Heatmaps are used for testing and research purposes. They can be applied to many different fields and web design and usability testing are just two of them. There are different types, some track the focus of your eyes on a webpage or there are others that will track clicks on a page. Damien Mulley has a great example of heat maps generated based on the movement of eyes around a webpage and they can give you some very valuable information. In Damien’s example below you can see that users mainly focus on the top three results in Google:
Today I want to show you how you can setup heatmaps for free on your website to track clicks on your webpage. You can see from the image below, it will show clicks on the page which can give you valuable info that you mightn’t already be tracking like, is the search function being used on the site?, are people viewing your twitter profile. etc.?
The tool I use is called ClickHeat and it is opensource. To set it up just download it from the site, upload it to your server and follow the installation process (which is very simple). Finally add the javascript to your template to enable tracking.
When you look at affiliate marketing more in depth, you’ll realise it’s not just a way to monetise your existing site, it is in fact a business opportunity in itself. Sometimes you’ll find offers and realise you can make more money building sites just dedicated to those offers. The offers available very from CPA (Cost Per Action) to CPS (Cost Per Sale). Online merchants/stores generally run cost per sale. Depending on the amount of products they offer a lot of online merchants offer datafeeds of their products through their affiliate programs. This allows you to build your own online store. Think about it, having your own online store, not having to deal with managing stock, processing sales, etc. and still making money?It’s a no brainer!
This is great but how do you build your affiliate store? Well I’ve found a FREE script which will allow you to do just this! It’s called Affilistore and you can find it at Affilistore.com.
So what does Affilistore do?
Affilistore allows you to pick a niche and develop a store around it. Take for example Perfumes, we could select feeds from Perfum Merchants and build it into our online store. The image below is store built using Affilistore importing feeds from Perfume Point, Cheap Smells, BeautyBay.com, SendMeScent, Jason Shankey and TheFragranceShop.
I have some fantastic news for anybody wanting to get started in Affiliate Marketing. How would you like your logo designed for free. Yes thats right FREE !! Even better how would you like your website built for $99? Sounds too good to be true? Well here is the unbelievable bit, its all for a good cause.
My friend Sean from www.smemon.com is running this special offer to raise funds for a sky dive for charity. I have to stress that this is a limited time offer and the quality of his work is unmatched, check out www.beerchief.com or have a look at his logo portfolio.
