Heat Map 101: Understanding User Behavior on Your Website

I remember when I first started working in tech project management, having just left a career in TV, reading about heat maps, and quite literally wondering if working in TV had made me dumb. I was reading terms like “rage clicks” and “dead clicks,” nodding along to myself like I knew exactly what they meant. Because, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, I had no clue.

A rage click? That sounded like something that only happened in 2010 when you were streaming Netflix on your laptop, and it decided to buffer in the middle of a season finale. A dead click? Morbid! I rebuke!

We’ve all been there if you’ve ever felt lost in tech jargon. And guess what? I’m here to tell you that’s completely fine. We all have to start somewhere, and you don’t need to know everything about how technology works. That’s why we’re here: to break it down in a way that makes sense.

In our experience, heatmaps are one of the most powerful but consistently underutilized tools for D2C founders. So much so that this past week, in our newsletter, we broke down how to make data-driven decisions for your website to increase your sales based on what you’re seeing in your heatmaps. If you’re looking for actionable insights, sign up for our newsletter TODAY.

But, we have to crawl before we run, so let’s start from the very beginning.

What Is a Heat Map?

A heat map is a digital analytics tool, like Microsoft Clarity, that visually represents user interactions on a webpage, helping website owners and marketers understand where users click, scroll, and hover to optimize design and functionality.

What Does a Heat Map Analyze?

Heat maps track various user behaviors, providing insight into how visitors interact with a webpage. Here are the key elements they analyze:

Click Tracking

• Click tracking shows where users click most frequently, helping identify popular elements for a better user experience.

Rage Clicks

• Rage clicks occur when users repeatedly click an element out of frustration, often signaling broken links, unresponsive buttons, or misleading UI elements.

Dead Clicks

• Dead clicks happen when users click on a non-interactive element, revealing potential design flaws where users expect action but get none, like an image that looks like a button but isn’t clickable.

Scroll Depth

• Scroll depth measures how far users scroll down a page, helping determine if key content is visible, engaging, or ignored.

Hover Maps (Mouse Movement Tracking)

• Hover maps track cursor movement to show where users focus attention, even if they don’t click.

Engagement Zones

• Engagement zones highlight the most and least interactive areas of a webpage, guiding teams in optimizing layouts to improve usability.

Form Interactions

• Form interaction tracking shows how users engage with forms, identifying hesitation points and abandoned fields.

Attention Maps

• Attention maps use click, scroll, and hover data to estimate where users spend the most time, helping prioritize important content.

User Frustration Indicators

• Frustration indicators, such as erratic cursor movement, excessive scrolling, or rapid back-and-forth navigation, pinpoint areas causing confusion or dissatisfaction.

Mobile vs. Desktop Behavior

• Comparing mobile and desktop behavior reveals how users interact differently on various devices, helping teams tailor designs for better usability across screen sizes.

Why Heat Maps Matter

Understanding these metrics isn’t about looking smart in a meeting; it’s about making websites and apps work better for real people. Heat maps visually represent user behavior, helping teams fix what’s broken and optimize what’s working, which translates to (say it loud for the people in the back) SALES.

And that’s the whole point of what we do. So, if you ever find yourself drowning in a sea of tech speak, remember: I once thought a rage click was a really aggressive retweet. You’ll get there.

But sometimes you need answers now. If that’s the case, book a Conversion Audit call with us, and we can discuss how minimal investment can lead to maximal conversation rates on your site.

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About the Author

Marshall Wootton is a copywriter and strategic marketing expert who is perpetually wondering if there’s ever a perfect moment to use the word pauciloquent and not come off as pretentious. Marshall is thrilled to be writing for Coura, a female- and minority-owned agency that helps build revolutionary companies through branding and tech development.