What is a Heatmap? How to Generate One for Your Website?


A heat map is the latest term to denote a shading matrix. If you are watching the weather forecast for a hot summer day, the hottest parts of the country will appear on your TV screen as red areas, while the cooler ones will be marked in orange or yellow.

Why do you need one on your website?

In a nutshell, you need a heatmap on your website to show you your visitors’ behavior – the share of the most active visitors that come and make purchases will be marked in red. Those who spend quite some time browsing your website, but leave without buying anything will be marked in yellow. Finally, those that leave right after opening your site will be marked in blue.

How to generate a heatmap?

You can generate a heatmap on your website by using a heatmap tool. This is a tracking script that can tell you which areas on your website generate the highest number of clicks and which areas are visited less often.

First, you have to choose a heatmap tool. For example, Crazy Egg is one of the most user-friendly heatmap tools out there.

Next, you have to decide on the number of snapshots you want to create. One snapshot means you’ll get reports on just one page of your website. We recommend that you create as many snapshots as you need.

At this stage you’ll have to enter the target URL into the heatmap tool you’ve chosen. Finally, you can customize your snapshots: are you interested in the number of users who visit your website from desktop computers, or would you rather know how many visitors landed on your webpage from a mobile device? Your heatmap tool can provide all sorts of statistical information, so try to use its full potential.