Improve Holiday Usability with These Nine Heatmap ToolsBy Ryan Chester

For marketers and web designers seeking to improve website usability, heatmaps can provide extremely helpful information.

A heatmap helps organizations understand website usability by reporting on particular sections that attract a lot of scrolls, clicks, or other website interactions.

Here’s how it works: Heatmap technology tracks a user’s interaction with a particular website.

Regions of the webpage with the largest number of views, visits, or clicks are displayed as “hot” spots, with warmer colors such as orange and red. The low traffic regions of the site are displayed as “cold” areas, using colors such as green and blue.

The heatmap combines these two areas into a visual display, showing you which areas of your site are getting the most interaction.

With heatmaps, webmasters can make appropriate adjustments to their websites so visitors are interacting with the areas that will garner the most conversions.

Below are some of the leading usability testing tools. All of these tools incorporate the heatmap technology and can help you track and make changes to your site in order to boost engagement.

ClickTale

ClickTale is equipped with heatmap technology and provides great results on page-specific web analytics.

Using ClickTale, you can also watch movies that show users’ mouse flow interactions with each web page. The tool tracks clicks, searches, and the number of scrolls on your page.

On particular benefit ClickTale is its ability to record the extent to which visitors use your site. With the help of its heatmap technology, Clicktale is tracks areas of the webpage that visitors frequently click on, helping you to maximize conversion rates. And all this monitoring is available in real-time.

There is a free plan for the newbies who want to use ClickTale. The free plan provides up to 400 page views monthly. There is another plan that charges $99 monthly and allows a 20,000 page-view capacity.

Mouseflow

Mouseflow provides specific analytics for mouse tracking, and guarantees real-time user studies. Like ClickTale, it also includes the ability to record visitors’ browsing activities on your site.

Mouseflow generates instant heatmaps of the regions of high traffic and those of low traffic. By applying this data, you can quickly boost conversion rates and visitor satisfaction on your site.

Mouseflow offers a quick and easy installation, as well as 100 free recordings.

SessionCam

SessionCam allows users to record and replay visits to a site in real time. Like Mouseflow, SessionCam tracks every mouse movement, be it a click or a scroll.

SessionCam is unique because it also makes it much easier to see forums and checkouts that are in the process of being completed.

And because it integrates well with the Google analytics API, it’s easier to aggregate data from your various analytics tools.

SessionCam comes packaged in free and paid plans. The free plan provides up to 500 pages monthly, while the paid plan offers 1,000 to unlimited pages from $10 per month and up.

Seevolution

This usability tool allows you to use real-time analytics to track mouse movements, data entry, and visitor destinations.

Plus, it comes loaded with all the heatmap varieties—click, live click, and mouse movement heatmaps.

Just like above mentioned usability testing tools, Seevolution has a 14-day free trial version and paid version that goes for only $29 for up to 300 daily visitors.

Usaura

Usaura is a truly unique usability tool in that it allows you to test your web design before you build it. All you have to do is upload screenshots of your design, and the program prototypes your design for further analysis.

It also allows other users to post their comments and constructive criticism to help you improve your website.

Usaura tracks the heatmaps of different regions of high traffic on your site, conducts preference tests, and relays feedback in real-time from the various users.

Usaura has a free plan that allows up to five results per test duration and a paid plan that goes for $9 per test per month.

There is another paid plan that charges $49 monthly for unlimited tests.

UserReport

This tool helps you to improve your website demographics by providing information about your visitors’ gender, age, and more.

Some of the UserReport key features include an online survey function, a feedback forum, plus measurement for user satisfaction.

UserReport also allows you to compare the usability of your site to that of your competitors.

GhostRec

GhostRec is a great tool for highly interactive pages because it provides easy web usability testing. This tool records the number of visitors on your site and provides the webmaster with a platform for improvement.

It has a free plan that guarantees 100 pageview recordings per month. The paid plan goes for only $25 monthly and guarantees 500 pageview recordings.

AttentionWizard

AttentionWizard has the ability to simulate human visual processing, thereby creating an attention heatmap.

This helps you to predict where people would probably search in the first few seconds of their visit to the site.

Loop11

This usability testing tool allows you to assign tasks to users of your site. This way, you can get valuable input on visitors’ site navigation activities.

Loop11 offers free page-viewing for the first project. For the second and subsequent projects, it costs a flat rate of $350.

Choosing a Heatmap Tool

These usability testing tools make use of heatmaps, real-time analytics, and click tracking to improve website engagement and conversions.

Consider your budget, your resources, and what kinds of tests you want to run.

This will help you choose the right tool to enhance quality and performance of your website so that it can meet growing needs of your visitors.

Ryan Chester

Ryan Chester is a digital marketing connoisseur. Part of the Enterprise SEO Team at AnnexCore. He has helped many multi-national companies achieve success with their digital marketing endeavors.

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