The three types of Heatmaps you will see when creating a Heatmap are:
Click and Tap Heatmaps
Click and Tap Heatmaps will help you determine where users are clicking on your page. Tapping will be tracked if they are on a mobile or tablet. Heatmaps can help you understand user behavior - for example, are your site visitors clicking the links you want them to? Or are they mistakenly clicking on elements that aren’t interactive?
Example of a Click Heatmap
Hotjar tracks the clicks and taps of all users whose session was recorded, and automatically generates a visual representation of the areas they interacted with.
Hotjar may collect more click data than shows on your Heatmap
Hotjar will only show you the interactions on the elements that are visible in the screenshot. The click count on the Heatmap view and the % of clicks, is based on these elements only.
For example, if your site has a drop down menu, the click data will not reflect any menu items that aren't expanded within the screenshot. For a full list of interactions you can export the raw data.
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.
How clicks and taps are recorded
To ensure that Hotjar accurately reports where your users have interacted, we collect clicks relative to elements on the page. For instance, if a user clicks on a button, we will record the position of their cursor relative to that particular button, not the entire page.
More examples of Click and Tap Heatmaps
Check out our Heatmap Guide to discover how click and tap Heatmaps can help you identify and understand user behavior.
Move Heatmaps
Move Heatmaps show where users have moved their mouse on the screen.
Example of a Move Heatmap
Hotjar samples the mouse movement of all users whose session was recorded, and automatically generates a visual representation of the areas they moved their mouse over. To show how often users moved their mouse over specific areas of the page, Hotjar uses this color scale:
If many of your users moved their mouse to a particular point, that area is "hotter." The color scale allows you to visually see how often your users 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 send movement data back to the Hotjar servers at regular intervals to record where users have moved their cursor on a page, and it is later used to generate your movement Heatmap.
Since we track the position every 100ms, the Heatmap may initially look like a click Heatmap when it has only a few pageviews. However, once you collect enough data, you will notice patterns emerging revealing the most used areas on your page.
More examples of Move Heatmaps
Check out our Heatmap Guide to discover how click and tap Heatmaps can help you identify and understand user behavior.
Scroll Heatmaps
Scroll Heatmaps are used to show you how far down the page your users scroll.
Example of a Scroll Heatmap
This data is calculated by analyzing the amount of users who visited the page against the depth each of them have scrolled down.
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 users that reached that point of your page.
To show you how many users 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 users have seen this part of the page. As you move down the page, the colors will get "colder" according to the percentage of users who scrolled down to that point.
Scroll Heatmaps that target multiple pages are not supported
If you are running a Heatmap that targets multiple pages, Scroll Heatmaps will not be accurate if they vary in size.
Average Fold
The Scroll Heatmap also calculates the average fold on your page. The fold is lowest visible point on the screen when a user opens a page before they've done any scrolling.
The average fold is calculated using the following formula: total window height/page visit count, and is presented as a white line labeled AVERAGE FOLD.
Scroll-depth Ruler
The Scroll-depth ruler shows the average fold, as well as how many users scrolled down 75, 50 or 25 percent of the page. This allows you to compare scroll depth with click and move data without needing to switch between heatmap types - letting you know immediately how many users clicked an element versus how many viewed it.
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.