I think it’s pretty obvious for everyone that simply ’slapping on some ads’ is not the best method of getting the most revenue out of them. So how do we figure out the best placement for our ads? This is where heatmaps come in.

Heatmaps will essentially show clicks through the use of hot and cold zones as you can see in the image on the right. With heatmaps you can see where users click the most, as well as where they don’t.

From the ‘hot’ zones you can figure out whether or not it is a good placement for an advertisement. Why I say ‘or not a good placement’ is because it’s a fairly straight forward fact that you will get clicks on your navigation menu, so for advertisement purposes, use some logic.

How to use Heatmaps

If you’re not technically-savvy, by which I mean it is not a 5 minute thing to install your own script, you can use Crazy Egg Heatmap to get yourself a heatmap. All you need to do is sign up, put some code in your template file and you’re set to go.

For Tech-Savvy Users: Download ClickHeat, an open source heat map script which will allow you to have your own heatmap. If you’re using a free host, I doubt you’ll be able to run this script due to technical requirements.

Bright Idea! If you can and want to, you may use both of these heatmaps. The limitations of Crazy Egg is the number of page views you can get, whereas the limits of ClickHeat are all the advanced features Crazy Egg has. So if you use both, you can benefit better.

Placement

After adding your heatmap, check it after a few days and you’ll begin to notice a trend of clicks in the same area. In the areas we get the most visitor attention, we want to place banners, ads, and so forth in order to maximize our clickthroughs.

Other Uses

Heatmaps can be used for much more than just ads. Here are some examples:

• Design Use: You want users to click on certain spots on your site, but you see it doesn’t happen. Change your design a bit and see whether the clicks improve or not.
• Page Layout – Seeing where your clicks go will help you determine whether the layout you have (ie sidebar items, widgets, archives, etc.) are positioned properly.
• Subscribe Buttons/Links – Boost your RSS subscriber database by placing subscribe links where readers will click.

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