Unlock the Power of Heatmapping for Digital Marketing

Wondering why your visitors aren’t converting or how you can improve their overall experience?

A website heatmap can solve your problem. 

Heatmaps help you track audience behavior. They measure how far users scroll, where they click, and what captures their attention. That’s information you can use to optimize your site’s layout, reduce user friction, and make your CTAs more clickable.

In this article, you’ll learn what website heatmaps are and how they work, the types of heatmaps you can use, what you can use them for, and how my team uses heatmaps to improve this very blog. 

Key Takeaways

• A website heatmap is a visual representation of user interaction. Heatmaps measure where users click, how far they scroll, and where they focus their attention. 
• Website heatmaps work by adding a snippet of code to your website that collects user interaction data. Heatmapping tools visually represent data with warm colors reflecting high interaction levels and cold colors representing low interaction. 
• To create a heatmap, you’ll need a heat mapping or behavioral analytics tool. Popular options include tools like Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Microsoft Clarity, Mouseflow, and Smartlook.
• There are several types of heatmaps, including click, scroll, movement, eye-tracking, and rage click maps. 
• Use heatmaps to run a cross-device analysis, optimize your content layout, increase conversion rates, and generate ideas for A/B tests. 
• I use heatmaps to improve the layout of this blog and increase engagement. We found adding a table of contents increases clicks and encourages visitors to scroll further down each article.  

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Are Website Heatmaps And How Do They Work?
• Heatmap Types
• How Can You Use Heatmaps For Digital Marketing?
  • Run cross-device analysis
  • Improve CTA conversion rates
  • Review page-specific performance
  • Optimize Page Layout
  • Run A/B Tests
• Heatmap Tool Options
• How My Blog Used Heatmaps To Increase Interaction
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Are Website Heatmaps And How Do They Work?

Website heatmaps visually represent how visitors interact with your site. They track where users click, how they scroll, where they move their mouse, and which parts of the page they focus on. 

They use color schemes to represent the frequency and intensity of engagement. Warm colors represent areas that receive the most attention or clicks. Cooler colors represent less popular areas.

(Source)

Marketers use heatmaps to spot user experience (UX) issues, improve the user experience, and boost conversion rates. For example, you can use a heatmap to find the best location for your call-to-action button or test techniques to encourage users to scroll further down your page. 

Heatmap Types

You can use heatmaps for websites to measure various visitor behaviors, from where they click to how far they scroll. 

Here are the most common types of heatmaps:

• Movement maps (also called hover maps) track where users move their mouse when navigating a site. It indicates areas of the page users might be focusing on. Use it to place important elements in areas that receive the most attention.

(Source)

• Click maps track where users click on a page. Warmer colors show more viewers. Use click maps to discover which elements users expect to be clickable, improve CTA click-through rates, and optimize your site’s navigation. 

(Source)

• Scroll maps track how far down the page visitors scroll. The warmer the color, the more visitors have viewed it. Use scroll maps to optimize your site’s flow and find the best places for your most important elements. 

(Source)

• Eye-tracking maps track the movement and focus of users’ eyes on a webpage, letting you see which elements receive the most attention. Use eye-tracking maps to find where users are looking, remove distracting elements, and reposition your CTAs for maximum exposure. 

(Source)

• Engagement zone maps combine click, scroll, and movement data into a single view, highlighting areas of high user interaction. Use them to identify engagement hotspots and optimize your page’s layout. 

(Source)

• Rage click maps visualize areas of your site that irritate users. It shows you where users experience friction, allowing you to remove roadblocks and increase conversion rates.  

(Source)

There are also device-specific heatmaps like desktop and mobile heatmaps, which measure the performance of a page across different devices. Use them to understand how different device layouts impact user behavior and optimize accordingly. 

How Can You Use Heatmaps For Digital Marketing?

Heatmaps for websites enable marketers to move beyond the quantitative analysis of analytics platforms and collect qualitative data that explains why users behave the way they do. As a result, digital marketers can use heatmaps to improve the user experience and increase conversion rates. 

Here are some of the specific tasks you can complete using heatmaps for websites: 

Run cross-device analysis

Visitors scroll differently on smartphones versus laptops. Use device-specific heatmaps to understand how browsing behavior differs and optimize your pages accordingly. 

For example, you can tailor your CTA placement to reflect scrolling habits. Mobile users might scroll further, allowing you to place it further down the page. On the other hand, desktop users might not scroll at all, meaning your CTA should go above the fold. 

Improve CTA conversion rates

You want your users to take action, right? Then, use clickmap data to find why users aren’t clicking your CTA and where they’re clicking instead. 

Use this data to remove distractions and adjust the size and color of CTAs, placing them in the parts of your site that get the most engagement. 

Review page-specific performance

It’s not efficient to add heatmaps to every page of your site. Instead, use them to improve the performance of your most important pages like your:

• Home page. Make the best first impression by ensuring readers focus on key information. 
• Landing pages. Increase conversion rates by optimizing page layout.
• High-traffic blog posts. Convert more readers by placing CTAs in the parts of high-traffic posts that receive the most attention. Tweak content and layout to encourage more visitors to read further down the page. Place content in the order of importance to users. 

