CODEWITHSUNDEEP
analyticsheatmapweb-analytics
s-rusev
s-rusev

Reputation: 150

What useful information can I get from my heatmap?

I have some sort of a heatmap and I can see how my users are using my website. Now I know where they are clicking, how much time it costs to complete a set of instructions, how much do they navigate between pages, etc.

So given that I have information with of this kind:

12/12/2014 12:45:00 - User pressed button 1 on page 1

12/12/2014 12:45:15 - User pressed button 2 on page 1

12/12/2014 13:00:00 (15 minutes delay) - User pressed button 3 on page 1

Now comes the hard part - how do I process this kind of information? For example how do I know that the user is lost on my website (if there is 15 minutes delay - does this means that his phone rang or my UI is bad?). And also - how can I find some patterns in large amount of data - say every third user spends 15 minutes after the second click to find what he has to click next.

What is the correct approach here? Thanks.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 130

Answers (1)

James Waddington
James Waddington

Reputation: 2905

In order to derive useful information from raw data you need some context. You need to be clear about what expected user behaviour is and, where appropriate, what you are aiming for the user to do (eg. buy a product, register, make a comment etc.).

For example, if you have an event splash page with a big button to book a place, and you find that a lot of people click on that button very soon after they arrive, that's probably a good thing. If you have a page full of important information that you want people to read, and they click away just as quickly - that's really not a good thing.

It sounds obvious but so many people fall in to the trap of trying to evaluate user behaviour without being clear about the context - and without acknowledging that the very same number can mean very different things depending on that context.

Evaluate each page of major section of your site and outline what is there, and how you'd expect users to interact with it. How long would you expect a user to spend on that page? Where would be the logical place to go next? Is this a logical place to leave the site (I booked, I'm done), or is a user leaving the site here a failure? And so on. Then compare these expectations to the reality you see from your heat map.

Don't get too hung up on individual cases - if one person took 15 minutes on a page that should take 30 seconds, that was probably the phone ringing. If 90% of visitors take 15 minutes, then your page needs re-evaluating.

Lastly, pay as much attention to what people don't do as what they do. Everyone's eye is drawn to the bright spots on a heat map or the rows at the top of a chart with big numbers. With analytics, a lot of the most useful information is what you expected to see people doing, but they aren't. Again, to realise this information you need to have defined that expected behaviour.

Upvotes: 1

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