Heat maps can teach you a lot about the effectiveness of your website at getting visitors to take action.

How would you like a free evaluation for your own site?

Landing Page Optimization

I’m a fan of Tim Ash and his company, SiteTuners.com, because their mission isn’t to build really pretty websites. Tim’s goal is to help create pages on the web that encourage people to interact with your brand and business in a concrete way. In other words, more clicks, not just looks.

You can generate a heat map just like I did be heading to Attention Wizard and creating a free account. Every free membership gives you one heat map analysis per day, but you can get unlimited analysis when you opt to buy a pro account. Take a screenshot of your website and visit Tim’s site now to see how your landing page ranks!

…and yes, I did take a peek at Social Media Commando! Here’s the results:

Notice the red and orange flares? Those are the activity ‘hot spots’ which indicate the highest concentration of appeal for the rods and cones inside your eyes.

Another helpful part of this heat map is that the points of highest attention are numbered, so you get a clear idea of where people look first when they land on your page. The results for this page reveal that the Facebook Fan Page widget get lots of attention, but not the email signup form in my header.

Not good! That’s going to require a fix.

Although I have to admit it’s tough balancing action oriented design vs. the look and feel of a site visitors have come to find familiar and cool. Still, I am a believer in effective landing page design, so a few changes are in order (I have updated JoeMescher.com to put the most attention on a signup form).

The bottom line is that landing page optimization is as much science as it is art, and if you’re ready to make the investment of time required to build a better user experience, check out one of Tim’s interviews from YouTube:

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