What is a heatmap and when is it useful?

A heatmap is a visual representation of data in the form of a color map, where the color reflects the intensity or frequency of a specific event or value.

In product analytics, heatmaps are often used for:

• Tracking user behavior on a website or app — for example, where users most frequently click, how they move the mouse.
• Analyzing the distribution of activity over time or across segments.
• Identifying hot zones of the interface that attract attention, and cold zones that are ignored.

This helps in making decisions to improve UX/UI, optimize element placement, and increase conversion.

Example: a click heatmap on a page will show that users click more often on the button in the top right corner, and pay little attention to an important element at the bottom.