Reading heat maps

The heat map lays the measured clicks over the real page. Every dot comes from a click that was actually recorded — condensed, but not simulated. For the dots to sit where the clicking happened, the reference size and the device class are decisive.

What is behind a dot

The click position is stored as a per-mille value of the document: horizontally relative to the width of the visitor’s view, vertically to the entire page height. On the server, neighboring clicks are combined into clusters; a cluster sits at the average of its clicks, not at the center of the grid. They are separated by device class: Mobile below 768 pixels window width, Tablet from 768, Desktop from 1024.

1. In the sidebar under “Analytics”, open the “Click Heat Map” area.
2. In the “Recorded pages” table, look for the page you want and click “Open heat map”.
3. At the top of the window, switch between “Desktop”, “Tablet” and “Mobile” — each view reloads the corresponding data set.
4. In the “Pages with click data” card, use the “On the real page” button to open the overlay in the frontend in a new tab; “Overlay” next to it shows the same page in the window.
5. Hide the dots in the frontend via “Hide” or end the view with “Close”.
6. If needed, download the page list as a file via the “CSV” button of the same card.

What the bar in the overlay reports

• Number of clicks, number of clusters and the view currently shown
• A scale from “cold” to “hot” as a reading aid for the colors
• Older clicks without document coordinates are named but not drawn
• If your window width differs noticeably from the recorded one, the bar points out that the dots may be off