Heatmaps 101: seeing what visitors actually do

An analytics tool like GA4 gives you valuable insight, but in tables and charts. For anyone who doesn't work with data daily, that's a barrier.

A heatmap lays the same behaviour over an image of your page. You see at a glance which parts get attention and which are ignored, without first learning to read a report.

That also makes it a good instrument for validating a change: put the before and after heatmaps side by side and you see immediately whether it had an effect.

Most people think of a click map, but there are more.

• Click heatmaps show where people click. Useful for discovering what does get clicked, and which carefully designed call to action gets ignored.
• Scroll heatmaps show how far people get. If your key message sits below the point where eighty percent drop off, you know what to do.
• Movement heatmaps follow mouse movement. An indication of where attention goes, though the correlation with actual looking isn't perfect.
• Attention heatmaps combine click, scroll and movement data into a single picture of activity on the page.

There are many; which one fits depends on your needs and budget. These are the most used.

• Hotjar. Popular and broad: click maps, scroll and movement maps, session recordings, funnel analysis, plus feedback polls and surveys.
• Crazy Egg. Click, scroll and attention heatmaps, with session recordings, A/B testing and visual reports with recommendations.
• Mouseflow. Click, scroll and movement maps, plus session recordings, funnel analysis, form analysis, A/B testing and surveys.
• Lucky Orange. Click, scroll and attention heatmaps, session recordings and form analysis, with chat and feedback polls alongside.

• Which types of heatmap. Not every tool offers all four. Decide first which type tells you the most.
• Ease of use. If nobody on your team opens it, the best tool returns nothing.
• Accuracy. Look at how the tool collects and samples data, because that's where reliability differs.
• Integrations. A link to your analytics tool gives context to what you see in the heatmap.
• Support and documentation. Guides, tutorials and webinars determine how quickly you get value out of it.
• Price. Models run from free to substantial, usually scaled on traffic volume.

The tools resemble each other closely, so the choice needn't weigh heavily. Nearly all offer a trial or a free tier, so try two and see which one you actually use.

For most smaller sites a simple click map is enough. If you want more, there's plenty of room to scale up.