In the dead of winter, we feel the need to talk about something…hot! How about the hot trend of heatmapping for webpages and video?
Heatmaps for webpages
A “heat map” is a graphical display of where viewers eyes scan specific content on your website represented as colors, or level of ‘heat’. Tracking software has been commonly used for usability purposes to track engagement of user experiences by capturing the user’s visual field or tracing clicks on parts of a web page. A heat map can help identify the strong and weak points on a given web page, and test the optimal placement of page elements, such as call to actions or contact forms.
Analysis of heatmaps over the years has shown that viewers scan webpages in a predictable “F” or an “E” shaped pattern.
So, is it possible to use heatmaps to track video experience?
Heatmaps for video
Web Page heatmaps have been notoriously inadequate in their ability to collect video viewing patterns, and most require software installation, which can be a tricky set up. Even sophisticated solutions only track the “surface engagement” of video, and do not drill into any data on the actual viewing experience. For example, a web page heatmap doesn’t distinguish between whether a user played the video and whether their eye just lingered around it. So unfortunately, you can’t rely on website heatmaps alone to gather substantive analytics for video.
Our friends at Wistia have a wizard heatmap solution that measures video metrics and the interactions between the viewer and the video – including re-watching, skipping, and starting new viewing sessions. This data offers sales and marketing teams a visual way to effectively “score” cold leads, with insights into which prospects are most promising given their video viewing behavior and level of interest. Wouldn’t you love to know who is watching your video, and how they are watching it? A graphic interface displays viewer interactions in real time!
Turn cold leads hot! Maybe it’s time to investigate heat mapping tools, like the one from Wistia, as an effective way to measure interaction and engagement with your video content.
