Heatmap

Heatmaps in plain English

Analytics tools tell you what happened: how many people visited a page and how many left. A heatmap helps explain why, by showing what visitors actually did on the page. It is one of the quickest ways to spot the reasons a page is not producing enquiries.

The main types of heatmap

• Click (or tap) maps show where people click. They reveal clicks on things that are not links, such as images or headings people expect to be clickable, and buttons nobody uses.
• Scroll maps show how far down the page visitors get. If only a quarter of mobile visitors reach your booking button, the button is in the wrong place.
• Move or attention maps estimate where people focus, based on mouse movement or time spent on each section.

Most heatmap tools also offer session recordings: anonymised replays of individual visits. Watching ten recordings of people abandoning a form often teaches you more than a month of reports.

How heatmaps help with CRO

In conversion rate optimisation, heatmaps sit in the diagnosis stage. They help you:

• check whether your main call to action is seen and clicked
• find the point where most visitors stop scrolling, and move key information above it
• spot "rage clicks", where frustrated visitors click the same spot repeatedly
• see whether visitors read your reviews and credentials or skip them
• compare mobile and desktop behaviour, which are often very different

How to read a heatmap without fooling yourself

1. Wait for enough data. A heatmap based on 40 visits can mislead. Aim for a few hundred visits per page if you can.
2. Split mobile and desktop. Layouts change, so combined maps blur the picture.
3. Look for patterns, not single hot spots. One busy area means little on its own.
4. Treat findings as ideas to test. A heatmap suggests what to change. Your conversion rate tells you whether the change worked.

Which heatmap tool should you use?

Microsoft Clarity is free and covers heatmaps and session recordings for most small and mid-sized sites. Hotjar is a popular paid alternative with extra survey features. Whichever you use, set it up with your cookie consent banner and avoid recording form fields that capture personal details.

Related terms

• Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)
• Customer journey
• Landing page
• A/B testing
• User testing
• Bounce rate

How WebManics can help

We install and configure Microsoft Clarity alongside Google Analytics 4, then turn what the heatmaps show into specific page changes. Every free website conversion audit uses heatmap and recording data where it is available, and our CRO Growth Retainer reviews it every month to decide what to fix next.