attractiveness. - Test the changes made.
Continue to monitor user behavior after corrections and changes are made. This is the only way to check whether the actions taken are bringing the expected benefits. Besides, no solutions work forever. User expectations and needs are changing, so you should respond to such situations on an ongoing basis.
Rely on a lot of data
HotJar is best analyzed in the company of data collected from other analytical tools. This will give you a complete picture of user behavior. And such information is invaluable in planning advertising campaigns, improving the site, and even in introducing new products or services.
