Heatmap software offers a two-dimensional representation of how customers are interacting with a business website. When a web page is clicked on, hovered over, or scrolled through, the heatmap software will use visualizations to display this behavior. Typically, heatmaps overlay darker colors on a web page to indicate a high-usage area versus lighter colors for a low-usage area.
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Must-Have Features in a Heatmap Software Tool
All the heatmap software tools reviewed here are cloud-based, and they all have some form of heatmapping capability for mouse clicks, hovering, and scrolling features. Here are some must-have features that will help you select the best product for your business:
- Behavioral Analytics: Helps a business make immediate changes to its website to improve the user experience. This feature collects and tracks all mouse movements and any user feedback.
- Predictive Analysis: AI tools predict future outcomes by using historical data, data mining, and machine learning to identify risk and ROI opportunities that will increase the productivity of a business website.
- Funnel Analysis: Maps a user’s journey through a website and identifies the locations where visitors stopped. These insights are used to optimize web pages, leading users to make a purchase or register to the website. Any of these final actions increases the conversion rate.
- Deployable on Mobile Devices: Heatmap software tools that can be deployed on mobile devices can offer deeper insight into the mobile experience for users.
- Polling/Surveying: Receive feedback from users for an image or mock-up website. Polling allows visitors to select website features they like or don’t like.
- Real-time Monitoring: Tracks how visitors are using your website in real time, allowing a business to quickly react to any identified trends.
Compare Heatmap Software Tools
| Vendor | Analytics | Analytics | Analysis | Mobile Devices | Surveying | Monitoring |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contentsquare | ||||||
| Crazy Egg | ||||||
| FigPii | ||||||
| FullStory | ||||||
| Hotjar | ||||||
| Inspectlet | ||||||
| Lucky Orange | ||||||
| Mouseflow | ||||||
| Smartlook | ||||||
| Zoho PageSense |
Best Heatmap Software Tools for Your Business
Contentsquare
Contentsquare (formerly Clicktale) is a heatmap tool for large businesses. This product uses an artificial intelligence (AI) feature that notifies web developers when an anomaly occurs. It offers a dashboard feature that allows users to track and monitor key performance indicators (KPI).
Contentsquare offers several analytical features that help a business understand merchandising trends, and the tool provides form analysis capabilities to help optimize site forms. Contentsquare offers their service on mobile devices, too. Further, Contentsquare provides A/B testing, which is a feature that allows a business to compare two different versions of a website.
According to user reviews, some of the drawbacks for Contentsquare include poor integration with other analytical tools, an expensive price tag compared to similar products, and a lack of some of the granular data provided by comparable heatmap tools.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg allows you to easily sign up for a 30-day free trial. This demo provides you an excellent overview of how the software works. Crazy Egg is affordable, too, with its professional version costing $249 per month. This product offers snapshots and recordings that allow you to see where visitors are coming from and record what they are doing on your web pages. Crazy Egg integrates with e-commerce and content management software products like AWeber, WordPress, Shopify, Appy Pie website builder, and Wix.
According to users, the snap feature is reported as not being easy to use, and the A/B testing feature could be improved upon. Crazy Egg heatmapping features have limited visualizations, according to one customer who has used other heatmapping tools. Further, the omit pop-up option doesn’t consistently block pop-ups. Several customers complained about Crazy Egg billing annually during initial sign-up, versus monthly.
FigPii
FigPii built its platform around optimizing the conversion rate of users visiting the website. This product offers a free 14-day trial version, and it offers four pricing tiers: Starter ($50), Small ($100), Medium ($200) and Large ($300), charged on a per-month basis. The pricing is based on the number of website visitors per month.
FigPii offers heatmaps, A/B testing, video recording, and polls. Polls are used to increase the conversion rate and improve usability of a website. Notably, customer satisfaction for FigPii is rated high in reviews.
However, FigPii is more expensive compared to similar heatmap products, and businesses must buy separate plans for each of their websites. Several customers mentioned FigPii lacks the ability to show heatmap results when doing A/B testing.
FullStory
FullStory’s analytics engine tracks sales, business, and engagement metrics. Its analytical engine uses AI, machine learning, and heuristics. This product is known for its analytical capabilities, which sets it apart from its competitors. The heatmap features offer additional information like load time and number of users that visited the website.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) allow Fullstory to integrate with several business intelligence (BI) software tools. Fullstory offers a free 14-day trial plan, and Fullstorys’ pricing plans can be found here.
According to reviews, performance can be slow when searching. And with all the different features, customers report that this product can be overwhelming. Compared to its competitors, this product is expensive. Other repeated complaints were that the initial setup time was lengthy.
Hotjar
Hotjar is praised for its user-friendly interface and easy-to-use dashboard. This product offers basic heatmap mouse click, mouse movement, and scroll features. Hotjar also offers recordings, surveying, and customer feedback features. In particular, the user feedback feature is a useful tool, and not a feature offered in typical heatmap products. Its pricing tiers are Basic (free), Plus ($39), Business ($99), and Scale ($398), all charged monthly.
Some of the cons mentioned by users are difficulty in displaying numbers, missed notifications when recording has stopped, and the recording sessions are unstable. Reviews also noted that Hotjar does not track dynamic content well.
