Keys to the Ultimate Heat Map
The hottest spots on any web page are shown in the diagram above. Red 1′s are the hottest areas, getting the most eye fixations, attention and clicks. Blue 6′s are the coolest being practically ignored, with very few clicks.
The dashed line represents “above the fold.” It is the prized area of the page, that the viewer can see without scrolling. Everything above the fold is hotter than areas below the fold, with the exception of subheadlines, navigation bars and the last two sentences of the final paragraph.
The transparent rounded rectangle is the skimming lens. It’s the hotter left third of the body copy, including subheadlines and the first four to five words of each paragraph. In the Ultimate Heatmap diagram above, you’ll see the lens overlay, running down the left side of the copy.
Almost everyone will read your opening headline, jump to each subhead, and skim the final paragraph, before deciding to stay on your page. If you catch their attention, or interest, with any of those elements, they’ll go back and reread your entire page.
So pay attention to what you say in your subheadlines. Be descriptive of the paragraphs, but try to arouse interest and curiosity at the same time. Use interesting verbs in unusual places, to surprise, amaze, entertain and draw the reader into your content.
Sample Template
Template L1
Ad Revenue Potential: 6 of 10
User Experience Rating: 6 of 10
The Ultimate Heatmap research shows the left column to be much hotter than the right. This is partially because the way we read, from left to right, top to bottom. As the eyes move left to start a new line of text, the ads come further into peripheral vision and awareness.
It’s also where the left vertical nav bar usually goes. But instead of finding the nav bar, over 50% of the people will look at, and read the ads, in the Wide Skyscraper instead.
Text ads in the Skyscraper section tested better than graphical ads, unless the graphical ad tightly matched the page content. In that case, graphical ads faired better.
The Leaderboard Ad was kept under the site masthead. It’s standard on most two column templates, because our tests from Template R4 show a substantial increase in heat, attention and clicks.
Instead of having the Medium Rectangle down by the footer, it has moved up, under the first paragraph. The results were explosive in terms of revenue. The text ads in this middle position were looked at 90% of the time.
Now the reader is forced to read “over” the ads to continue with the article. They also see the ads if they’ve reached the end of the article, and are returning to the top nav bar.
The ad at the bottom, instead of a nav bar, is what Google calls a Link Unit Ad. Remember that they permit you, “Up to three AdSense for content units, and a maximum of three link units, and two search boxes on each webpage.”
We’ve used up all three “Content Units” above the fold, in the hottest areas possible. That means if we’re using AdSense, we have to rely on a “Link Unit” above the footer, which worked out well anyways.
Why? Because the links in the ad were very similar, to what would have been in a nav bar. Many people naturally clicked on it, for info that was related to the page content.
Of course, if you’re not using AdSense, you don’t need to follow their rules. You could use a different ad network and place as many ads as their terms of service allows, but would you want to? You’ll need to use your own judgement as to how cluttered you go.
I hope you enjoyed this free sample template and appreciate the work that went into all the research. If you’d like to purchase the full report, and get a dozen different templates, you can do so here:
