Clickmaps
Clickmaps visualise click density per element so you can tell which buttons, images, and links your visitors actually interact with — and which look clickable but aren't.
Clickmaps
A heatmap variant that plots click density on each element, showing exactly where visitors tap or click on a page.
A clickmap is a behavioural analytics visualisation that aggregates every recorded click on a page and renders it as colour intensity, usually red for hotspots and blue for cold zones. Unlike scroll or move maps, it answers one narrow question very well: is this element being interacted with?
CRO teams use clickmaps as the first diagnostic when a page underperforms. If a primary CTA shows weak click density while a non-clickable hero image lights up red, you have a perceived-affordance problem — visitors are trying to click things that don't respond. That single insight typically drives the next A/B test.
Clickmaps belong to the broader behavioral analytics toolkit alongside scrollmaps, mousemove maps, and session replay. Each answers a different question. A scrollmap tells you how far down the page visitors reach. A clickmap tells you what they tried to act on once they got there.
Read a clickmap by element, not by pixel. Modern tools attach clicks to a stable selector (button.add-to-cart, img.hero) so the visualisation survives responsive breakpoints. That's what lets you compare desktop and mobile click share on the same CTA without the layout shift confounding the data.
Element Click Share = (Clicks on Element / Total Page Clicks) × 100
Clicks on Element
Element clicks
Total clicks recorded on a specific element across the sample window.
Total Page Clicks
Page clicks
All clicks on the page in the same window, including dead clicks on non-interactive elements.
A Shopify apparel store reviews 14 days of clickmap data on its main product page for a hero tee.
Clicks on Add to Cart button: 1820
Total page clicks: 11000
→ 16.5%
Add to Cart is taking 16.5% of all clicks on the page. The product-image gallery is taking 41% — visitors are spending more attention on visuals than on the conversion action, which suggests the CTA needs more visual weight or a stickier mobile placement.
Click share is the metric that turns a pretty visualisation into a prioritisation tool. Rank every interactive element by its share, then compare against intent: high share on non-clickable elements is a hypothesis, low share on your primary CTA is a problem.
Typical click-share ranges on a Shopify product page (desktop, 10k+ sessions)
| Element | Healthy range | Warning zone | Common issue when out of range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Add to Cart CTA | 12–25% | <8% | Below the fold, weak contrast, or competing buttons |
| Product image gallery | 20–45% | >55% | Visitors zooming/swiping looking for info the copy should provide |
| Variant selector (size/colour) | 8–18% | <4% | Variants hidden in a dropdown instead of swatches |
| Reviews / social proof block | 3–10% | <1% | