A visual representation of user behavior on a webpage — typically showing where visitors click, how far they scroll, or where their attention concentrates — using color gradients to indicate areas of high and low activity.
Why it matters
A heatmap turns abstract behavioral data into an intuitive visual that's often easier to interpret and act on than a spreadsheet of click coordinates — it can reveal, for instance, that visitors are clicking on an element that isn't actually a working link, an easy thing to miss without a visual representation.
In a sentence
"The heatmap showed a lot of clicks on the product screenshot, which turned out not to be clickable at all — we made it link through to the demo instead of wasting that attention."
Related terms
- Often confused with: Scroll depth (a heatmap can visualize scroll depth as one of several possible views, alongside click and attention maps — scroll depth on its own is a single specific metric, while a heatmap is a broader visualization tool that can display several different kinds of behavioral data).
- Synonyms: Click map (a specific type of heatmap focused on clicks).