When I created my ebook website it became important for me to know exactly where my visitors were clicking when it came to the style of graphic, icon or play button I had added to my site.

I initially started off by having a picture of the video and the words “Click Here” to play the video. Clicking anywhere in the picture would play the video, but I wanted to monitor how well either the “Click Here” and actually clicking on the actual picture was doing.  You can see the “Click Here” to watch and then the actual picture of the video on the left.

Click Here to Play image

What I found happening was that the majority of my visitors were clicking on the picture to play the video. This told me that I needed to try and do something to increase the number image clicks rather than have them click elsewhere around the graphic. So I decided to add a “play” button graphic to the picture, as seen below.

This addition to the graphic increased my click through rates by over 95%! I couldn’t believe how something so simple had incresaed my CTR so dramatically. It led me to change the images on all the video graphics on the site.

Throughout the process I was using some software called ClickHeat. It takes a couple of minutes to install and is really easy to use.

I didn’t take a snap shot of the graphic before I added the play button, but this is what my ClickHeat map looks like now:

Image of clickheat map

Notice how all the “ClickHeat” seems to be happening above the black play button, and also on the “Click Here” to watch text? I can’t explain it but put it down to the way the data has been collected, as I am almost sure it would be the button they would be clicking, and not above it. So I just factore in that distance when analysing my ClickHeat map.

Notice the yellow area above the button? That indicates that there were more clicks in that area than elsewhere. The less clicks the darker the blue.

What’s my conclusion to all this?

I am satisfied that I have gotten the play button increasing click throughs, and the click heat (along with Website Optimiser by Google) has, in my opinion, got the graphic optimised as highly as possible.

The use of a ClickHeat map can be very useful to you as a website owner. If you offer a “Contact me Now” live chat button, but are not regularly online, perhaps the clickheat map can indicate to you, by the representation of heat on the map, whether you need to provide more online time for your visitors?

Don’t ever rely on ClickHeat maps on their own. ClickHeat maps married with Google Website Optimiser is a sure fire solution to paving your way to internet success.