Heat maps are a well-liked conversion optimization tool, but are they that useful?
It’s easy to mention that they assist you to see what users do on your site. Sure, of course—but many other methods do this too, and maybe with greater accuracy.
So what can heat maps answer?
1. Hover maps (Mouse-movement tracking)
When people say “heat map,” they often mean hover map. Hover maps show you areas where people have hovered over a page with their mouse cursor. the thought is that folks look where they hover, and thus it shows how users read an internet page.
Hover maps are modeled off a classic usability testing technique: eye tracking. While eye tracking is beneficial to know how a user navigates a site, mouse tracking tends to come short due to some stretched inferences.
2. Click Maps
Click maps show you a heat map comprised of aggregated click data. Blue means fewer clicks; warmer reds indicate more clicks, and therefore the most clicks are bright white and yellow spots.
3. Attention maps
An attention map may be a heat map that shows you which of the areas of the page are viewed the foremost by the user’s browser, with full consideration of the horizontal and vertical scrolling activity.
They show which areas of the page are viewed the foremost, taking into consideration how far users scroll and the way long they spend on the page.
Peep considers attention maps more useful than other mouse-movement or click-based heat maps. Why? Because you'll see if key pieces of information—text, and visuals—are visible to most users. that creates it easier to style pages with the user in mind.