Insight, Analytics and the New Marketing
Heatmaps for Free
I remember the first time I showed a heatmap of a website to a client in a new business pitch a couple of years ago. They thought it was the coolest thing they had ever seen and I believe we won the pitch just because of it. Nobody was doing it at the time. We had partnered with one of the pioneers in the area and it was a big undertaking. But it paid off. Soon after we started using them for all of our clients. The results were great and for a short amount of time it was a real differentiator for our team. We even rented an eye tracking machine so we would have it on site in our office (it sounds more spectacular than it is. It’s really just a PC monitor with a couple of sophisticated webcams).
But soon everyone started doing them and while they still have value, heat maps no longer are a differentiator. I recently found out they have entered the final stage of commoditization – they’re given away for free. On Tim Ash’s website http://www.attentionwizard.com you can create your own heatmaps in a matter of minutes – for free. I gave it a go for the doublethink. You can see the result above. If this was an ecommerce site I would probably make a few changes … .
While the tool is pretty cool, I think the most interesting part of this whole story is how a cutting edge, highly sophisticated optimization technology got automated and completely commoditized in only a matter of years. Change really is accelerating!
Good read … headline catchy … good points, some of which I have learned along the way as well (humility, grace, layoff the controversial stuff). Will share with my colleagues at work as we begin blogging from a corporate perspective. Thanks!
Your blog site is so helpful … keep up the great work! Also, is your wordpress theme a free one? and if so..can i have it?
thanks amigo! great post!
We’ve been getting excited about looking at this method as well. Brilliant read.