What exactly is a Website Heatmap?

It a web analytics tool used to measure customer experience. It can be used to improve essential components of a website such as Web Usability, Customer Experience, Conversion Rates.

How is a Heat Map Tool different from a regular Web Analytics Tools?

There are Web Analytics tools such as Google Analytics that show how many people visited your website, their “Bounce Rate”, etc. but they are missing a key feature. They can’t show what visitors “actually do” on your web pages. And knowing what your visitors are “actually doing” on your website can be really vital for your business. They don’t show you why your visitors aren’t “Converting”. This is where a “heat map” kicks in.

What’s Converting?

To answer this question, let me ask you a question first. What do you want the visitors to do when they visit your website? Do you want them to buy anything? Or do you want them to subscribe to your email newsletters? Or do you want them to call you over the phone? Do you want them to sign-up for your free trials or the service itself? It could be anything that you think, would be profitable to you, now or in the future. This is what “Converting” actually is. It’s nothing but the “final action” that you want the visitor to perform when they visit your website.

Conversion is inversely proportional to “Bounce Rate”. The higher the Conversion, the lower the Bounce Rate and vice versa.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate is nothing but the percentage of users that leave the page of your website, that they first landed upon. So for example, let’s say that visitors landed up on “Services” page of your website and they left the website right from that very page, then the Bounce Rate is 100%. If they navigate to “About Us” and then leave the website, then the Bounce Rate is said to be 50%. So ideally speaking you would want to have as less Bounce Rate as possible.

What can Website Heatmaps actually do?

Website heatmaps can show what visitors are doing when they visit your web pages. There are different companies that provide heatmaps that more or less, include features such as monitoring:

• Mouse Clicks
• Keystrokes
• Mouse Movements
• Elements that cause visitors to leave the website

Apart from that, they can also create videos of your website visitor’s browsing sessions. Yes, you can actually “SPY” on what visitors are doing exactly from the point of time they arrived on your website, what they clicked on, etc. till they exited the website. These analytics data are usually collected together to form an actual powerful and visual heatmaps and actionable behavioral reports are provided so that you can drill down further into the data.

These data can also show you what visitors click on the website, such as an image, link, button, etc. mouse movements, eye tracking and even how far they scroll vertically on a web page.

The heat maps when used in conjunction with form analytics, can also reveal what part of user forms take too much time to fill. They can also show what fields are left blank and what caused the visitors to leave, in case they abandon the form mid-way. In this way you can revise that field and provide additional helpful info to the user so that they take less time to understand what needs to be done. That will help them finish filling up the forms faster and the faster a form is filled, the faster you get your leads/sales.

You can also analyze collective data on what visitors could not find the products/data they were searching for, what caused them to not take an action and what actually causes them to leave the website as well. This way, you can refine the existing elements on your website to your visitor’s liking.

General Features of using Heat Map tools on your website:

Although every company tries to provide a unique product and/or service, they more or less offer the following features in general:

• A Heat Map tools that shows where exactly a visitor has clicked on a web page so that you can retain the items that receive lots of clicks and remove/replace elements that the visitors’ don’t feel like clicking on .
• A Scroll Map tool that shows how far vertically on the website, the visitor is scrolling. That way you will get to know where the visitors are actually losing interest on the pages and you can revise the content following that point. You can try adding new, fresh content, images, etc. to improve the appeal of the content.
• An Overlay tool that shows the number of clicks each of the elements of the web page (such as buttons, images, etc) received.

Additional Benefits:

• You will also be able track multiple domains/ HTTPS pages, IFrames, Flash Objects, etc. (if the company supports it)
• Improve User Experience by introducing improve elements such as Call-To-Action buttons, etc.
• Save money on expensive user testing and do all the testing yourself.
• Eliminate the problem of cart abandonment by fixing usability issues and fix vital business processes in real time.
• Improve client websites (if you are a Web Designer/Web Developer)
• Easily Optimize Sales Funnel by making use of the insights data.
• Demographics let you understand where your visitors are coming from so that you understand your visitors and their needs better.

Using Heatmaps on your website:

Generally you don’t have to go through the hassle of downloading anything extra. In most cases, the deployment of web site heatmaps is as simple as including a tiny piece of JavaScript code (barely 1-2 lines) and you are done! This will be your step towards collecting essential data that will provide you a detailed insight into your customer’s interaction with your website. You can use this data to optimize your customer’s experience and improve your online business performance.

All you will have to do is login into your account and review the Heat Map data to get started with it. It’s as simple as that!

Heat maps Performance Issues:

Usually the companies offering the heat map services are fully hosted and the usage of heatmaps usually does not have any noticeable performance issues as they are light weight and transparent to the user.

