How to use heat map software with other tools

6 types of tools to use with your heat map software (with examples)

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the best heatmap software is the variety of tools they integrate with. Below are a few types you should particularly show interest in.

#1 Session recording software

Simply said, session recording and heatmap software are like a match made in heaven, as they complement each other ideally. While heat maps give you a bird’s eye view of all user actions within a given page, session recording software lets you dive in and replay each user activity.

To give you a sense of how it works, let’s consider a scenario for an eCommerce store. Your heatmap indicates that a lot of users click on the “proceed to checkout” button, but only 5% of them finalized the purchase within the last week. If your heatmap analysis rules out any broken buttons or rage clicks, it’s time for further investigation. After watching a couple of recordings, you notice an error – the items keep disappearing from the cart. After trying two or three times, most users simply lose motivation and give up.

What tools to use?

We encourage you to try out LiveSession, as it offers both session replay and heat map software. The best part is you get to see a 3-in-1 view, i.e., as you watch the recording of a user’s session, you also see a semi-transparent overlay of the areas with the overall highest number of activities and clicks on the site.

If you’d like to see this in the works, you can try LiveSession on a free trial.

#2 Website analytics

Website analytics tools are essential if you want to make the most of your heat maps. How so? They store key website stats such as each page’s bounce and conversion rate, CTR, and session duration. This means they help you decide which pages – other than your homepage and pricing – would make good candidates for a heat map.

In your website analytics platform, you might, for instance, find an important landing page that has very few signups or notice that your entire blog has exceptionally high bounce rates. By setting up a heat map on them, you might be able to notice whether your CTAs are getting notices and clicks, or how far down the page readers scroll before dropping from it.

Source: Content Marketing Institute

What tools to use?

As far as website analytics are concerned, we recommend going for two tools from the G-Suite, i.e., Google Analytics and Google Search Console. While the first gives you access to both general and in-depth website and audience insights, the latter focuses on your site’s traffic, SEO ranks, and performance.

As your business, customer base, and website complexity grow, you might be interested in implementing customer analytics, which we discuss next.

#3 Customer analytics

Customer analytics tools give you a more sophisticated view of your client base. By diving deep into your customers’ on-site behavior, psychographics, and purchasing history (among many other data), they help you better tailor your offer, increase on-site engagement, and boost conversions.

What tools to use?

We recommend looking into two customer analytics leaders – Mixpanel and Segment.

The first tool is famous for its ‘innovation loop’ functionality – it collects data from various tools, notices emerging trends, and helps you find out the reasons behind new behaviors so that you can use it to your business’s benefit. Segment, similarly to Mixpanel, collects data from various sources and can be used by your product team to make data-informed decisions on your product and UX.

Source: Mixpanel

Which one is a better choice for you depends on your specific needs; nevertheless, regardless of your choice, you’re e able to integrate both of them with LiveSession for an all-in-one-tool customer analytics experience.

#4 A/B testing tools

A/B testing tools are yet another type of software that works perfectly with heat maps. They let you trial two versions of your site and decide which one drives better results. You can use this type of software both when you’re putting out a new page and when you’re looking to fix a current one.

Let’s assume that a heat map on a landing page shows that it’s getting very few CTA clicks.

Your product team draws up a hypothesis, for instance, that adding a fixed CTA banner to the top of the page will increase conversion by 15%. You set up heatmaps on two versions of the site – version ‘A’, which is the one you already have, and version ‘B’ – with the new concept. You can compare the results from both versions and either confirm or overthrow your hypothesis. Pretty neat, right?

What tools to use?

While there are a number of A/B testing tools on the market, we recommend going with Google Optimize – not only does it integrate with your other tools within the G-Suite, but also the majority of heat map and session recording software, including LiveSession.

Source: Google

#5 Website feedback

While heatmaps are a great source of insights on what is happening on your site, you might need to hear directly from users as to why they’re interacting with it in a certain way. Here’s where website feedback tools such as survey software come into play.

Surveying your users will give you both quantitative and qualitative data to supplement your heat map analysis. For instance, you can ask your site visitors why they won’t scroll further down your page, or why they ignore the CTA.

Set up a survey on the exact pages you’re using your heatmaps on. For pages where you’ve noticed an issue, you can ask a very specific question based on the user’s on-site activity. Alternatively, on crucial pages such as pricing or your homepage, you can always keep a general survey running, asking people whether they’d found what they were looking for.

What tools to use?

Some customer communication or CRM tools, such as Intercom and Hubspot, offer built-in surveys. However, bear in mind that they have lower customizability and follow-up logic than dedicated survey solutions. If you’d like to add custom questions or create complex follow-up question paths, we recommend using a tool like Survicate, which integrates with LiveSession.

Source: Survicate

#6 Customer support

Last, but not least, you should use heat maps with customer support software. While they’re not, per se, related to optimizing the on-site experience, they certainly influence the customer experience. Chances are, you’ll find the reflection of the issues users report in your heatmap data in your conversations. For instance, if you were wondering why many people click on an image, by checking your customer conversations, you might learn that a number of users expect them to be clickable and take them to another webpage.

That said, by integrating CS and heat map software, you’ll also be able to link heat maps to specific customer query tickets. As a result, your support team will be given more context on the issues and user behavior on each page.

What tools to use?

There are a number of great tools out there – two which we can wholeheartedly recommend are LiveChat or HelpScout. Both platforms allow you to integrate customer communication from various touchpoints into one panel. That said, LiveChat also gives you the ability to set up a chatbot, which can relieve your support teams of answering recurring questions.

Summary

Heatmaps are a great source of user intent and website usability insights. Among others, they let you conduct an audit of your site’s UX and better understand user activity. That said, they deliver the best results if used with a few other tools.

First and foremost, the best heatmap software comes with other usability testing functionalities, such as user session recordings. Here’s where LiveSession might come especially in handy, as not only does it let you see the click and most noticed parts of the site, but also replay each user’s on-site behavior.

Secondly, it’s worth using your heatmap solution with software such as website and customer analytics, A/B testing tools, surveys, and live chat. By cross-referencing your heatmaps findings with data from these platforms, you’ll be able to fill any information gaps and ace your website usability and CX.

To give you a sense of all the types of tools you can integrate with heatmaps, refer to our Integrations catalog.

Chapter 8

11 experts share the UX improvements they achieved with heat maps