Web heat maps have become an essential analytics tool because they capture in a very visual way aspects of the user experience that are often difficult to measure.
For this reason, they are the perfect companion to Google Analytics reports, as they provide a qualitative explanation for quantitative data that is more complex to interpret.
To create these heat maps, just use one of the many heat mapping tools that exist (some of them 100% free) and that we are going to see here.
First, let’s look at what exactly a web heat map is and what its purpose is.
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What is a web heat map?
A web heat map, also known as a heat map, is a visual analysis tool that graphically represents user behavior on a web page.
It uses a color scale to show areas of higher and lower interaction, ranging from cool tones (blues and greens) for areas of lower activity to warm tones (yellows, oranges and reds) for areas of higher interaction.
This visual representation facilitates the quick identification of points of interest on the page and user behavior patterns, and is done through different types of heat maps, such as:
- Click maps: show where users click most frequently.
- Scroll maps: these indicate how far down the page users are scrolling.
- Motion maps: record the movement of the mouse cursor across the page.
- Area maps: represent the areas of the page that receive the most attention in terms of viewing time and cursor movement.
Depending on the heat map tool, we can find other interesting ones such as conversion (Microsoft Clarity), or links (Yandex Metrica).
What is the purpose of analyzing a web heat map?
The main objective of web heat map analysis is to obtain visual insights of user behavior on a website in order to optimize the user experience.
By being able to see the path and the actions of users on our website, heat maps allow us to:
- Make adjustments to the design and layout of elements to facilitate navigation and improve usability.
- Optimize the structure and presentation of information to maintain the visitor’s interest and prevent them from leaving.
- Fix functionality issues, such as when a user clicks on non-clickable items or there is a form that does not work.
- Eliminate obstacles in the user’s path that may lead him to ignore important elements of the page.
- Guide the user to conversion by strategically placing CTAs in areas of high interaction.
Most importantly, they confirm or refute hypotheses elaborated from the analysis of metrics, such as KPIs in ecommerce or any other type of website.
As a result, heat mapping tools are now part of the strategic decision making of marketing, design and development teams.
In the following section we will learn about the 5 most common ones, many of them free of charge.
5 Tools to create web heat maps (free and paid)
Many of the heat mapping tools we’re going to look at are all you need to analyze and optimize your website for users, because they also incorporate analytics and UX features.
Let’s take a look at them:
Clarity
Microsoft Clarity is a web behavioral analysis tool that offers dynamic web heat maps and session recordings, with the ability to observe any user in real time as they navigate the website.
Clarity provides 4 main types of web heat maps: click, scroll, area and conversion.
| 💡 The latter is especially interesting in ecommerce, because it shows the interactions that lead to conversions and translates them into concrete numerical data, such as the number of purchases or the conversion rate percentage (see image). |
Session recording is one of the most powerful features of Microsoft Clarity, because it captures the user’s entire journey and interactions from login to logout.
These include actions such as cursor movements, clicks and scrolling. They also show changes in page content.
What makes it an even more interesting tool are its data dashboards, which allow you to see at a glance:
- Main user events
- Click and JavaScript errors logged
- Predominant traffic channels
- WPO Data
In addition, reports can be generated with data from Google Analytics 4 thanks to its integration with this analytics tool.
💲The best thing is its price, as it is completely free, with no traffic limits or functionality restrictions.
Hotjar
Hotjar was one of the first heat mapping tools to become known and, today, it has become a comprehensive UX optimization platform.
With a strong focus on direct qualitative feedback from users, it combines:
- Heat maps and session recordings, on the one hand.
- Gathering feedback through surveys, online widgets, user tests and personal interviews, on the other hand.
Much like Clarity, Hotjar records clicks, cursor movement, scroll, high engagement zones and rage clicks in 5 heat maps. Recordings are available in both playback and real-time.
Different filtering options, such as certain user characteristics and custom events, can be applied to both records of user behavior.