Inspectlet
Inspectlet offers eye-tracking heatmap capabilities, as well as the standard click and scroll heatmap features. Session filters provide information on visit duration and navigation path to web pages. This product is designed to work with Google Analytics to help businesses track what visitors are doing on their websites.
Other key features are filters that can provide more granular data, conversion funnels to track a website visitor’s movements toward making a purchase, and JavaScript tagging that allows you to filter on specific user data. Inspectlet’s pricing tiers are free, Micro ($39), Startup ($79), Growth ($149), Accelerate ($299), and Enterprise ($499), charged monthly.
To use the website engagement feature, you need to use Google Analytics, and Google Analytics 360 is priced at $150,000 per year for the premium package. However, Google Analytics has tier-based pricing and the standard version is free. The higher tiers of Inspectlet are expensive, and it is not commensurate with what is offered in those tiers, according to reviews. Customization can also be time consuming.
Lucky Orange
Lucky Orange’s web pages are efficiently designed, making it easy for the users to quickly understand what is displayed. This product advertises the standard bevy of heatmap tools including recording sessions, conversion funnels, form analytics, and polling features.
Lucky Orange brags on its dynamic heatmap capability, meaning you can see a visitor’s action in real time. Their pricing tiers start with a free trial version; with tiered pricing, prices begin with the Starter ($10) package followed by the Small Business ($20), Medium ($50), and Large ($100) package, all charged on a per-month basis.
Customer reviews state that, at times, the load time is extremely slow. The real-time feature left one user a bit confused when a website has a lot of visitors accessing a web page. The session recording feature can use some improvements, too, because it doesn’t consistently perform well. Further, A/B testing capability is not available for this product.
Mouseflow
Mouseflow is reviewed as one of the best heatmapping tools on the market. Mouseflow is reasonably priced and on par with its competitors. Using funnels, Mouseflow shows you a user’s journey from web page to web page, and you can generate reports on these funnels. Several customers complimented Mouseflow’s tracking capability using the funnel feature. Also, Mouseflow features tools that show how users interact with online signup and form pages.
The scroll feature is less well liked by users when recording, as it slows down the application the more scrolling you do. The filters for searching can be difficult to use according to some users. However, a lot of customers had nothing negative to say about the product.
Smartlook
Smartlook features always-on recording, which is unique. This same recording capability is provided on the mobile application, too. Besides many of the expected heatmap features, this product offers retention tables (showing which users continue to access your website), events statistics, and customizable dashboards.
Smartlook can start recording after a customer clicks on a CTA link or button designed to get the customer to register, or continue down a purchasing path to buy an item presented on the website.
Several user reviews imply that some of the expected features are lacking, or are not fully developed. For example, the recording feature is noted as operationally spotty at times, and detailed tracking is not available according to some users. Additionally, some customers think the product is a bit pricey.
Zoho PageSense
Zoho is a conversion optimization platform. Customers state that the application is user-friendly, and you can easily track the conversion rate as visitors become customers. Reports are easily customized, and you can filter data in various ways.
There were not a lot of reviews, but most were very positive about the entire Zoho PageSense package. Zoho’s pricing is on par with its competitors. However, several customers report that customer support was very poor. Customers did mention issues with the heatmap interface, as trying to correlate the clicks and colors displayed on the screen were difficult to understand.
Types of Heatmap Software
There are four types of heatmaps a business can use:
- Click Tracking Heatmaps: Records data on where visitors click on a web page.
- Scroll Maps: Records how far a user scrolls down your web page. This feature helps you determine the best length for your web page.
- Mouse Tracking/Hover Maps: Records post-click actions, and the specific location where the mouse is at on a web page. Hover maps are not always indicative of what the visitor is doing on a web page, since the mouse stays in that one location if the visitor is reading another portion of the web page.
- Eye Tracking Heatmaps: Records users’ eye movements as they look at a page. This is a post-click action, occurring once the visitor is on the landing page. Eye tracking can occur via webcams.
Most of the heatmap vendors on the list above offer click, hover, and scroll heatmap features.
Benefits of Using Heatmapping Software
Using heatmaps takes all the guessing out of how effectively or ineffectively a web page is performing. Heatmaps let you know which web page elements are performing as intended, or which elements are performing less than optimally. Heatmaps help businesses in the following ways:
- Website usability testing: Allows you to see the areas on your web page that are getting the most attention from visitors. Parts of the web page that are infrequently used can be revised to improve the overall user experience, or removed to improve loading speeds.
- Ad placement and optimization: Helps you determine the best position to place an advertisement on a web page. Using heatmap software will help increase a business’s ROI through improving the conversion rate.
- Creating user-friendly web pages: By using heatmapping software, you can experiment with web design layout to improve usage rates for an entire website.
Overall, heatmap software can help with e-commerce shopping cart optimization, online forms optimization, and link placement on web pages. Making informed choices based on heatmap results improves a business’s bottom line.
Selecting Heatmap Software
It can be challenging to select the best heatmap software for your business, as each vendor may have unique features beyond the ones mentioned here. Still, a website is a website, so there’s no industry-specific heatmap software to get confused with. With a more detailed understanding of the heatmap features available, you can now consult with stakeholders in your organization to make an informed decision.
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