Recently, Small Biz in: 15 On Location, traveled to Austin, Texas for ZohoDay 2022. In this episode, Shawn Hessinger, the Chief Editor of Small Biz Trends talks with Zoho Corporation Product Manager Naresh Kumar to find out more about how heat maps and other software marketing tools can be used to grow your business.
Demystifying Heat Maps
Shawn: What is a heat map for those who don’t know, and how is it applicable to a small business and what they’re doing?
Naresh: Heat maps are basically a visual representation of how visitors behave on a website. It generates the various places in which the user has clicked. And it has different components.
So, the heat map is one thing, a scroll map is another thing, and an attention map is another. The heat map gives you the various places where the user has clicked…it gives a number of clicks on that particular component.
How Heat Mapping Can Help Page Performance
Naresh: Say you have a primary CTA at one part of the page. Or you have a very good video that you want the users to see on the second full or third full of the website. Then, you notice there are not many people who scroll down to see that particular CTA or the video.
The heat map gives you the various places where the user has clicked; it gives a number of clicks on that particular component.
In addition, the heat map will give you information about that, such as:
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- How many users scrolled down to that particular part of the website?
- How much time do users spend on that particular video or the other content with that CTA?
- How many users clicked on it?
Then, when you collate all this information together, you may get, for example, only 50% of the visitors have scrolled to that particular point of the page and only 10% of the visitors have clicked it. You right away lose 50% of the user’s first scroll and the remaining 90% of users never click on that particular part.
You can get an inference out of this data, and that’s basically the hypothesis you test through A/B Testing methods. So, if you take the CTA all the way to the top of the page, 100% of the visitors see that. Then, you can see whether it works out for you in order to do an A/B test with the current page against the new page–which you will be able to help with the hypothesis. Later, you can see how well it performs and are able to process it.
Lastly, you have to keep measuring again and again and again till you achieve an optimal process. And even after that, the measurement continues.
What Businesses are Helped by Heat Maps?
Shawn Hessinger: Are there businesses where heat maps are more helpful than others? I would imagine eCommerce might be one.
Naresh: We are in 2022 and after the pandemic, it’s more important than ever to have a website to run a business. I would not differentiate between saying this is important for e-commerce and this is not important for others because a website is required for all businesses right now. You also need to give all the required data points on the website, and you need to generate leads through your website.
Keeping that in mind, I think a heat map would be adequate and essential for every business out there. It depends on what goal you have for the website and it depends on what measurement you do on your website to see whether your goal is achieved or not.
What to Look for in Conversion and Optimization Software
Shawn: You mentioned heat maps, scroll maps and attention maps. When I’m looking for this software, how do I know what to look for or that it’s got the features I need to deliver what I’m trying to find out?
Naresh: These tools are called conversion and optimization software in the market, and there are quite a few players who offer these services. However, what you want to get depends on what you want to achieve.
So, what I would recommend is first: go to the website again; it is a gateway for everything. Go to the website and look at the feature pages and see whether what you require is something that particular software offers.
Second, sign up for all these products and see whether it matches your requirement or not. That’s the only way to go, in my opinion.
The third, and one of the main things which I look at when I’m evaluating, is how far your page speed is going to be affected when you implement these software solutions. Because you need to have JavaScript code to track your visitors on the website, and you need to place them on the website to do that. So, when you do that, that has some amount of impact on your tracking code; on your page speed, right? So that is one more thing you must constantly look at when you evaluate this type of software.
Automated Marketing Software Can Also Help Grow Your Business
Shawn: Let’s talk about Zoho Marketing Automation. What are the kinds of ways that you can use that platform to grow your business?
Naresh Kumar: Zoho Marketing Automation is a complete marketing suite. It covers the top, middle and bottom of the sales funnel. You can use it for a lead, in order to nurture it and follow up with them, therein qualifying the lead and marking it as sales qualified, or marketing a qualified lead, and passing it on to the sales team.
You can also use automation for a customer in terms of loyalty, management and retention.
So, these are the various avenues in which you can use marketing automation. And to go into the specifics, there are different models which help you do that.
Moreover, the basic contact module helps you to manage all your contacts in your business. And we also have the lead generation model where you can generate leads for your business with the help of sign-up forms, pop-up forms and various other avenues in which you can generate the leads.
And besides that, we also have “Journeys” where you can create a Customer Journey and orchestrate them in terms of whether you want to send a follow-up email to them or you want to do the entire Sales Journey for the customer in terms of Dynamic Journeys–where, if the user has opened an email, they are sent to a different part. Or if the user has not responded to an email, they are sent to a different path…that’s what Journey does.
And suppose that we also have engagement models where you want to send a standalone email campaign, seamless campaigns, and various engagement mechanisms, you’ll be able to do that. In other words, if you want to navigate through the entire funnel of your business, marketing automation helps you do that.
The Takeaways
In closing, heat maps are just another example of how technology can help your small business run more smoothly. Also, consider heat maps when trying to figure out how visitors are behaving on your website and use its data, along with tools such as Zoho Marketing Automation, to help grow your business.
Be sure to tune in to the rest of Using Heat Maps to Grow Your Business to learn more about Zoho Journeys and get other tips and ideas to elevate and grow your small business.
If you enjoyed learning about heat maps and want to learn more about them, be sure to read Small Biz Trend’s informative article: 10 Heat Map Tools and User Tracking Tools.
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This article, “Naresh Kumar on Using Heat Maps to Grow Your Business” was first published on Small Business Trends