When author Michael Alvear reached out to me to tell me he had a heat map about how shoppers use Amazon when buying a book, I hadn’t originally considered covering this topic. But authors can learn a lot from this map and what areas of their book page visitors will spend the most time.
The heat map shows different colors depending on how long a shopper’s pupils focused on a certain area. The red and orange areas were the most important areas — although another interpretation would be those areas were where the shopper was looking for more information and could have been confused.
The most important things:
- Cover
- Title
- Summary of Reviews
- Price
The most viewed parts of the page shoppers were, unsurprisingly, at the very top of the page.
The cover was the most important element, and Michael recommends authors get the best work out of their graphic designers. The second biggest fixation point was the title, which Michael has listed best practices for developing in his book, Make A Killing On Kindle Without Blogging, Facebook Or Twitter. Other important pieces at the top of the page where shoppers looked were the summary of reviews and the price.
Another important area shoppers fixated on was the Also Bought section, and depending on what is listed in that area, if the books are not yours, this area might lure shoppers away from your book and onto a competitor's page.
Be aware that a competitor could siphon your book sales through the AMS ads. This works to the advantage for authors using these ads placed on another page, but works against them when competitor’s book ads are placed on your page.
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However, if you have written a series or even if you have related books, you can ask Amazon to list them as Books in This Series, which shows up above the fold, meaning shoppers will see those books before scrolling to where the Also Bought books would be. According to Michael, this feature is supposed to be automated, however he suggests emailing Amazon to ask them to list those books.
If shoppers scroll down, the heat map also showed they payed attention to the top, middle and bottom of the reviews section. This led Michael to suggest putting calls to action in that area, like in the Editorial Reviews section, that’s not in the book copy section.
One more tip that can be gleaned from the heat map is that shoppers only see those first one or two sentences in the book description before expanding, so make sure those sentences are strong and stand out.
Bio of the Author in the Case Study:
Michael Alvear is an award-winning ad veteran and author of more 15 self-published books.
He is a columnist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as a frequent contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
Resources Referred to in this Episode:
- Michael Alvear’s Author Page on Amazon
- Writing for a Living Heatmap
- Make A Killing On Kindle Without Blogging, Facebook Or Twitter: The Guerilla Marketer's Guide To Selling Ebooks On Amazon by Michael Alvear
- BookBub
- 99Designs
- Kirkus Reviews
- Site used to create heat map: LookTracker
- Amazon Marketing Services Course
- The Book Marketing Show Listing Previous Books For More Sales With Steve Scott
- Kindle Direct Publishing 
Thank you!
Absolutely!
Power packed information, as always. I knew of crazyegg from Neil Patel and Sumo`s heat maps, but good to know there is a heatmap specially for amazon.The first impression matters (cover designing, of course) for a book to captivate the reader ‘s / buyer ‘s attention. Not to forget to have unbeatable content and word of mouth of course is the cherry on the cake, which at first is hard to get, but with time and great content combined, the magic happens on its own!Will keep in mind about this new tool for amazon. thanks, Dave! sharing with my peeps.