Everywhere you look, you will find heat maps. They are used to show weather forecasts, map out real estate and show the spread of pandemics. However you choose to use a heat map, it’s possible to easily visualize your excel data with the right software. But, why do you want to create heat maps and how will it benefit you? Let’s look at the perks of mapping out your data.
What is a Heat Map?
A heat map is a graphical representation that illustrates data to visualize trends. You can use your location data and place it onto a Google map by simply using your excel files. Plus, heat maps are entirely customizable by radius, intensity threshold, opacity and gradient colors.
As the data density increases, the heat map shows a color that indicates higher intensity. It also has a maximum threshold that is represented by the highest gradient or darkest color when using a single hue.
What is a Heat Map Generator Used For?
Geographic heat maps identify trends that would be otherwise difficult to see. Not only will you quickly spot the saturated areas, but you can also spot a market opportunity. Here are some of the benefits of using a heat map generator.
Map Sales Density
Combine numbers from your spreadsheet to weight out the locations. You will quickly see what locations have the highest sales and also receive insight into where you should put your marketing budget.
View Market Availability
If you want to know what customers access your products or stores, you can use your excel spreadsheet to map it out. The gradient colors will show you where people might travel from and what stores are too far away.
Complete Customization
You can customize your heat map by adjusting the radius, gradient color, intensity threshold and opacity. It’s also possible to display maps with just one color if you prefer.
What Should You Use a Heat Map For?
The short answer is, there’s never a bad time to use a heat map generated from your excel data. Aside from taking location data from your excel spreadsheet, here are just a few of the best times to create a map.
During a Website Redesign
It isn’t cheap to redesign your website. It takes time and money that you don’t want to waste. What you want is an updated design that works better than the first. Heat mapping tools help graphic designers understand user behavior to pick the best placement, color and contrasts, ultimately driving up the conversion rates.
Performing A/B Testing
Every company should perform A/B testing to determine what works best. Heat maps are a powerful tool to use during the testing to provide further insights into what the visitors do. You can map out the activity on the blog posts, home page or landing pages.
Whether you are going to change your website copy, alter images or move the CTA button, you want to see which converts better and why. Heat maps allow you to visualize the conversion behavior, showing you which option is best.
Planning Content Marketing
As you plan your content marketing, you have to look first at what works and causes engagement. Maps show you where your users scroll, whether they are reading the content and what grabs their attention.
You can determine how long to make the posts, what to write about and who clicks on the CTA.
Performing UX and Usability Testing
While you are looking at what your users are doing, it also makes sense to test the user experience and usability. Let’s assume you sell products online and you have lots of customers putting items in the cart, but they end up abandoning the cart. What is going on?
UX testing will give you the insight you need.
Heat maps and overlays show you where the people click and what they get hung up on. Maybe it’s the color of your checkout button that isn’t working. You can test different colors and see how people respond.
How To Make a Heat Map With Excel
Now that you know why you should use heat maps let’s discuss how to create one with mapping software.
- Upload your data to the platform from your excel spreadsheet.
- Choose the heat map style you want. You can choose from Marker Density or Numerical Data with most software.
- Create markers for your map or a specific field. You can select information from one column of data or more. How you filter the data is up to you.
- High-quality software will allow you to see the visualization instantly.
- From there, you can further customize the information by changing colors, the outlook or appearance.
The more you use an online map generator, the more ways you will find to utilize it. From filtering individual salesperson data to looking at high-performance locations, the possible maps are infinite. You can even compare your salespeople side by side to see who the top performer is. Use your insights to formulate new locations or distribute your marketing budget. There’s no limit to the ways you can succeed with heat maps from excel data.