What is a heatmap? 9 popular heatmap tools

If you have a website but don’t know how visitors actually behave on it, you’re missing something. Why do they click here and ignore there? Why do they leave straight away? Instead of guessing, a heatmap lets you see user behavior on a visual map. You learn what your customers want and can improve the website to increase revenue. Let’s MONA Media look at what a heatmap is and go through the 9 best heatmap tools available today.

What is a heatmap?

A heatmap is a data visualization that uses color to show how concentrated data is at each position on a surface. Warm colors such as red or orange usually mean high concentration, while cool colors such as blue or green mean lower levels.

On a website, heatmaps are used to track how users interact with a page. With a heatmap you can easily see where users click, how far down they scroll, and which parts of the content get a lot or little attention.

With this visual format, website owners can quickly spot behavior patterns on a landing page. That gives the business a solid basis for adjusting the layout, refining the design and improving the user experience.

Using heatmaps in website analysis helps you optimize your site more effectively, UI UX lowers bounce rate, raises conversion rate and helps the business grow revenue.

Common types of heatmaps

A heatmap shows user behavior on a website through areas of different colors. To analyze behavior more fully, heatmaps are usually split into several types, each reflecting a different kind of interaction. Below are the three types most commonly used when optimizing a website.

• Click Heatmap: Shows the places on a page where users click most often, so you can see which areas attract the most attention and interaction.
• Mouse Cursor Heatmap: Shows where users move or pause the mouse cursor. This helps identify the content people pay most attention to on a page, with accuracy that can reach about 85% to 90%.
• Scroll Heatmap: Shows how far users scroll and which parts of the content are viewed most. You can see where people stay longer and which sections are easy to miss.

Why use heatmap software to optimize your website?

To optimize a website well, you need to understand how users behave on each page. Instead of relying on statistics alone, heatmap software lets you see the areas users click, scroll or look at most. The business can then adjust the layout and content to improve the experience and raise conversion rate.

Reasons to use heatmaps to optimize your website:

• See user behavior at a glance: A heatmap turns complex data into an easy-to-read color map, so you can quickly see where users interact on your website.
• Understand how users engage with your content: With heatmap types such as click maps and scroll maps, you can see where users click, where they stop and which content they skip.
• Optimize conversion rate: Heatmaps help you find friction points such as buttons CTA that rarely get clicked or forms that are too complicated, so you can fix them and get more purchases or sign-ups.
• Improves user experience: Heatmap data helps you rearrange the page layout, highlight the important content and make it easier for users to find what they need.
• Spot behavior trends quickly: Instead of reading through many data reports, you can look at the heatmap and quickly understand how users interact with the page.
• Support A/B Testing worth using: A heatmap gives you real data to test optimization ideas, such as moving a CTA button or changing the content layout.
• Save analysis time: The tool quickly shows problems such as users clicking an image they think is a button, or skipping important information.
• Find out why users leave: A heatmap shows friction points such as a confusing menu, content that doesn’t engage, or design choices that don’t work, so you can reduce bounce rate.

The 9 most popular heatmap tools

To understand how users interact with a website, many businesses now use heatmap software. These tools visualize behavior such as click positions, the areas that get the most attention and how far people scroll on each piece of content. You can then see what to improve to make the experience better and raise conversion rate. Below are the 8 most popular heatmap tools used by marketers and website managers today.

Microsoft Clarity, a free heatmap tool 

Microsoft Clarity is a free heatmap tool built by Microsoft and used by many marketers and website managers to track user behavior. 

It offers session recordings, heatmaps and automatic analytics reports. Clarity can also be connected to Google Analytics, which makes it easier to track and analyze how users interact with your website.

However, compared with tools such as Smartlook, the heatmap features in Microsoft Clarity are still fairly limited. It doesn’t yet capture dynamic page content, such as a menu that appears on hover, and it has no move map for tracking mouse movement in more detail.

