Heat maps, the best tool to know how customers behave in your store. “Knowing your customers habits is the key to offer proper products and services for your customers, who are becoming increasingly demanding”. “Getting this data is really interesting for retailers, who can improve their strategy and design their layout more effectively”.

The main challenge for any business with a commitment to conversion is to find out what customers want and what they look for in your store, local, supermarket, shopping centre, pharmacy, etc. To achieve this is absolutely necessary to know each profile perfectly. It is essential to know how these users interact in our store: what they see, what catches their attention, what attracts them… Some time ago, this task required a lot of effort and research; however, nowadays there are really useful tools that can help us to come closer to our target. One of these useful and fantastic tools are heat maps.

What are they?

Heat maps are graphics that allow you to identify hot spots on your store, which means the areas that attract your clients attention. This representation is based on thermography and uses a colors hierarchy in which, typically, the most interesting points are identified by warm colors ranges (red, orange, yellow), while areas less interesting are represented by cool colors ranges (green, blue, turquoise).

This allows the heat map set the ‘hot spots’ that exist on a local, those places where users go and stay more often, that is, the places they love and call their attention.

For heat mapping, Flame uses IP video cameras. The great advantage of using cameras for heat mapping lies on the accuracy provided by the video (you can analyze products movement and lifting).

Heat maps types

There are two types:

Traffic Maps: These maps indicate wherever customers pass and give us an idea of ​​how they moves through our shop. This type of map is used primarily to help shape the design or layout of our store, identifying therefore busiest areas.

Activity Maps: These maps indicate where most people stand still and they are very useful to identify interesting areas. Also we can use activity maps to see if a promotion is working or if a particular area is attractive or not.

Heat maps will help you to …

– Place the products properly

Several Spanish-known brands have already proven this innovative technology. In fact, this information can be very useful for traders because through it they can know which products get more attention and which are the store best areas to make a promotion or place a given article.

– Finding an optimal design

As already explained, thanks to heat maps is easier to make decisions about a store or shop design, make changes, and then re-measure the results to find an optimal design.

– Analyze pricing strategy

It also allows the possibility to analyze the pricing strategy of the store. For example, a product that many people play with but almost nobody buys could be a sign that that product is too expensive…

– Manage exhibitors and showcases

Thanks to heat maps is easier to find out the hot and cold spots in your business and know how customers behave, which are the most visited areas… This information will help us manage our exhibitors and articles, give customers better promotions or highlight those products that sell best.