Splash Page Heatmap Testing
I haven’t heard of anyone doing Heatmap testing out there before, so I thought it would be fun to test some splash pages and see what happens.
My first is the SuperSurfer splash page that has a bit of auto playing sound. What’s interesting to note about this, is that people aren’t clicking the stop button to stop the sound. Rather, it appears they are clicking the X like icon inside the splash page graphic, something similar to those buttons to close a window.
And when I change over to show clicks over time, pretty much all the clicks 5-10 seconds after the page loads, is in that upper right corner. Now the funny thing is, that icon is part of the graphic link to open Advertising Knowhow. I’m wondering how many of those people are then converting on the squeeze page at AKH!
September 20th, 2008 at 9:50 am
It seems like the box really did keep their attention up. It was clever and I think seems perhaps a little deceptive putting the sound down there where it appears to be almost below the fold.
I take it the splash page was not made by you, so I wonder if the creators did any similar research of their own before they launched the splash page.
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September 20th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Sound on splash pages simply makes me want to move on as fast as possible. If a new page comes up when trying to stop the sound, I merely click it off without looking.
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September 20th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Interesting. Wonder if this is the highest converting of the Super Surf Splash pages. It’s the one I liked the best.
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September 20th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I agree with Karl, I grind my teeth everytime sound starts playing while I’m surfing. That’s why I usually surf with my speakers turned off. I just can’t bear that little annoying yellow duck anymore…
IMO, sound should be forbidden at all TEs.
How did you do this heatmap testing? :)
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September 20th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I am glad to see that I am not the only one who do not like the “yellow duck”.
I do surf with sound on, some things I like to hear but most ad sounds are annoying. Maybe someone should do a research on annoying sound like they do with other advertising.
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September 20th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I was using sound in web pages and splashes 5 years ago when I used a neat little free program used by sight impaired persons to change the written word into an mp3 file. True Voice I think it was called. The voice choices were quite good and very divers. I stopped using it when threw testing I discovered that sound hurt my click rates and people I made these sites for stopped requesting sound. I have not used sound in several years. I look forward to seeing what has changed since then that makes sound a plus on any splash page. I can see it being good for a main website on request but splashes remains a mystery to me.
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September 20th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Loud sounds, & flashy lights may appeal to some but not me. Every add with bells & whistles reminds me of years ago, when all the used car salesmen thought if they blast your ears off you will buy from them.
lol
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September 20th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
That’s some pretty cool info Tim. I had never even heard of this heat map testing before. Very cool suff!
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September 20th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I don’t care for sound….so I keep my speakers off…..that way I’m not suddenly surprized by sounds that come up………
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September 21st, 2008 at 1:15 am
Superb Tim, I love this heatmap stuff you’ve found. :-)
Those reply buttons on the comments are really cool too. Which plugin is that?
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September 21st, 2008 at 11:16 am
Tim, brilliant as always.
Can’t wait to hear your results.
;)
I just added sound to my front page and 1 splash, need to tweak it though.
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September 22nd, 2008 at 3:27 am
Hey Tim…I thought it was me …so glad to read that others do not like sound too when surfing.
Have fun
Bryan
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September 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am
If I’m surfing one exchange, I don’t mind sound. However, when I’m super surfing at the five exchanges, it’s annoying, especially when pages at two or more of the TEs have sound at the same time.
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