ClickTale, an easy tool for checking heatmaps

ClickTale is one of the user behavior analytics tools many businesses choose when they want to track data through heatmaps. It shows how users interact with your website, so administrators can see which areas of a page attract attention and need further optimization.

ClickTale stands out for its in-depth data analysis, which makes it easy for a business to judge how well the user experience is working. It also connects with popular analytics platforms such as Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, which makes tracking and consolidating data easier while you optimize your website.

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SeeVolution, a popular heatmap app

SeeVolution is one of the user behavior analytics tools many businesses choose to check heatmaps on their website. It is well rated for an easy-to-use interface that suits even beginners. SeeVolution also offers plugins for many popular website platforms, so installation and use are quick and convenient.

SeeVolution also has a clear dashboard that makes the data easy to follow and understand. It gives full information on behavior such as clicks, mouse interaction and mouse movement on the page. With this detail, a website manager gets an overview of how the site performs and can make suitable adjustments to improve the user experience.

Hotjar, a behavior analytics and website heatmap tool  

Hotjar is a heatmap tool used by many businesses and marketers to analyze user behavior on a website. It stands out for combining several features: heatmaps, session recordings, form analysis, user surveys and feedback tools. As a result, Hotjar not only tracks how users interact with your website but also helps you improve the experience and conversion rate.

With Hotjar you can easily track behavior such as clicks, taps, scrolling and mouse movement through heatmaps. It also has a clear dashboard, so you can quickly grasp the data and spot problems that hurt your website’s performance. That makes analyzing and optimizing your website easier and more effective.

Heatmap.me, a heatmap analysis tool

Heatmap.me is a heatmap tool chosen by many website managers for its simple use and clear data analysis. It tracks user behavior on a website through heatmaps, so you can easily see which areas of a page attract the most attention.

Setting up Heatmap.me is also quick. You only add a small piece of JavaScript to your website and data collection can start. The script loads asynchronously, so it barely affects page speed. The tool also offers real-time heatmaps and protects user privacy by not storing data it doesn’t need.

Ptengine, a popular heatmap app

Ptengine is a website analytics tool that combines several features in one platform and stands out for tracking user behavior through heatmaps. Website managers can easily observe interactions such as clicks, mouse movement and the areas users pay the most attention to.

Besides visual data from heatmaps, Ptengine supports A/B testing to compare different versions of a layout. This lets designers and marketers test, evaluate and choose the layout that best improves the user experience on the website.

Inspectlet, a top heatmap app

Inspectlet is a user behavior analytics tool that lets a business view heatmaps to understand how visitors interact with each area of a page. It supports the common heatmap types: clicks, scrolling and cursor movement, giving clear data on how interested users are in each piece of content.

Inspectlet also includes funnel analysis and powerful data filters, so administrators can track and analyze the behavior of each user group. That makes it easier to optimize the experience and improve how the website performs.

Crazy Egg, for viewing heatmaps quickly

Crazy Egg is a heatmap app used by many businesses to analyze user behavior on a website. It tracks interactions such as clicks, mouse movement and the areas of a page users pay the most attention to.

Crazy Egg’s standout feature is the Confetti Heatmap, which breaks data down by traffic source, such as social media, search engines or other channels. A business can see how visitors from each source interact with the website and optimize the experience accordingly.

Mouseflow heatmap software

Mouseflow is a heatmap app for tracking and analyzing user behavior on a website. It provides data on clicks, mouse movement and attention levels across each area of a page, so administrators understand how visitors interact with the site.

Mouseflow also records entire sessions so you can watch real user behavior. It has form analytics too, which shows why users don’t finish a form or leave the page, making it easier to improve the experience on your website.

Many businesses already have data from heatmaps, Google Analytics or other behavior tracking tools, yet they don’t know where to start optimizing their website. The site gets traffic but doesn’t convert, visitors look and leave, and the data keeps piling up with no clear way to use it.

