ClickHeat HeatMap ~ What are you visitors doing?
By 
andrew daum on Mar 19, 2008 in Featured, How To
I "stumbled upon" a neat little tool that every person who owns a web site or blog needs to use.
I really should not say everyone needs to use it — you only need to use it if you are curious to know what your visitors are doing, in a visual mode.
For example — in my overnight initial evaluation of ClickHeat, I discovered my little 125 x 125 banners — those down just a bit, over on the right, received very few clicks (didn’t receive any last night).
I know they do in fact get clicked on — my tracking software supports this fact, but for the few hours that I tested ClickHeat last night - nada — not a single click.
I could have just as easily checked my stats software, but using ClickHeat is faster and easier.
My text links?
Well, they did receive a couple clicks in this overnight test of ClickHeat.
Having a visual aid like this will really help — it is a great tool for giving you a quick glance on what your visitors are attracted to and find interesting — and what they don’t.
With me knowing this little bit of information — I can now focus in on and write articles — and provide resources and display ads that’s proven to be of interest to my visitors, by utilizing the data from ClickHeat.
If those little 125 x 125 banners do not begin to carry their weight - BAM!!, they are gone.
While I suspected they did not receive very much interest — ClickHeat confirmed it, with a quick glance.
Real estate on your site or blog is far to valuable to have something "non performing" on it. Ads are like employees — you do not perform, you get fired. Now I can blame ClickHeat for giving them the boot — and hire some more text link ads.
I did a quick little video below.
It looks a bit foggy — that is due to the fact that QuickHeat uses an overlay to show you where people have clicked.
Keep this in mind when watching — a bit blurry.
Here is a link to ClickHeat – oh yea, it is Free.
Hard to believe labsmedia released this at no charge - but I’m glad they did.
ClickHeat Heatmap Overview - The best video clips are here
|———–***———– Post Sponsor —————***—————————–|
In the spirit of this post (and data)… this Sponsor is doing a text link.
Set Your Traffic On Fire With Social Power Linking!
and use ClickHeat to see what they are doing when they get there!
|———————————————————————————————-|
On Mar 19, 2008,
Walt Goshert (Check me out!) said:
Andrew,
Interesting tool. I’m gonna play around with this too.
Here’s a great resource that talks about ads and “junking up” your blog. Skellie at skellie.org and anywired.com has a PDF called “The Simple Web” I like her clean, simple site designs. It focuses the attention on the content.
Also, good point about Google. Adsense are text links, not banner ads. No doubt those MIT/Stanford propeller heads tested that one!
Walt
Walt Goshert’s last blog post..Best-Kept Marketing Secrets
On Mar 21, 2008,
Zack (Check me out!) said:
This is a great one, Andrew. Thanks for the heads up especially about the free part.
Right now I’m using crazyegg.com which has a free version, but costs more pretty quickly. Has some really nice features though and is super easy to setup. Definitely worth a look.
Zack’s last blog post..What Makes a Video Viral?
On Mar 22, 2008,
AnneMarie (Check me out!) said:
Andrew
This is the first time I have seen that sort of software and thank you for putting the video there.
I would like to put it on my website too so would appreciate any help, if I get stuck.
Can you give us any updates on your thoughts, since you wrote the article?
AnneMarie last blogpost http://ez4u2gowebbusiness.com/Blog/how-to-use-internet-marketing-to-eliminate-your-debts-challenge/
AnneMarie’s last blog post..How To Use Internet Marketing To Eliminate Your Debts Challenge
On Mar 24, 2008,
Getting Links (Check me out!) said:
This is a cool tool. Checking it out now. These used to be fairly costly, so it’s nice to see them coming out for free now!
On Mar 24, 2008,
andrew daum (Check me out!) said:
Hey AnnMarie, A couple things I have noticed — having used it for a week now.
My "Featured Article" at the top — with the delay in it displaying throws off where people have actually clicked.
So it messes up my visual when checking to see where people have truly clicked.
Also… I would say heatmaps work better with "fixed" static pages.
For example — my blog layout changes every few days.
For example, the current "Featured" post may come down lets say 20 lines (before the "read more" link) — where the one before it came down 17 lines. This would skew my visual as it would appear for example if someone clicked on line 20, and I do a new post with 16 "intro" lines — they may have actually clicked 4 lines higher on the next post (just an example) — could be vice versa.
If I check the visual before posting a new article — I will get a better representation of where people clicked. But, I cannot do a weekly or monthly check because my visual is all skewed — which ironically gives me a better overview. Only a daily view.
The "featured article" delay also causes additional issues as some people will scroll down while it is loading — click on an article or link before it loads — again throwing off the map.
This would explain why there are clicks where there should be no clicks.
I still think it is a great tool — I just have a few things to work out on my blog. I may also look into CrazyEgg - http://crazyegg.com/ to see if it works better.
They have a free version where you can track 4 pages I believe.
On May 29, 2008,
Johnnie from Home Security System (Check me out!) said:
Wow, thanks Andrew, a tool like this will be really useful on a website like mine. Right now i have a transparent gif that visitors must click on to receive my offer. And i always wondered if they were clicking the “click here” part or not.