The heat map above shows where people clicked on a login page. You have been to similar pages thousands of times on hundreds of websites. You’ve used such a page yourself. You clicked where those people clicked. Whether you are a UX designer or a CEO, you instantly understand this heat map, don’t you?

What Do Your Eyes Tell You?

Take a long look at the heat map, before you read further. What do you see?

There were lots of clicks in “Sign In Now” (on the left) and “Create Account” (on the right) buttons which is good. Both buttons get the same share of clicks, which is also good as the business retains existing customers but also acquires new ones. There are some clicks in “Forgot the Password?” link. It would be better if everybody remembered their passwords, but obviously, that’s not possible. That’s why the link is there, so people who don’t can click it. So clicks in “Forgot Your Password” are good too. There are practically no clicks in navigation or any other elements which are great because this means that people did what they were supposed to do — they signed in or registered.

Therefore, everything looks FINE on this heat map.

But does it?

Don’t Trust Your Eyes

What if users put wrong passwords when they tried to sign in? They had to correct the password and click the “Sign In Now” button again. What if they did this a couple of times? All those clicks would sum up and make a huge hot spot over the “Sign In Now”.

The same problem applies to the hot spot over the “Forgot the Password?” link. On this page, the link doesn’t even work. If visitors clicked it multiple times in frustration, we get another hot spot.

What could have those visitors done next if the link didn’t work? Probably, they clicked the “Create Account” button. Perhaps, there were not that many new customers as we first thought, and in reality, existing customers who couldn’t sign in decided to register. That wouldn’t be that bad, after all, they would remain customers.

But does the click on the “Create Account” button means that visitors registered? What if they went to the registration form, entered their email and got an error that the email is already registered?