Heatmap

What types of website heatmaps exist?

• Click maps show where visitors click or tap.
• Move maps track the cursor, as an indication of attention.
• Scroll maps show how far down the page visitors get.
• Rage click maps mark repeated clicks on the same spot (Contentsquare).

Desktop and mobile behavior differ, so the data should be split by device (Contentsquare).

What are heatmaps used for?

They help to see whether visitors notice a button, ignore a section or stop scrolling before an important element. The results feed design and content decisions, for example moving a call to action up, and often serve as input for A/B tests. For SEO, they are a diagnostic tool for the user experience of landing pages. They do not measure rankings.

Limits

A heatmap shows what visitors do, and does not explain why. Seobility notes the same: a trend appears, but the reason needs interpretation. Pages with little traffic produce unreliable maps, and a map should be re-checked after a change.

Example

A scroll map of a product page shows deep red at the top and a sharp drop to blue around the middle. The shipping information sits below that point. The team moves it up and compares the next map.

Privacy

Recording tools collect visitor interactions. In the EU, Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive covers consent for storing information on a user’s device or accessing it there. Article 6 GDPR lists the legal bases for processing personal data.

This is not legal advice.

Last updated: October 7, 2026