Heat Mapping: An Easier Way for Relationship Building

The new camera based Technology is helping the Retailers to get an information about not only what the Customers wants to buy but to keep a track on the matter about what the Customers are actually buying.

Utility of the camera technology:

The Heat Mapping Technology or the camera based technology is a regular trend in today’s world that helps the retailers in the following ways;

1. It help the retailers to keep a track on what the customers are liking
2. Keep a track on what the customers are ignoring
3. Where the customer traffic is more inside the shop.

Thus in-store heat mapping is an excellent way to optimize the store’s layout and design. One of the major utility that the heat mapping technology has is that it helps to distinguish between popular vs. unpopular places and expensive merchandise vs. cheap merchandise.

Latest trends in Heat mapping:

There are various latest trends that have emerged in the world of retailing. So the heat mapping technologies have also undergone various changes in the recent years. These include:

• Heat mapping technologies are so advanced now a day that they help retailers by saying what the customers wants inside the store. There is a common psychology behind is that touching a product inside the shop increases the chances to buy that particular product. Pricing problem is one of the main problems being faced by the retailers. Heat map can be a solution to this problem. High price can be a reason for the customer to touch a product and not buying it.
• Another trend in heat mapping includes tracking merchandise record. This type of heat mapping is only concerned level of interaction among the retailers with the customers instead of what the customers are touching.

Heat Map analytical tools:

The top ten heat map analytical tools are as follows;

• Mouse Flow
• Lucky Orange
• Crazy Egg
• Click tale
• Heat Map.me
• Click Heat
• Click Beat
• Clicky
• Inspectlet
• Sessinocam

Example showing how the in-store heat map works:

There are different colors in the heat mapping system indicating different things like;

A store has certain areas with a high traffic interest then it might be indicated with red, while the areas with little traffic interest can be demarcated by blue light.

On the contrary there are certain areas inside the stores that are having a mix response among the customers. Like some portion of the area can attract people and some can’t, these areas are being demarcated by red color with green patches inside it.

Conclusion:

There are few things that a retailer should keep in mind to make the best use of heat mapping or heat map analytics. The most important content or the thing that a customer may be attracted to is to be kept in front of the eyes of the customers, as when someone is in hurry then he or she picks up the thing that is in front of the eyes. Over crowded with lots and products or contents can make the customer confuse. The interior decoration of a store plays an important role in seeking the customer’s attention.

Heat Mapping: a Way to Better Optimize Your Store

The Technological changes are affecting the Behavior of the Customers. Gone are those days when the shopkeepers or the Retailers were only concerned about what the customers are buying and what are the things that are attracting more customers, but now they also keep a close eye on how the customers are buying the product, or in short the Retailers today are more concerned about an individual Customer’s Behavior.

Unlike the earlier days the Retail Shop’s layout, design, placement of a product, discounts to be offered etc are some of the important criteria that dictates a customer’s behavior. The closed circuit camera inside the stores helps the retailer to track what are the products that are attracting more customers, what are not, the places inside the Retail Shop with high traffic etc. This data collected are then used by turning the information into Heat Maps. In-Store Heat Mapping thus help in proper optimization of the store. The network cameras used for heat mapping are very much pocket, friendly, flexible and are also scalable. The data collect from these cameras are an effective mode to provide a solution to heat mapping.

Types of Heat Mapping:

Heat mapping can broadly be divided into two types, these include;

• Mouse tracking heat mapping
• Eye tracking heat mapping

Differences Between the Types of Heat Mapping:

The mouse tracking heat maps are widely used by most of the companies because it is less expensive. The data collected from mouse tracking heat maps are the one that are collected from actual customers or visitors inside a shop on the other hand the data collected from eye tracking heap map are gathered after sampling out the visitors into small groups that means the result of this mapping system is a distorted one. However the data collected through eye tracking heat mapping after considering the samples are a much accurate one than the mouse tracking heat mapping.

Functions of In-store Heat Mapping:

In-Store Heat Map functions in the following ways and help the retailers;

• There are various spots inside the stores that in Retail terminology is termed as the hot spot, dead areas or bottlenecks, the heat maps contains picture of this areas and help the retailers to gain a clear idea about the store.
• The data in the heat map that are collected from the closed circuit or the network cameras inside the shop are used to highlight the retailers with information about the traffic flow inside a store. These data are stored and can be collected from anywhere through the network.
• These help the Retailers to have an up to date knowledge about the store’s performance, how the customers are behaving, whether or not their employees are fulfilling the job of customer’s satisfaction effectively.
• These data can further be compared with that of the previous year’s data whether it is a loss or profit the current year.
• The heat mapping system use different colors to demarcate different values like traffic flow inside the stores are marked by one on the other hand the product attracting more customers having another color.
• The content of that attracts most of the customers are to be kept at the top page, to intrigue the customer’s need.

Heat map analytics and its impact on Retail

The dictionary meaning of Heat Map is the graphical representation of any individual value. The matrix of this representation is represented by colors. The different colors that are seen in this graphical representation have different meaning or depict different values for different data. However, in Retail the heat map help the Retailers in many ways like;

• It helps in knowing the hot spots,
• Dead areas
• Bottlenecks

How the Heat Map Works?

The in-store heat map system takes the images being captured by the network cameras or the IP cameras which help the Retailers to have an idea about the customer’s traffic pattern in a particular time or during the real time. The information can be collected from anywhere in the network. Benefits of in Store Heat Map:

The benefits of heat map system in Retailing are many folds. These are;

• By having a clear view on the customer’s traffic pattern or by collecting information about this helps the retailers to improve the in store.
• Help or improve the customer service techniques being used by them to satisfy the customers.
• It also helps the retailers to improve or plan the promotional activities and the marketing techniques. This helps the retailers to meet the customer’s demand by using the customer’s traffic data containing customer’s buying habits, behavior.

By using the heat map system in the in-Store Retail Analytics process the Retailers can see positive changes in terms of the customer’s flow, items that are sold , average sale value and many more. Features of the cameras that make in store heat map a beneficial one; The network cameras that are used in the in store heat map are,

1. Scalable
2. Flexible
3. Cost Effective

All these above three characteristics make heat map a powerful Retail Solution.

The Various Heat Map Analytics Tool That Can Be Used by the Retailers to Get a Better Result in the Retail Store:

• Mouse flow: It is a live analytic tool. This helps to know the website visitors. This help the retailers to gather information about the customers by knowing where they click, where they browser or on which item they are giving extra attention. This system captures all the mouse clicks, keystrokes etc.
• Lucky Orange: This is also a live analytics tool that helps the retailers by giving them information about how many customers are currently visiting their sites. This system compares the historical statistics to see what kind of customers are mainly visiting their sites, what keywords are being used more frequently and so on.
• Crazy Eggs: It helps the retailers to analyze their customer’s engagement through heat maps. These give an information about which portion of their website attracts most of their customers.
• Click Tale: By aggregating the total number of mouse clicks of the customers the click tale tool creates a visual representation of where the customers are viewing more or focusing more on the website. The tool calculates by seeing the mouse move, click, attention of the customers, etc.

Conclusion: This shows that the heat map system makes the in Store Retail much more smooth and fast. It also helps in making the in store retailing fruitful.