Heatmap

What is Heatmap?

A heatmap is a data visualisation tool that uses colour gradients to show how visitors interact with a web page. Areas where many users focus are shown in warm colours (red, orange); areas that receive little attention are shown in cool colours (blue, green). There are three main types of heatmaps used in digital marketing. Click heatmaps show where users are clicking — revealing which CTAs are being used, which images people mistakenly click expecting them to be links, and where users expect navigation that does not exist. Scroll heatmaps show how far down a page users scroll before leaving — critical for deciding how deep to place key content and CTAs. Move heatmaps (sometimes called hover maps) track mouse cursor movement as a proxy for eye movement — where users look before they click or scroll. Popular heatmap tools include Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity (free), and Crazy Egg. Session recordings — video replays of individual user sessions — are often paired with heatmaps for deeper insight. Heatmaps are particularly powerful for improving landing page performance and diagnosing why conversion rates are lower than expected. Common discoveries: important CTAs placed below the fold that 70% of users never scroll to; confusing navigation causing users to click in wrong areas; form fields that cause friction (users abandoning at specific questions). Heatmap insights should then be turned into A/B test hypotheses to validate changes before permanently implementing them.