But what elevates user experience analysis are the specific tools for:
- Configure and analyze conversion funnels
- Send surveys to users
- Activate customized forms
- Recruit participants for tests and trials
Direct insights can be obtained from all of this and analyzed in the platform’s reports.
However, not all of them are available in the free plan, and there is a daily limit of user sessions.
A maximum of 35 sessions per day can be tracked for free, while the Plus plan (39€/month) increases this to 100 and includes extra segmentation filters.
The Business plan (99€/month) and the Scale plan (213€/month) start at 500 sessions per day and, in the case of Scale, customized funnels are included.
Overtracking
Overtracking is known to be one of the most powerful (and Spanish!) alternatives to GA4. Therefore, it is an analytics tool, but among its functions it includes web heatmaps and session recordings.
This means that in addition to the key metrics, a record of each visitor’s sessions is included:
- Data on when they were made, from where, and for how long
- Their respective heat map and recording
As with G4, it is possible to segment the data by filters and, as with Hotjar or Clarity, to know the errors and problems detected in each session (broken links, status codes, WPO…).
What sets Overtracking apart is its zero-cookies mode, which respects users’ privacy and, at the same time, allows tracking of all their movements.
Its price is very competitive, because it varies according to the visits received by the website. The account is free up to 40,000, but for analyzing 70,000 page views you would only pay 6.95€/month.
Yandex Metrics
Lesser known, but with enormous power. Yandex Metrica is a Russian web analytics tool, not so much UX, which includes web heat mapping functionalities.
Specifically, 3 types:
- Link Map: creates a map showing which links or buttons receive the most clicks, using bright colors for areas of high interaction.
- Click Map: shows where users click on the site, helping to identify usability issues and attractive areas for visitors.
- Scroll Map: indicates which areas of the page receive the most attention as users scroll, using reddish tones for the most viewed areas.
In line with the other tools seen, it also offers session recordings and a data dashboard with basic statistics such as traffic sources, segmentation by region, gender and age, as well as tracking of goals or conversions.
So why is it different? Because of its Form Analysis, a feature that allows you to analyze the performance of forms on a website.
For example, you can see how many users visited the page, how many interacted with the form and how many completed the submission.
| And, watch out: Yandex Metrica simplifies the detailed tracking of each form field (average time of completion, fields left blank, fields where the form is abandoned), something that with tools like GA4 can be much more complex and less intuitive. |
A much simpler alternative to Hotjar when it comes to obtaining direct user insights and it is also free for most of the functionalities 💲, including heat maps.
Heat map
Heat map is a tool specialized in the creation of heat maps and user behavior analysis, but simplified.
Web heat maps (clicks, movements and scrolling) and recordings are displayed in a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface that also offers:
- Dashboards with top pages and rage clicks, plus per revenue per session, WPO and JavaScript error data.
- +12 filters to segment data by user type, location, source, AOV(Average Order Value) and others, as well as the ability to set up custom segments and compare them.
- Timeline of actions per page, with a detailed log of clicks and events.
- Integrations with the main ecommerce CMS.
- AI wizard to land data into concrete actions for home pages, product pages and more.
It should be noted that it is very focused on conversion and, therefore, used for the optimization of online stores.
💲As for its price, it offers a limited free plan. Paid plans start from $89 per month and based on project turnover, with the possibility to enjoy a 7-day trial.
As you can see, these tools provide visual insights that help you identify usability issues on your website or ecommerce that conventional metrics cannot capture.
So to get the most out of them, include them in your web analytics reports along with specific improvement actions. You will see how the increase in conversions will not be long in coming!
Alex Serrano
12 años en marketing digital. Creador de Chartud y especialista en Looker Studio. Consultor SEO desde hace 8 años. Creador y divulgador de contenido en diferentes formatos como 300Segundos (newsletter) o SEOdesdeCero (podcast). También cofundador de RankPulse.app, herramienta de SEO Local.