Optimize Page Layout

Do you think a page needs more engagement? Does it have a high bounce rate?

Use scroll and click map data to understand how users navigate your website, identify low-engagement areas, and test changes to boost scroll depth and clicks. 

For example, you can remove distracting elements like unclickable images that cause friction in the user journey. You can also move critical elements (like your CTA) higher up the page where users are more likely to engage with them. 

This can reduce bounce rate by encouraging users to click and enhancing the overall experience. 

Run A/B Tests

Use heatmaps for websites as part of the A/B testing process. 

If one of your pages has a below-average conversion rate, use a click map, move map, or scroll map to discover why users aren’t taking the desired action. They may not be scrolling far enough to find your CTA, for example. Or perhaps users are clicking on a different element instead. 

Once you’ve made and tested an optimization, you can use the same heatmap to reconfirm your findings. If the new design encourages users to scroll further or click in the right place, then your A/B test is a success. 

Heatmap Tool Options

You’ll need a heat mapping or behavioral analytics tool to track website visitors. Below, I’ve listed some of the best free and premium options:

• Crazy Egg: An analytics platform that tracks and improves visitor behavior using five heatmaps (click, scroll, confetti, overlay, and lists). Confetti maps let you track individual clicks and segment them by traffic source, device, and operating system. Additional features include surveys, session recording, and error tracking. Plans start from $99 per month.  

• Hotjar: Behavioral analytics tool that lets you track how users move, click, and scroll. Hotjar also offers rage clicks maps to show where users get frustrated. Combine heatmap insights with surveys, user feedback, screen recordings, and trends. Track up to 35 daily sessions for free. Premium plans start from $39 per month.

• Microsoft Clarity: A 100% free heatmap and session recording tool that offers click, scroll, area, and conversion heatmaps. Clarity provides a list of top-ranked page elements and Copilot summaries making it easier to understand where users focus their attention. 

• Mouseflow: A digital experience analytics platform that creates click, scroll, attention, movement, geo, and live heatmaps. The platform automatically records 100% of your traffic, meaning you don’t have to choose which pages you monitor. Session replays, form analytics, friction scores, and user feedback are also available. Plans start from $31. 

• Smartlook: A product analytics tool that offers click, movement, and scroll maps. Smartlook records 100% of sessions by default and organizes heatmaps into galleries. Smartlook is free for up to 3,000 sessions. The pro plan costs $55 per month. 

How My Blog Used Heatmaps To Increase Interaction

Heatmapping is a core part of our digital marketing strategy at NP Digital, explains Ryan Velez, Sr Content Production Lead:

 “We use heatmapping to help us get more insights into how readers are interacting with our blogs to improve the reader experience. For example, reading how far our readers scroll on an average blog helped us decide to make UX changes to make it easier to skip to a certain section.”

This revelation came about when we used Microsoft Clarity to create click and scroll heatmaps to gauge rich media performance (things like infographics, embedded videos, and images) across my blog posts. 

The results were startling. 

Scroll maps showed almost 40 percent of users dropped off after the first CTA, as shown in the image above. 

Click maps showed users clicking static images, thinking they were interactive or would enlarge. Clicks also dropped off significantly after the first CTA. 

In short, we found a “golden window” for user engagement starting at the top of the page and ending at the first CTA. We brainstormed ways to capitalize on this by:

• Shortening introductions to get to the key points as soon as possible
• Adding a table of contents to encourage readers to scroll down the blog
• Front-loading infographics where relevant

We also planned to stop using infographics and images from other sources (lest users click on them and leave the article) whenever possible and to double down on creating additional graphics and custom videos for future blog posts and guides. 

But first, we tested how a clickable table of contents would impact user behavior. 

The test (shown above) received 50 clicks across a 30-day test period for this particular blog. 

Many clicks went to the “key takeaways” section, despite it being before the table of contents, but it also encouraged users to engage deeper with the article. What’s more, the new table didn’t impact drop-off at all while scrolling. 

As a result, we’ve added this feature to all net new content and have started working them into legacy blogs, prioritizing those with higher traffic. 

FAQs

What is a heatmap in marketing?

A heatmap is a digital marketing tool that visualizes how users interact with your site. Heatmaps use color coding to represent values. Warmer colors indicate high levels of engagement (like more clicks or views), while cooler colors indicate low engagement.

What does a heatmap tell you?

A heatmap shows how users scroll, click, and navigate your website. They are a great way to understand how users engage with your site, where they focus their attention, and which elements of your page are most popular. 

How to make a heat map?

Make a heatmap using a heatmapping or behavioral analytics tool. Some, like Microsoft Clarity, are free to use. Others, like Hotjar and Crazy Egg, charge a monthly subscription, but come with other features like surveys and session recordings to help you gather even more data. 

Conclusion

A heatmap tracks how users scroll, click, and move around your website. 

They’re easy to create and read, which makes them a fantastic tool for digital marketers of any experience to find ways to improve the user experience and boost conversion rates. 

You can even get started for free using Microsoft Clarity. What are you waiting for?