Mouse Click Heatmap

From ClickTale Wiki

The Click Heatmap is a great way to evaluate the effectivness of your links and navigation. It shows you every spot on your page that visitors have clicked, whether its links, images text or blank space. It can help locate the obstructions in your conversion funnels by seeing what advertisements, images and links aren’t getting enough clicks, and what call to action buttons are being ignored. If visitors are clicking on images and text, such as “Special Offers” banners, buttons or icons, without going anywhere potential customers may be lost.

Please note, Heatmaps may need to be selected by date range rather than page version for dynamic sites that serve different versions of the same page to visitors. For more information see our wiki page on how to unify several page versions.

How to use

To access your Click Heatmap, click the Heatmap link on your Dashboard underneath the Reports heading and select Mouse Click. Next, select the page URL you are interested in analyzing , followed by the page version or date range.

Buttons and uses

	Shows the entire heatmap so you can print or capture it easily
	Turns on advanced analytic data which can be seen while hovering over specific page links. When left unchecked a snapshot of analytic data is available
	Displays link analytics percent values
	Clicks: Number of mouse clicks (% of total clicks) Hovers:Number of mouse hovers (% of total hovers) Hover Conversion:Percent of mouse hovers that click Time to Click:Average time from page load to click Hesitation:Average time from begining of hover to click Hover Order:Average order the link was hovered over by visitors Clicking Visitors:Number of visitors who clicked (and the % of the number of visitors who clicked)
	Downloads heatmap to you local machine to use off line, for presentations, etc.
	Enhances the intensity of the color from Cold (far left) to Hot (far right)
	Allows the adjustment of the page background. Clear (far left) provides a transparent view of the page being viewed while Opaque (far right) shows a clearer view of the heatmap itself

How to interpret

High density click areas may mean:

The area is recognized as ‘clickable’ – check if this area is intended to be ‘clicked’.
If there are a lot of clicks on an area that you did not expect to be clickable, consider why users are clicking there? maybe something in the design is leading users to think there is a button/link there.
If there are no links/buttons there – maybe you should consider adding them? Users are interested in the content in that area – if a specific button/link are getting many clicks, it means the users are interested in this content/feature.

Low density clicks area may mean:

Users to not see this area of the page – first, you need to verify that users get to this section of the page.

Use the Scroll Reach Heatmap to see if users actually see this part of the page.

Users do not recognize the link/button - you may want to consider the design of a button, or clarify visually that a certain text is a link, in order to clarify that the user recognizes they can click there.
Users are less interested in this content

Areas with no clicks at all may mean:

The ClickTale system will show you locations users clicked, even if there is no ‘clickable’ element on the page.

Therefore no clicks at all in a certain area probably means the users are not interested in that content, or do not understand this is ‘clickable’.

To make sure the system recognizes a specific element on the page, you can use the ‘display all elements’ setting at the header of the heatmap.

Clicks in areas that do not include a link/button may mean:

Users are mistaking content such as text of image to be a link or a button
Users are clicking on ‘hidden’ objects – it’s possible that there is a menu that opens in that area (and is not currently displayed). To view all ‘hidden elements’ you can use the ‘display hidden elements’ setting in the header of the heatmap.

Link Analytics

There are 8 statistics offered with Link Analytics (hover over a link to view all or click on the Link Analytics menu to choose):

Clicks

Counts the number of clicks and the percent of the total clicks on every link.

Hovers

The number of mouse hovers over a link.

Hover Order

Ranks links by the average order in which they were hovered-over by visitors. Shows which links attract the mouse first, second and so on.

Time to Click

The average time between the moment a page has been loaded to the moment a link is clicked. You can discover which links are the most attractive by seeing the average time it takes for a visitor to click on them.