Types of Heatmaps

The three types of Heatmaps you will see when creating a Heatmap are:

• Click and Tap
• Move
• Scroll 

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Click and Tap Heatmaps

Click or Tap Heatmaps will help you determine where your visitors are clicking. Tapping will be tracked if they are on a mobile/tablet. These Heatmaps help you quickly uncover issues with your page - for example, are visitors clicking your links? Or are they clicking areas that aren't links?

Example of a Click Heatmap

Hotjar tracks the clicks and taps of all visitors included in your Heatmap report and automatically generates a visual representation of the areas your visitors clicked on.

To show how often specific areas of your page have been clicked, Hotjar uses a color scale:

 

Red or "Hot" shows the elements/areas that have been clicked on most frequently while blue or "Cold" shows the areas that have been clicked on the least. Any area on the Heatmaps which contains no colors is an area which has never been clicked on.

How clicks and taps are recorded

To ensure that Hotjar accurately reports where your visitors have clicked, we collect clicks relative to elements on the page. For instance, if a visitor clicks on a button, we will record the position of their cursor relative to that particular button, not the entire page.

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Move Heatmaps

Move Heatmaps show where visitors have moved their mouse on the screen.

Example of a Move Heatmap

Hotjar samples the mouse movement of all visitors included in your Heatmap report and automatically generates a visual representation of the areas your visitors moved their mouse over. To show how often visitors moved their mouse over specific areas of the page, Hotjar uses this color scale:

If many of your visitors moved their mouse to a particular point, that area is "hotter." The color scale allows you to visually see how often your visitors have moved their mouse to different areas on your page.

How Hotjar records and shows movement

Hotjar records the position of the user's mouse cursor every 100ms, or 10 times per second. We periodically send this data back to the Hotjar servers, and it is later used to generate your movement Heatmap. Since we track the position every 100ms, your move Heatmap may initially look like a click Heatmap when it has a few pageviews. However, once you collect enough data, you will notice patterns emerging revealing the most used areas on your page.

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Scroll Heatmaps

Scroll Heatmaps are used to show you how far down your visitors scroll.

Example of a Scroll Heatmap

Hotjar tracks how far each of your visitors in your Heatmap report scrolled down while browsing your page. This data is presented by analysing the amount of visitors to the page versus the depth each visitor scrolled to on your page.

This results in an average of how many users scrolled to each portion of your page. To see this, you can place your mouse over the Scroll Heatmap where a marker will show, indicating the exact percentage of visitors that reached that point of your page.

To show you how many visitors scrolled to different parts of your page, Hotjar uses this color scale:

Red or "Hot" areas of your Heatmap indicate that all or almost all your visitors have seen this part of the page. As you move down the page, the colors will get "colder" according to the percentage of visitors who scrolled down to that point.

Average Fold

The Scroll Heatmap also calculates the average fold on your page. The average fold is the average location which would be visible as a user opens the page, before they've done any scrolling. This is presented as a white line with the label AVERAGE FOLD.

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More Heatmap Questions?

Check out our Heatmap Guide to discover how scroll Heatmaps can help you identify and understand user behavior or reach out to our Support team with the Contact Us button below.