Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:03 — 3.7MB) | Embed

Video Breakdown:
0:00 – 0:12   Introduction
0:13 – 0:41   What are heat maps?
0:42 – 1:20   Google Analytics Free Heat Map
1:21 – 1:40   Upgrade when you have more traffic or need more testing
1:41 – 2:10   Fantastic resource for any type of research
2:11 – 2:41   An example of where to use archive.org
2:42 – 3:43   Summary and wrap up

Andrew here for LeanMeanMarketing.com. Today let’s talk about free heat maps and where you can get yours along with a tremendously valuable resource for doing any type of research. Let’s get right to it.

Heat maps are absolutely critical to not only optimize your business and your website but also to help you understand your target audience and what drives them, what motivates them, what they like and what they dislike. They help you increase visitor value without having to write code.

There are a ton of paid heat map services like Clicky and Visual Website Optimizer which is the one that I like. But there is also an excellent free option if you are just getting started or if you do not have enough traffic to warrant spending 50, 60, 70, 80 dollars a month.

Google Analytics offers a free basic heat map that is actually something that very few people seem to know about. Granted it is not the same quality you will get from something like Visual Website Optimizer, but it’s pretty darn good and considering that it is free, you cannot argue with that.

The heat map within Google Analytics is not right on the front page so you will have to dig in a little bit to find it. But it is not that hard and I will provide you with instructions. It will provide you with all the important data like how many clicks your links get, what parts of your website are getting the most actions and activities, and critical data which is displayed in a visual format that is great to look at.

When you are ready to upgrade because you either have more traffic or you need to do some more advanced testing like multivariate or AB testing, you can go with something like Visual Website Optimizer. That is actually what we use for most of our websites and I honestly cannot complain whether it is about the price, the service, or just the actual data that you get back from it.

The second thing I want to talk to you about is archive.org. It is a fantastic resource for doing any type of research or competitor analysis because it provides screenshots of billions of websites at different points in time. You can look at the same website from two years ago and it will have different snapshots from different days and different months of that website over time. You can actually watch it change and you can watch your competitors’ site change, get modified and updated over time.

One of the valuable things that I used to use this for was when I used to buy a lot of aged domains and richer domains and a lot of the time when I would buy these websites, I would just buy the domain and they would be an established website; they would have a lot of mature backlinks and old backlinks to them. What I would do is, I would go on archive.org and I would find an image of what the website looks like most recently and then reconstruct the pages with the same naming structure so we could benefit from all the quality link building done by the previous owner and use them for our purposes.

To quickly review, spend a few minutes and dig into your Google Analytics account and find the free heat map and actually review it. Try to make use of some of the data that it is telling you. If you do not have money to use a paid or premium service right now, become familiar with this heat map because it provides incredible data about not only how your website is performing but also about your target audience and target demographic.

Number two was archive.org, use it to do competitive research to see what your competitors have done over the last year and it will provide you with a historical perspective when you are doing any type of research.

Again, this is Andrew Hiddleston from LeanMeanMarketing.com.

Dig into your Google Analytics account, find that free heat map, see what it tells you, see what value it can bring to you and check out archive.org when you have a minute. I already gave you an example of what we used it for at one point and it was tremendously valuable to us. See what use you can think of for it, make note of it, and use it.

Thanks for watching and I’ll talk to you soon.

Tweet