What a heatmap tells you about your shop, and what it can't
A picture of where people tap, click and stop scrolling on a page, coloured from hot to cold. Great at showing where. No help at all with why.
- 055Heatmap
- A visual representation of data where values are depicted by colour, often used to show where users are clicking or how far they are scrolling on a webpage.
- Main kinds
- Tap or click maps, scroll maps, and move maps on desktop
- Common tools
- Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar and Contentsquare
- Read it with
- Session recordings, which show one visit at a time
- Split it by
- Device, always, and traffic source where your tool allows
Three kinds of heatmap, and the question each one answers
| Map | What it shows | Ask it |
|---|---|---|
| Tap or click map | Where people pressed, hottest where most did | Are they pressing things that aren't links? |
| Scroll map | How far down the page people got | Does anyone reach the reviews, or the delivery info? |
| Move map | Where the mouse went, so desktop only | What did they look at before deciding? |
Some tools flag frustration for you as well. Microsoft Clarity marks rage clicks, where someone hammers the same spot, and dead clicks, where they press something that does nothing. Both point straight at design bugs, and Clarity costs nothing to install.
How a heatmap misleads you if you let it
- Phone and desktop in one map: the layouts differ, so the colours land on the wrong things
- Too few visits: a handful of sessions paints a confident picture of nothing
- Pages that move: sliders, pop-ups and personalised blocks shift what's under the colour
- Hot isn't good: a burst of taps on a product photo might be people trying to zoom
The fix for most of it is boring. One device at a time, enough traffic that the picture stops changing when you add another day, and a recording or two to explain anything odd.
Point the heatmap at the pages your emails send people to
Your flows send people to the same few pages again and again: the product page behind browse abandonment, the cart behind the cart flow. Filter the map to visitors from email, if your tool can read your tracking links, and see whether they scroll to what they came back for. If they never reach the delivery info, move it up the page or put it in the email.
Then remember what the colours can't show. A hot zone tells you where people were, never why they left. That's why CRO research pairs heatmaps with recordings and surveys, and why a high product page exit rate needs all three before anyone changes the page.
Related terms
FAQs
Heatmap or session recording: which should we look at first?
The heatmap. It shows which page, and which part of it, deserves attention across hundreds of visits at once. Then watch recordings of that page to see what people were actually doing. Start with recordings and you'll lose an afternoon watching strangers scroll.
How many visits does a heatmap need before we trust it?
There's no magic number, and anyone quoting one is guessing about your shop. A practical test: when another day's traffic stops changing the picture, it's ready. Quiet pages may never get there, so judge those from recordings and from what customers ask you instead.
Is there a heatmap for emails?
Sort of. Klaviyo's campaign report has a link activity tab showing which links got the clicks, and some third party tools draw that as a heatmap over the email. It's useful for spotting the link everyone ignores. Judge the email on orders, though, not on where the clicks landed.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
Half an hour with Theo, our founder.
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