A website heatmap (or heat map) is a visual representation of user interaction data where values are depicted by a range of colors from the most popular (red) to the least popular (blue) elements of a web page.

Heatmaps make it easy to understand how visitors interact with individual website pages—how they move their mouse around the page, and what they click on, scroll through, or ignore—which helps identify trends so you can optimize your site and improve the user experience (UX).

Scroll heatmaps show you the exact percentage of people who scroll down to any point on the page: the redder the area, the more visitors saw it.

How a scroll heatmap can help you optimize your site: knowing how far down the page your visitors are scrolling can influence where you place important information and page elements—like your unique selling proposition (USP) and your call to action (CTA). You can also use scroll maps to compare desktop and mobile versions of the page; for example, to identify whether prominent elements on desktop are also positioned well on mobile.

Click heatmaps (also known as touch heatmaps on mobile devices) show you where visitors click their mouse (on desktop) and tap their finger (on mobile).

How a click heatmap can help you optimize your site: the heatmap is color-coded to show you what visitors have clicked and tapped on most frequently, which can help you identify popular page elements and understand if people are clicking on what you want them to click on, or if they’re rage clicking on a broken button or link. Conversely, infrequent clicks or taps on an important element could inspire you to run a usability test to find out how to get more visitors to see and interact with your most important content.

Move heatmaps track where desktop users move their mouse as they navigate the page: hot-spots represent mouse movement. If your visitors tend to follow their cursor with their eyes—or move their cursor to where they’re looking on the screen—a move heatmap could indicate where they spend more (or less) time viewing your website page.

How a move heatmap can help you optimize your site: if you see very little mouse movement in an important section of the page, you can use other behavior analytics tools (like session recordings) to investigate—which can help you understand why your visitors might be missing that part of the page, and how you can fix it for them.

Yes, potentially: heatmaps show you how people interact with your website pages so you get a clear understanding of what needs to change (and what to start A/B testing) to improve the user experience and increase conversion rates.

When you use heatmaps on business-critical pages like your homepage, product pages, and checkout page, you can see whether visitors respond to important content like your CTA, or if they experience issues while browsing your site, like broken page elements. You can then use what you learn from your visitors’ behavior to improve your website and increase conversions.

A website heatmap is a behavior analytics tool that helps you understand how visitors interact with individual website pages so you can find out if they are:

• Reaching (or failing to reach) important content

• Using a page’s main elements like links, buttons, opt-ins, and CTAs

• Getting distracted by non-clickable elements

• Experiencing issues across devices

Heatmaps can also be used in combination with other analytics tools to help you make informed, data-based decisions for A/B testing, website redesign, conversion rate optimization (CRO), and improving the user experience (UX).