Conversion
Heatmap
A heatmap aggregates interaction across many visits into a visual overlay: where people clicked, how far they scrolled, where the cursor dwelled.
What is heatmap?
A heatmap aggregates interaction across many visits into a visual overlay: where people clicked, how far they scrolled, where the cursor dwelled. It summarises behaviour across a page rather than within one visit.
What it changes
It answers whether content below a certain point is seen at all, which decides whether a problem is about the content or about its position.
How it works in practice
Read per template and per device, with enough sessions for the pattern to be stable, and interpreted alongside the page’s actual goal rather than as a picture of engagement.
The usual mistake
Clicks on non-clickable elements are a finding, not noise. They usually mean the design implied an affordance that does not exist.
If somebody uses this term to mean something else, it is worth asking which meaning.
Where this comes up in the work
It is part of Paid Social and Meta Ads, and more specifically of Meta Ads management. Across the rest of the work it shows up in:
- Paid Social and Meta Ads, where getting it wrong shows up in deciding what the first three seconds have to do and testing only that
- Conversion Rate Optimization, where it sets the ceiling on finding the step where people leave and asking them why
- Website Design and Development, since writing the error states that nobody designs until they happen is only as good as this is
- AI Automation and Workflows, in which it shows up as making the thing maintainable by whoever is here next year
What to check
Two questions that establish whether this is actually in order on a given site:
- Whether the staging behaviour matches production behaviour
- Whether the person who would notice a regression is looking at the right report
Common questions
Does heatmap affect rankings directly?
It answers whether content below a certain point is seen at all, which decides whether a problem is about the content or about its position. The honest framing is that it removes a constraint rather than adding a boost. Product feed optimisation is where the measurement is defined, Product page optimisation where it gets disputed.
What tells you whether heatmap is in order?
Read per template and per device, with enough sessions for the pattern to be stable, and interpreted alongside the page’s actual goal rather than as a picture of engagement. Toronto is the shortest useful page on this. Udaipur is the most complete.
Who owns heatmap in a business?
Whoever is accountable for deciding whether a rating prompt is helping or annoying. Problems with this tend to persist because nobody is. Two pages carry the detail this one summarises: Nonprofit and NGO, and then Real estate and property.
How much work is heatmap?
It depends entirely on where the problem originates. Establishing that is the first piece of work.
Should heatmap come before other work?
It comes before work that assumes it is already handled, and after anything actively blocking indexation.
How do you prove heatmap is worth fixing?
It answers whether content below a certain point is seen at all, which decides whether a problem is about the content or about its position. The evidence is specific to the site, which is why the check comes before the recommendation. The sequencing matters: Content and Editorial before Conversion Rate Optimization, not the other way round.
See the gaps before you spend against them
A conversation about the problem, not a presentation about us. Bring whatever data exists.