Heat maps are a great tool for understanding user behavior on your
website. By analyzing click patterns, scroll depth, and engagement
levels, you can uncover valuable insights to optimize your site's user
experience and boost conversions.
In this exercise, we'll work through a real-world example of
interpreting heat maps for Kosmo's Q, an e-commerce client and discuss
potential improvements based on the data.
We're going to go through some heat maps that one of my clients has furnished with permission and go through some of the things that might be of interest for us to try and fix. So this is the homepage of a heat map for a Cosmos queue. We just went through it in a previous lesson. I want us to go through the process that I recommended before. So I've attached these separately so that we can go through.
I have home page. I have product detail page. And I have collection pages. And this is the home page here. And even looking above the fold at everything that's going on, there are a few things that kind of stand out to me.
So I'll pause and let you reflect for a moment on what you think might be happening here. So a few things that are of interest for me. You can pause this if you're still thinking. But I see a lot of people kind of zooming in on this products link here, which leads me to believe this is the actual storefront. People care less about what our story is, and they care more about how they can actually use our products.
So it might be of interest for us to try and swap those two links, see what the overall engagement looks like there, or break out this products link into subcategories of what we sell, so rubs, sauces, other accessories, that sort of thing. People are also uninterested in subscriptions, which makes a lot of sense. We confirmed this with interviews, actually, that people like to try before they buy. So there's something kind of going on there. People love dismissing the pop-up.
This is actually the number one clicked element on the entire page. And we found that this was fairly intrusive, even though it was a sale. So putting a blurb up here or even in the bottom corners, the indexed over the rest of the layout might be really useful for us. People are engaging with primary and secondary calls to action, but seeing it a little bit further below the fold wasn't working so well for us. So we made that change to move them a little bit further up.
And then we were seeing some engagement here, but not a whole lot of people were actually looking at some of the individual rubs. And then by this point, it kind of just drops off. Nobody's actually looking at anything. And you can see this with our scroll maps as well. So this is the scroll map for the home page.
You see, essentially, by the time we get to these subcategories here, nobody's actually looking at anything. So what would we do to try and fix this? I mentioned a couple of things earlier that we did to try and address some things. But if you're noticing things of your own that don't necessarily connect with some of the suggestions that I'm providing, Try and understand what common sense things you would be doing to try and fix those things. Taking a closer look at the heat map on the product detail page, this is fairly common for an online store that you see a lot of engagement with configuration options.
But normally, you also see a lot more engagement with an image gallery, which kind of makes sense. This is really just an individual product. Doesn't really matter what the optical parameters of it looks like, right? People do care a lot about the ingredients. So what ended up happening was in interviews, we found that people cared a lot about whether the ingredients worked with their dietary restrictions.
Taking a look at the scroll map on mobile here, you're seeing a lot of drop-off for the frequently bought-together upsell. Only 50% of people are actually getting to that. Seems interesting. These upsells tend to result in improved average order value, so how can we make that a little bit more visible? It's definitely of interest.
And then taking a closer look at the heat maps on collection pages, you're seeing a lot of bouncing off to see the products again, and not a whole lot of engagement on individual products. And in fact, some of our more popular ones seem to be a little bit more buried further down, where you're getting a couple of more taps. This also, when I see individual taps like this, it tells me a little bit that Maybe we need to track a longer time frame to figure out what's going on here. So sometimes you can understand whether or not a heat map is giving you the right amount of data to make an actionable decision. So those are some things that show up for me as I'm going through this heat map.
But I want you to go through each set of these heat maps, figure out five things that are wrong with each or that are surprising, things you would try and do to address any sort of fixes for each of them.
We're going to go through some heat maps that one of my clients has furnished with permission and go through some of the things that might be of interest for us to try and fix. So this is the homepage of a heat map for a Cosmos queue. We just went through it in a previous lesson. I want us to go through the process that I recommended before. So I've attached these separately so that we can go through.
I have home page. I have product detail page. And I have collection pages. And this is the home page here. And even looking above the fold at everything that's going on, there are a few things that kind of stand out to me.
So I'll pause and let you reflect for a moment on what you think might be happening here. So a few things that are of interest for me. You can pause this if you're still thinking. But I see a lot of people kind of zooming in on this products link here, which leads me to believe this is the actual storefront. People care less about what our story is, and they care more about how they can actually use our products.
So it might be of interest for us to try and swap those two links, see what the overall engagement looks like there, or break out this products link into subcategories of what we sell, so rubs, sauces, other accessories, that sort of thing. People are also uninterested in subscriptions, which makes a lot of sense. We confirmed this with interviews, actually, that people like to try before they buy. So there's something kind of going on there. People love dismissing the pop-up.
This is actually the number one clicked element on the entire page. And we found that this was fairly intrusive, even though it was a sale. So putting a blurb up here or even in the bottom corners, the indexed over the rest of the layout might be really useful for us. People are engaging with primary and secondary calls to action, but seeing it a little bit further below the fold wasn't working so well for us. So we made that change to move them a little bit further up.
And then we were seeing some engagement here, but not a whole lot of people were actually looking at some of the individual rubs. And then by this point, it kind of just drops off. Nobody's actually looking at anything. And you can see this with our scroll maps as well. So this is the scroll map for the home page.
You see, essentially, by the time we get to these subcategories here, nobody's actually looking at anything. So what would we do to try and fix this? I mentioned a couple of things earlier that we did to try and address some things. But if you're noticing things of your own that don't necessarily connect with some of the suggestions that I'm providing, Try and understand what common sense things you would be doing to try and fix those things. Taking a closer look at the heat map on the product detail page, this is fairly common for an online store that you see a lot of engagement with configuration options.
But normally, you also see a lot more engagement with an image gallery, which kind of makes sense. This is really just an individual product. Doesn't really matter what the optical parameters of it looks like, right? People do care a lot about the ingredients. So what ended up happening was in interviews, we found that people cared a lot about whether the ingredients worked with their dietary restrictions.
Taking a look at the scroll map on mobile here, you're seeing a lot of drop-off for the frequently bought-together upsell. Only 50% of people are actually getting to that. Seems interesting. These upsells tend to result in improved average order value, so how can we make that a little bit more visible? It's definitely of interest.
And then taking a closer look at the heat maps on collection pages, you're seeing a lot of bouncing off to see the products again, and not a whole lot of engagement on individual products. And in fact, some of our more popular ones seem to be a little bit more buried further down, where you're getting a couple of more taps. This also, when I see individual taps like this, it tells me a little bit that Maybe we need to track a longer time frame to figure out what's going on here. So sometimes you can understand whether or not a heat map is giving you the right amount of data to make an actionable decision. So those are some things that show up for me as I'm going through this heat map.
But I want you to go through each set of these heat maps, figure out five things that are wrong with each or that are surprising, things you would try and do to address any sort of fixes for each of them.
Nick Disabato