Ever wondered if customers are scrolling to the bottom of your homepage to see all your featured products? Curious to know if your website layout is truly user-friendly? Heat maps can show you exactly how users engage with your site.
Rather than guessing where to place a call to action (CTA) or relying on intuition to design your website, heat maps can help you make data-driven decisions, transforming potential missed opportunities into high-converting web pages.
What is a heat map?
A website heat map is a visual representation of user engagement on a webpage. This type of data visualization tool helps you understand user behavior by identifying which parts of your site visitors most engage with or ignore. Heat map tools often have separate maps for mobile and desktop versions of a page.
Through software, heat maps overlay a gradient color palette on a page to represent how users behave as they browse your website. This facilitates data analysis. Warmer colors represent areas with high engagement, while cooler colors represent areas with low engagement. Yellow and green signal moderate engagement.
How a heat map works
Heat map tools like Hotjar or Heatmap.com use tracking software to collect user interaction data to show you where users click, move their cursor, or scroll on your page. The platform then aggregates data points into data sets, like click locations or scroll depth, and calculates the frequency of each.
Finally, the software organizes data into a color range from red (most engaged) to blue (least engaged) to help you analyze user behavior and identify patterns. For example, if a heat map highlights your CTAs with casual language in red, it might signal that visitors prefer a more informal tone.
Types of heat maps
You can use different types of heat maps to get a full picture of user engagement. Here are five common types to help you visualize data:
Click maps
Click maps give you a snapshot of where users click (or tap on their phones) the most and least on a page. Typically, red areas mean high clicks, blue areas mean low clicks, and areas without color mean no clicks.
Click maps can reveal the relationship between your page’s design and user engagement. For example, if a CTA above the fold (the portion of the page you can see before you scroll) gets fewer user clicks than a CTA below the fold (parts of a page only visible after you scroll), swapping them can boost visitor interaction. Or if users keep clicking on a non-clickable element, it means a design element on your page is confusing.
Mouse-tracking heat maps
A mouse-tracking heat map shows you where users move or hover their mouse on a page. Knowing which sections capture attention can inform where you place CTAs or high-value messaging.
However, mouse location doesn’t always correlate with visual focus. For a more thorough view of user engagement, combine mouse-tracking maps with another website heat map (like a click map).
Scroll maps
A scroll map reveals how many users scroll down to various points on a page. The transition from red to yellow to blue can indicate where users lose interest or stop scrolling.
Scroll maps can shape blog content and website layout. For example, you might move a newsletter signup CTA from a yellow area to a red one to capture more leads or place critical page elements where users spend the most time.
For the most comprehensive data, use scroll maps with other analytics tools or website heat maps.
Attention heat maps
Attention heat maps combine data from click, scroll, and mouse-tracking maps into a single view. This can help you uncover insights like what non-clickable elements engage users or areas with low scroll depth that have high interaction.
Without this full-picture view, you might assume that certain elements aren’t effective. For example, you might have a GIF in the middle of your page that significantly engages users, but you may not know that if you were only using click maps. This can lead to misguided decisions about your site’s design and content.
Segmented heat maps
Segmented heat maps let you group users according to criteria like location, device, and demographics. You can then analyze each group to learn how different types of users interact with your site. With granular insights into specific groups, you can create targeted optimizations and a more personalized experience.
How to use heat maps on your website
- Optimize layouts
- Identify popular elements
- Improve the user experience
- Facilitate A/B testing
- Spot technical issues
Heat maps help you make data-driven decisions instead of operating on a hunch. Here’s how you can use them to improve your site:
Optimize layouts
Since you can’t watch over users’ shoulders as they scroll your web page, you can use a heat map to understand what parts of your website’s layout they find engaging. You can then shuffle elements to create a website that better converts leads.
Identify popular elements
Clicks, hovers, and scrolls show what your users interact with, what interests them, and what holds their attention. This helps you optimize CTA placement, improve the visibility of key elements, or remove elements that aren’t popular.
Improve the user experience
Have you ever clicked on a site element and nothing happened? Heat maps reveal visitor friction so you can fix issues like misleading or unexpectedly non-clickable elements.
You can also use a heat map to segment users by new versus returning, geographical location, or device, then personalize their experience. For example, a mobile user might scroll to the bottom of your homepage, while a desktop user loses interest halfway through. This shows you have more leeway with length on mobile, while you should place high-value CTAs and messaging higher up on a desktop page.
Facilitate A/B testing
Heat maps don’t directly serve as A/B tests, but they can provide valuable insights into design, messaging, and layout, helping you make more informed hypotheses. After you run a test, compare the variant heat maps to better understand your results.
For example, you might think a “Free Shipping” CTA will lead to more engagement because heat map data shows users click more on shorter prompts. You can then run a test and compare heat maps before and after to confirm your hypothesis.
Spot technical issues
Non-responsive elements, misleading CTAs, broken links, and slow-loading elements can hurt conversions. You may not even know these issues exist.
For example, if you suddenly experience a drop in sales, you might think it’s because of external factors like increased competition or seasonality. However, heat map data might reveal that users clicked on a non-responsive Add to Cart button that doesn’t work on mobile devices.
Heat map FAQ
What is a heat map used for?
A heat map visually represents user interactions and engagement on a web page. It uses color schemes from red (high engagement) to blue (low engagement).
Does Google have a heat map tool?
Google doesn’t have a heat map tool. However, you can use Google Analytics’s Behavior Flow report to learn how users move through your website. You can also combine Google Analytics with another tool like Hotjar.
How do I create a heat map?
Start by choosing a heat map tool. Then, use tracking codes to install the software on your site. After you install and configure it, let it run for two to four weeks to gather meaningful data before analyzing it and making decisions.
