All terms
Analytics and measurement

Heatmap

In short

A heatmap is a colour map of a web page that shows where visitors click, and how far down the page they actually scroll.

Warm colours mean a lot of activity, cold colours little. A click map shows where people click and tap. A scroll map shows how many people reach each part of the page. You see what the numbers in Google Analytics leave out, namely whether people notice your button at all.

What the map tends to reveal

People click on images and headings that are not links, because they look clickable. Important information sits below the point where most people stop scrolling. A button nobody clicks is placed where nobody sees it. All three are cheap to fix once you know about them.

Heatmap tools store information in the visitor's browser, so you need consent. Read more under cookies. Microsoft Clarity is free and has heatmaps. According to Microsoft, Clarity requires consent from visitors in the EEA, and without it every page visit is recorded as a separate visit, which makes the maps less useful.

Get started

Clarity is added as a line of code on your website. If you have access, add it yourself behind the consent banner. Otherwise ask whoever runs your website to do it. Wait until the front page has had a few hundred visits, then look at the scroll map. If the contact button sits below the point where most people stop reading, that is the first thing to move.

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