With years of experience in website design and optimization, the MONA team has helped hundreds of businesses improve website performance, speed up page loading and improve the user experience. We optimize websites to the SEO-readystandard, covering speed, security and conversion. When you use website optimization service at MONA Media, you get:

• Faster page loading: Your website loads in under 2 seconds, which improves the user experience.
• SEO-ready and technically sound: Optimized to Google, GTmetrix and Pingdom standards.
• Your website structure stays intact: We don’t interfere directly with your theme and plugins.
• Plugin support where needed: We provide premium plugins for optimization.
• Warranty and long-term support: Our technical team is ready to help whenever you need it.
• Optimization cost: A reasonable investment compared with the results your website delivers.

If you want to optimize your website to improve page speed, the user experience and business results, contact MONA to get advice on the solution that best fits your website.

How to set up a heatmap on your website

Once you know what a heatmap is and have picked a tool, the next step is to set heatmaps up on your website and start collecting user behavior data. The process is fairly simple and takes just a few basic steps.

Step 1: Choose the right heatmap tool

First, choose a heatmap tool that fits your needs and budget. Popular options today include Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, Crazy Egg and Pendo. Each has its own features, so think about what you want to analyze before choosing.

Step 2: Create an account and set up your website

After choosing a tool, create an account and confirm your email. Then enter the URL of the website you want to track so the system can start setting up data for your site.

Step 3: Install the tracking code

Most heatmap tools give you a JavaScript snippet for tracking data. Copy it and paste it into the <head> section of your website. You can also install it through Google Tag Manager, which makes it easier to manage.

Step 4: Choose the pages to track

After installing the tracking code, pick the important pages where you want to analyze user behavior. 

For example, the home page, product pages, landing pages or the checkout page. These areas have the most direct effect on the user experience and conversion rate.

Step 5: Collect and analyze data

Once the system starts collecting data, you can follow user behavior through several types of heatmaps, such as:

• Click Map: Find where users click the most.
• Scroll Map: Track scroll depth to see which content gets viewed the most.
• Move Map: Watch mouse movement to understand which areas attract attention.
• Rage Click Map: Spot frustration points where users click repeatedly.

Step 6: Optimize your website based on the data

From heatmap data you can see the “hot spots” (red or yellow) where users interact a lot and the “cold spots” (blue) that get little attention. 

Based on this, you can adjust the layout, content or placement of call-to-action (CTA) buttons to improve the user experience and raise your website’s conversion rate.

Tips for getting the most out of heatmaps

A heatmap is a very useful tool for analyzing user behavior on a website. To get the most from the data, though, you need to know how to read it and apply it sensibly. Used well, a heatmap not only shows you how users interact with a page but also helps you improve the design and content and raise conversion rate.

Specific tips for getting strong results from heatmaps:

• Combine several types of heatmaps: Use click maps, move maps and scroll maps together for a complete view of how users pay attention and interact on your website.
• Analyze hot and cold spots: Red or orange areas are usually where users pay the most attention, which makes them good places for key content or CTAs. Blue areas show low interaction, so consider adjusting the layout there.
• Optimize CTA placement: Check whether your buy or sign-up button sits in an area users tend to look at. If it isn’t performing, try changing the position, color or wording of the CTA.
• Track scroll depth: A scroll map shows where users usually stop. Put the important information above the point where most users stop scrolling.
• Limit overly long content: If the heatmap shows users skipping long paragraphs, consider replacing them with images, infographics or video to hold attention.
• Analyze by device: Users behave differently on mobile and desktop, so track heatmaps for each device separately and optimize the layout for each.
• Keep monitoring the data: Don’t look at a heatmap only once. Review the data regularly and run A/B tests to check the effect of changes on your website.
• Combine with other analytics tools: For a clearer picture of user behavior, combine heatmaps with session replay or Google Analytics to dig into the reasons behind the interactions on your website.

Using heatmap software is essential for managing and getting the most out of a website. Knowing what a heatmap is and which heatmap tools are well rated is useful information, and it makes analyzing and improving a website much simpler for individuals and organizations alike.