Heat Map: What It Is, How to Create, and Use

Analysts have many ways to present data, such as graphs, various charts, tables. This article will focus on heat maps. This way of presenting data was invented a long time ago, and perhaps the most obvious example of it is a temperature map during a weather forecast. The extreme values correspond to blue and red, while the comfort values correspond to green. Even children understand that red is hot and blue is cold.

Other data can also be plotted on an ordinary geographical map: population density, number of stores, distribution of real estate prices. The analysis of heat maps sometimes leads to unexpected insights or anomaly detections that were not noticeable when analyzing other views of the data. For example, this way you can identify territories where there is a need for a certain product, or niches where there are no competitors.

Why heat maps are needed and how to create them

Heat maps are a highly effective and visual way of representing data when you need to show the degree of change in a certain parameter in a given 2D or 3D space. The value of the parameter is shown not quantitatively with numbers, but qualitatively with colors. In other words, specific numerical values are transformed into colors, and these numerical values are always linked to a specific point or zone.

Heat maps can be implemented in existing analytics systems or created manually if you have programming and data manipulation skills. When I worked at FITTIN Inc , we developed a way to display the comfort level of wearing shoes, using a fitting map. This is how we named the three-dimensional polygonal model of the foot, painted in colors that characterize the level of comfort of the shoe. The non-contact shoe fitting algorithm developed by us combines a 3D model of the inner surface of the shoe and a 3D model of the foot and calculates the force impact of the shoe on the foot at each point. Next, we determined at what values of forces a person feels comfortable, and this range began to correspond to the green color gradation. The range of forces at which a person will experience pain began to be indicated in red. The blue color has come to mean that the shoes are great. By transferring the color values to the 3D leg model, we got a visual representation, according to which each unprepared user can choose the most comfortable shoes.

This example shows that a heat map can be displayed not only on a flat surface but also in 3D. Engineers use heat maps when analyzing the strength of 3D parts, visualizing the results of modeling other loads and processes.

Heat Maps in Marketing

Heat maps are effective for solving a wide range of tasks. If you work in marketing, content marketing, or study the UX of digital products such as websites or mobile applications, I recommend using heat maps. For example, you can use a click map, a feature available in tools like Google Analytics. Clicks on the map are highlighted with different colors depending on their frequency.

The most clickable elements are highlighted in red, and the least clickable ones in blue. If your most important call-to-action button "Buy" is displayed in blue, it means that users are not noticing it, and you need to think about how to draw attention to it, perhaps by moving it up or increasing its size. On the other hand, if less significant elements are highlighted in red, it means they are attracting too much attention. This kind of analytics will be particularly useful for website administrators and SEO specialists. The obtained data will show precisely which ineffective materials, articles, videos, images, or other information should be removed.

I know of interesting projects that analyze video from surveillance cameras in stores and create heat maps of customer navigation as a result. Computer vision technologies allow them to discover:

• Customer movement paths.
• Intensity and density of customer traffic during different periods.
• Customer interest in specific product positions.
• Areas of the highest and lowest popularity.

With this information, store employees can optimally arrange products on shelves, thereby increasing the average purchase amount and overall revenue. The areas highlighted in red on the heat maps are perfect spots for placing advertisements, promotions, and specials to ensure that the information reaches as many visitors as possible.

The main advantage of heat maps is their visual clarity.