What is Heat Mapping?
A visual analytics technique that shows where users click, scroll, and move their cursor on web pages, using colour gradients to represent interaction intensity.
Understanding the Details
Heat maps transform user behaviour data into visual patterns that reveal how people actually interact with your pages — which often differs dramatically from how you think they interact. Click maps show which elements get the most clicks (revealing whether CTAs are being noticed). Scroll maps show how far down the page visitors reach (revealing if important content is below the fold). Move maps show cursor movement patterns (indicating what draws visual attention). Tools like Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, and Crazy Egg generate heat maps from aggregated visitor behaviour. The insights are most valuable when combined with conversion data: knowing where people click matters most when you also know which clicks lead to conversions.
How It Works in Practice
CTA placement optimisation
A click map reveals that visitors click a non-clickable image more than the actual CTA button, leading to a redesign that improves conversion by 20%.
Scroll depth analysis
A scroll map shows only 30% of visitors reach the pricing section at the bottom of a landing page, prompting a layout change to move pricing higher.
Navigation behaviour
A click map on the homepage shows visitors overwhelmingly click 'Pricing' and 'Features' while ignoring 'About' and 'Blog', informing navigation priorities.
Why It Matters
Understanding how visitors actually interact with your pages reveals optimisation opportunities that analytics alone can't surface. Heat maps bridge the gap between quantitative data and visual understanding.
What People Often Get Wrong
Heat maps tell you why users behave a certain way. Actually, they show what users do but not their motivation — you need qualitative research for 'why'.
More data makes better heat maps. Actually, a few hundred sessions often reveal clear patterns, and more data rarely changes the insights.
Heat maps replace A/B testing. Actually, heat maps generate hypotheses that A/B testing validates with statistical rigour.
How We Handle Heat Mapping
We use heat mapping alongside analytics and A/B testing to identify conversion opportunities, generating data-informed hypotheses about how page changes will improve performance.
Related Terms
Common Questions
Need Help With Heat Mapping?
If you'd like to discuss how heat mapping applies to your business, we're happy to explain further.