What is a heatmap?

A heatmap is a visual representation of user behavior — colors show where they click, where they scroll, and what they ignore. Skillfully used, tools like Clarity or Hotjar that are based on heatmaps constitute extremely valuable diagnostic tools used in UX audits by Wise People.

1. What is a heatmap and why do we use it?

A heatmap in UX is a graphical visualization of user activity on a website — warmer colors indicate greater engagement (e.g., clicks), while cooler zones signal a lack of activity. This tool provides answers to the questions: “do users see what we want them to see?” and “does the interface fulfill the assumed business goals?”.

2. How do heatmaps work?

After installing and configuring the chosen tool’s plugin (we recommend Hotjar or Clarity) on the website, data about clicks, scrolling, and mouse movement is collected. The system divides the page into a grid and assigns an intensity of activity to each area, which is visualized with colors.

3. Types of heatmaps (and what each one shows)

There isn’t just one “heatmap.” Depending on the goal of the analysis and the tool we use, we can distinguish several types of heatmaps, each allowing us to look at user behavior from a different perspective.

• Clickmaps – show which elements (buttons, links, images) are clicked most often. Ideal for evaluating the effectiveness of CTAs and navigation.
• Scrollmaps – indicate how far users scroll down the page; particularly useful for analyzing long offer pages or articles.
• Move maps (Cursor Movement maps) – show where the user moves the mouse, which often correlates with the direction of attention, although it is not a perfect substitute for eye-tracking.
• Frustration maps (rage-click / dead click maps) – identify areas where users click repeatedly without effect, indicating potential errors or unintuitive interface elements.

Each of these types can provide different insights — therefore, it is important to interpret them together, within the context of a specific business goal and scenario. This is not data “for its own sake,” but rather starting points for further analysis and action.

4. When do heatmaps help — practical benefits

Heatmaps are especially useful when we want to understand how users actually use the site, not just what we think about it. They allow us to discover problems that are not visible in classical numerical data from Google Analytics, such as:

• Unnoticeable CTAs that are too low on the page or not prominent enough.
• Interface elements that are being clicked even though they are not interactive (which leads to frustration).
• Key content that is never viewed because users don’t scroll to the appropriate section.
• User attention being distracted by too many elements at once.

Dzięki temu heatmapy mogą wskazać, które zmiany projektowe przyniosą największy efekt w krótkim czasie — i to nie na podstawie przypuszczeń, ale rzeczywistego zachowania odbiorców.

5. Heatmaps in the Wise People UX Audit

As part of the UX audit offered by Wise People, we analyze heatmaps (often from tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity). The likely scenario:

• We install the tool’s code (if it’s not already on the site).
• We collect data for 2–3 weeks.
• Other metrics (GA4) are also integrated.
• Based on this data, we prepare a description of errors, visualizations, and recommendations for the UX report.

Heatmap analysis becomes the foundation of recommendations: does the CTA need to be moved? Is the content at the top of the page engaging users? Where is attention distracted by irrelevant elements?

6. Heatmap Limitations and Best Practices

Although heatmaps are a very valuable tool, they also have their limitations, which are worth understanding before we make decisions based on them. Above all—they are not a substitute for qualitative research, such as user interviews. Just because something looks attractive on a heatmap doesn’t mean we fully understand the user’s intention.

Cursor movement may not correlate with eye movement – movement maps are not eye-tracking. Furthermore, a small number of sessions or highly diverse traffic sources (e.g., advertising campaigns) can distort the representativeness of the data. One must also be careful about interpreting behavior – for example, a lack of clicks does not always mean a UX problem; sometimes, it is simply the result of appropriately designed content.

A good practice is to combine heatmaps with other data sources (e.g., GA4, session recordings) and segment the analysis (e.g., mobile vs. desktop, new vs. returning sessions). Only then can we speak of a complete picture.

Summary

A heatmap is more than just a view of beautiful graphics. It is a tool that provides solid UX context, which allows for the precise identification of areas requiring optimization. In the Wise People UX audit, it is one element of a broader diagnosis and, consequently, one of the bases for design recommendations.