Conclusion:

If you have never tried any Website Heat Map tool so far, I strongly suggest you try it. If you are running a very short informational website without having much to offer for visitors, in such cases Heat maps may  be of little use. But if you are running a Shopping cart website or a dynamic website, or a website that deals in selling stuff, interacting heavily with visitors and relies on user decisions to make use of the service you are promoting, then a Visual Website Heat Map can do wonders and help you keep your existing traffic and improve your existing website to attract more traffic and increase conversions!

So try a heat map tool and start optimizing your website, increase your sales and profits today!

Your Turn!

Have you used any Website heat map tool in the past? What is your review of such a tool? What did you find good about it? What did you find bad about it? Please feel free to share your views by commenting below.

How to use Creative Commons

Here is the video that will give you a very quick overview of the basics of Creative Commons:

Your Turn!

Did the video help you learn more about what Creative Commons really is and how you can use it? Do you know of any other ways of legally sharing content online? Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting below.

So what to choose? Joomla or WordPress?

Before I get started with the actual comparison, let me tell you something very briefly about me so that you understand my perspective of doing this comparison. I am a Web Designer and a Web Developer. I started working with Joomla Themes first. I worked on it for quite few years before coming across WordPress. And now I create WordPress Themes and develop WordPress Plugins as well. So simply put, I have practically worked on both the platforms and hence I feel this review should help you in making a good decision from my perspective.

Because I started working with Joomla first, let me talk about it first. I will try to cover the features from both a user perspective and a developer perspective for better understanding. So let’s see whether to use WordPress or Joomla.

Joomla

Intro:

It is basically a Content Management Tool that was developed for users to maintain their website on their own, without having to hire a Webmaster for each and every change that need to be done. It’s a free tool available on PHP platform.

Use of Themes:

Multiple themes can be used (one at a time). All you need to do is use the Template Manager. Having couple of options such as the “Default” and “Assigned” seemed overkill. If you are getting started with Joomla, then you will find having two options is quite unnecessary. Only one option (Assigned) would have sufficed.

Ease of use of Frontend:

Frontend is easy to use, based upon the customization done and the way the theme is built.

Ease of use of Backend:

Backend is complex to understand and learn. It has loads of options and settings and trying to get your head around them especially when you are getting started, could be frustrating and time consuming. When I was learning Joomla, I spent a lot of time trying to understand how the backend works and it took me a significant amount of time to learn what does what.

Addition of Enhancements:

It’s possible to add new features to existing CMS by means of new extensions. But then you will need to decide what is right for you whether you want to go for a Plugin or Module.

Theme Design Learning Curve:

It’s rather easy to learn Theme Design. It used mainly index.php file and all your raw HTML code along with position of different elements. Once the theme is designed,  the content that appears in each of these blocks can be controlled using the backend. But again, because the learning curve of the backend is more and complex, it could affect the overall Theme design whenever interaction with backend is required.

Module Development Learning Curve:

Modules are relatively very complex, when compared to the Theme design. In fact, Joomla theme design is the easiest. Your core understanding of the concepts of Modules and Plugins must be clear in order to understand  what you need to build in order to satisfy your requirements. So the learning curve is high.

Plugin Development Learning Curve:

This is again difficult and complex, especially if you are getting started. If you do not prefer a good guide, You will end up feeling frustrated. So the learning curve is high.

Support:

Joomla has a forum and has a friendly community . People are willing to help but at the same time, in order to understand the solutions they prescribe, you really need to have a good grasp on the subject of how to use Joomla or else even support from others will not help much.

Updates:

The Joomla developers are kind enough to releases periodical updates with newer functionality and bug-fixes.

Client Demand:

The client demand for a Joomla website has really fell over the years. Note that I am talking only about my perspective and my experience. Other developers may have experienced this differently. But according to my experience, the main reason for the fall of demand is because of the high learning curve of the back-end.  Most of the clients that I worked with are not tech-savvy and they really found it tough and time consuming to cope up with learning curve of Joomla.

Yes, a Joomla Theme designer / Extension Developer is not the only one who need a lot of learning curve, but even clients do. Although Joomla developers have tried to make it as easy as possible, I have had clients come back to me with complaints stating that they just can’t do things on their own. They paid me to even do their  part, that is administering back-end  IMO, that really beats the purpose of a CMS. A client shouldn’t have come to me asking me to even perform the CMS work, especially when the role of CMS is to be simple enough for clients to manage it on their own.

So mainly because of the couple of above reasons, fewer clients preferred to go for Joomla over the years.

Preparing Guides for Client (Text and Video):

This is tough job & very time consuming. Although there are tons of resources & tutorials out there, my clients preferred me to write instructions and make videos for them (for payment, of course). They knew that I would cut down the geeky jargon, which in fact would save them more time. This is not the case with just one client or two. Rather many of my clients ended up paying me to make specific and to-the-point short videos so that they can get started easily.

