Heatmaps
See where visitors click and how far they scroll on each page of your website, drawn over a real recorded visit to the page.
Ads → Analytics → Heatmaps shows where visitors click and how far down they scroll on each page of your website, separately for desktops, tablets and phones. The map is drawn over a real recorded visit to the page, so you see the clicks on the page as visitors saw it. Heatmaps come with every plan.
Heatmaps are built from the same recordings as session replays, which the Smileline tracking script makes once it is on your website (see Website tracking). Recording is on by default, follows your consent setting and never captures what visitors type: see Who is recorded and What is never recorded.
Who can see it
| To do this | You need | Who has it |
|---|---|---|
| See Analytics | View ads, captured leads & results | Owners, managers, front desk and analysts |
| Switch heatmaps and session recordings on or off | Access to Settings → Website | Owners and managers |
Read a heatmap
Open Ads → Analytics, click the Heatmaps tab and pick the dates at the top right: the same picker as the other Ads pages, remembered on this device. You can also click the flame button beside a page in Top pages on the Overview tab to open that page's heatmap straight away.
Pick a page from the Pages list. Each one shows how many recorded visits it had in those dates; Load more adds the next pages. Only the page's path is kept; query strings and fragments are removed before upload.
Pick Desktop, Tablet or Mobile, each with its number of recordings. A page lays out differently on each, so their clicks are never mixed.
Choose Clicks to see where visitors clicked, or Scroll to see how far down the page they got, with the average fold: how much of the page shows before anyone scrolls.
The backdrop
The map is drawn over one recorded visit to the page, called the backdrop. It starts as the newest visit that can be shown; pick another from the list beside the controls, for example one from before you last changed the page.
Clicks are placed on the elements of the backdrop. If the page changed during the dates you picked, some clicks belong to elements the backdrop doesn't have, so the page tells you how many fit: N% of clicks match this backdrop. A low figure means the page has changed since: pick another backdrop or narrow the dates.
On a page with a great many different click spots, the map shows the most-clicked ones and says how many it shows. The match share then reads N% of the clicks shown match this backdrop: it covers the spots shown, not the ones left out.
On a page in an A/B test, the backdrop is labelled with the version it shows, such as Backdrop: version B. Clicks from visitors who saw either version are drawn on it, so expect fewer of them to match. Separate heatmaps for each version are not available yet.
When there is nothing to show
- Heatmaps and session recordings are off: recording is switched off for your website. Turn it back on under Settings → Website → Tracking (see Switch recording on or off).
- No page views from your website yet: the tracking script hasn't reported in from your website. See Website tracking.
- No recorded visits in these dates: the script is installed, but no visit was recorded in those dates, for example because visitors haven't allowed the visitor ID.
- No recordings on this device: the page was recorded, but not on the device you picked.
- No recording can show the page yet: the visits were recorded and counted, but none of them has the first snapshot of the page that the map is drawn on. Very short visits may not have one. Their clicks and scrolling still count, and a later visit provides a backdrop.
How long heatmap data is kept
Heatmaps count recordings from the last 13 months, the time recordings are kept. A visit drops out of heatmaps once it is 13 months old. See How long recordings are kept.