{"id":6173,"date":"2022-11-16T12:15:29","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T12:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.figpii.com\/blog\/?post_type=guide&p=6173"},"modified":"2025-06-18T17:24:45","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T17:24:45","slug":"analysis","status":"publish","type":"guide","link":"https:\/\/www.figpii.com\/blog\/guides\/heatmaps\/analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Heatmap Analysis 101: How to Use Heatmaps to Uncover Visitor Frustration"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

If you are into sports, you must have seen something similar to the image below. \"Heatmap<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

They are called heatmaps, analytical tools that show the activities of individual players during the game.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

With heatmaps, coaches, fans, and players can easily see the parts of the field where they spent the most or least time playing. Sports analysts also use heatmaps to gauge players’ performances.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Heatmaps<\/a> use a color scale (blue to red) to depict intense activity or inactivity in selected areas. The image above is the heatmap of a player; the section colored red shows that the player was mainly active during the game. The section that is colored yellow indicates activity but not as much as the red-colored section.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In marketing, the same analogy applies when using heatmaps as an analytical tool on websites. Heat maps help marketers, designers, and product teams understand user activity on their sites and provide an overview of the sections and elements of their websites getting the most attention. Let’s formally define what a Heat map is.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What is a Heatmap?<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Heatmaps<\/a> are visual representations of user activity on your website. They help provide visual data that reveal where users are clicking, how far they scroll, the content they engage with, and how well they engage with the content.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Heat maps use a color scale (from red to blue) to show which sections or elements of your website users interact with the least or the most.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Warm<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Heatmaps date back to the 1800s when they were used in Paris as a shading map that visually represented social demographic changes. Although, they weren’t called Heatmaps until the 1990s. A software engineer, Cormac Kinney<\/a>, used the term “heat map” to describe a tool he created to display financial market information graphically.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Heatmap<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Red<\/strong> indicates an area you should monitor to understand why visitors are highly concentrated in that area.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Orange<\/strong> means less concentration, but clearly, it is enough to consider.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Yellow<\/strong> signifies minimal activity or data and is essential to note if it’s an area of priority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Green<\/strong>, less movement on this area of the page<\/p>\r\n

Types of Heatmaps and What They Show You<\/span><\/h2>\r\n

There are different<\/span>\u00a0<\/a><\/span>types of heatmaps<\/a><\/span>, and each has its purpose. Still, when combined, these different heatmaps give a detailed insight into your users’ behavior. The common heatmaps are click-tracking, mouse-tracking, scroll maps, and eye-tracking heatmaps.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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    Click Tracking Heatmaps<\/span><\/h3>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

    As the name suggests, Click-Tracking heatmaps visually represent where visitors are clicking on your site. On mobile devices, they show elements of your site that users tap on.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

    As a business owner, you may have specific sections on your website where user clicks or taps are important. Click-tracking heat maps can provide visuals that help you decide whether or not to make changes to influence users to engage with these specific sections.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

    \"FigPii<\/p>\r\n

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      Eye Tracking Heatmaps<\/span><\/h3>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

      Eye-tracking heatmaps use sensor software to record the user’s eye behavior, including blinking, pupil dilation, and fixation length, on a site’s element. They also reveal what your visitors are paying attention to by visualizing their mouse movements.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

      The only problem with eye-tracking technology is that it is expensive to acquire and requires users to wear special glasses. Also, unlike other heatmaps, eye-tracking heatmaps require physical usability sessions with users.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

      Alternatively, you can integrate less expensive eye-tracking software into your website to monitor users’ eye activity. However, they do not accurately represent the visitors’ eye activities since they rely on mouse movement.<\/p>\r\n

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        Scroll Heat Maps<\/span><\/h3>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

        A scroll map is a website heat map that visualizes data on how visitors scroll when they are on your website. Scroll maps also reveal how far down your visitors scroll and the sections of the site they scroll through the most or least.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

        \"FigPii<\/p>\r\n

        Scroll maps also help you determine how long a page should be to help you optimize conversions on your page since they show how far users scroll on it.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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          Mouse Tracking Heatmaps.<\/span><\/h3>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

          This heat map visually depicts visitors’ mouse movement while clicking, hovering, or scrolling on your website. Mouse-tracking heatmaps are sometimes used in place of eye-tracking heatmaps, based on the ideology that the position of a user’s mouse on a site is equivalent to where their eyes are focused.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

          \"An<\/p>\r\n

          Like most heat maps, mouse-tracking heatmaps make it easy to get an overview of website visitors’ activities without having to go into details of statistical analysis.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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