Although this complexity and heavy learning curve for my clients has helped me earn more money in the process, I do not really favor that. Why? Because simply put if the clients are paying me to do even the stuff that they should, then the CMS has failed to keep up to its full value. Preparing Joomla guides and videos with voice narration consumes a lot of time, which again is a bad thing, in my view.

WordPress

Intro:

WordPress basically started off as a blogging tool and now over the years, it has evolved and has become an excellent choice for Content Management Tool as well. It’s a free tool available on PHP platform.

Use of Themes:

Multiple themes can be used (one at a time). Themes can be installed either locally or directly online. It’s easy to manage and use themes.

Ease of use of Front-end:

It’s very easy to use the front-end, although this could vary upon the theme design.

Ease of use of Back-end:

WordPress bring a very refreshing change, especially after dealing with Joomla. It’s very organized and all options of the website can be reached in just a click or two. The back-end is not bloated. Rather, it has only the relevant stuff that makes back-end operation very simple and a breeze.

Addition of Enhancements:

It’s very easy to add enhancements. All enhancements are called “Plugins” and that’s about it. No more geeky terminology here, no more chaos!

Theme Design Learning Curve:

WordPress Theme Design learning curve is a bit higher than Joomla’s theme design learning curve. WordPress can run on a very minimal level but in order to achieve the level of customization that you require, you will need to add more pages. So I usually find myself ending up adding files such as  404.php, page.php, comments.php, etc. for pretty much every WordPress theme I design. This is not hard once you get used to it, but will need you to spend a good amount of time in learning it.

Module Development Learning Curve:

There are no modules in WordPress. So YAY! Less things to worry about 🙂

Plugin Development Learning Curve:

Actually the plugin development is what I have found to be one of the most appealing things in WordPress. If you already deal with Object Oriented Concepts in PHP, then you can use the same to build your plugin. Or if you prefer to use native functions and variables, you can do that too. I really like this flexibility to use either of these coding standards.

Support:

WordPress has a big community of users. But despite that, I personally found that support for an issue could really take a lot of time. I have seen user boards where people have posted all the information they have along with the problem, yet there are no replies. Sometimes, it does feel like as if the entire community has deserted that specific thread. This does not happen normally, but it does happen at times.

Upgrades:

WordPress developers are great and they put a lot of time & efforts in releasing periodical updates with bug-fixes. You can update online automatically without having to manually download packages and perform a manual upgrade. IMO, this a huge time saver!

Client Demand:

The client demand for WordPress based websites and WordPress has drastically increased over the years. I find myself working with WordPress almost every day now, one way or the other. If I was working with a WordPress plugin yesterday, If find myself working on a WordPress Theme today, tomorrow, I might end up working on both. So I have seen a lot of increase in client increase due to its simplicity and very short back-end learning curve.

Preparing Guides for Client (Text and Video):

It’s relatively easy to prepare guides for WordPress websites. But I rarely get any requests of such guides for WordPress. This is really good because that tells me that my clients are able to handle WordPress on their own, without my involvement.

And the Winner is..

The clear winner to me is “WordPress”. There is no question about it. It is relatively very easy to learn, operate and manage when compared to Joomla. Not only that, but even WordPress’ popularity and demand among my clients has increased over the years and I have worked more on WordPress based projects than on Joomla projects. My clients always keep getting back to me because they want their themes to be redesigned or they want a “Plugin” with some new customization ability.

I must say, I am thankful to my clients for having asked me to build more of WordPress based Themes & Plugins. Mainly because I learned a lot. And I developed things that I never did in the past. I developed Plugins that are unique to their product, in the shortest time possible and I can guarantee that this would have never happened so quickly and easily, had they chosen Joomla over WordPress. And the reason is simple. Joomla is very “Complex”.

Although Joomla’s complexity can be regarded as its strength, it’s an overkill for an easy-to-use-and-maintain website. If the website is a community based website and involves user interaction at higher level, then Joomla can be preferred. It has nested sections, deep level navigations that can be useful for maintenance.

If I had to describe WordPress in comparison with Joomla, I would call WordPress as “Simple!” and that’s what everyone wants. My clients want it to be “Simple”. I want it to be “Simple”. Who doesn’t want their choice of CMS/blogging tools to be “Simple”? I guess, we all do!

So if you are thinking “Why to use Joomla?”, here’s my question to you: “Why NOT to use WordPress”? It’s easy, simply, efficient and very popular among clients. So why not give the clients that something that they love to use for its simplicity? Why complicate things when a simpler solution at hand can solve the problems and meet the requirements at a cost of fraction of the resources? Give it a thought!

Your Turn!

Well, I know that I will be designing more WordPress Themes and developing more WordPress Plugins in future. What about you? Are you using Joomla or WordPress? Would you suggest your clients to use Joomla or WordPress? Please feel free to share your thoughts by commenting below.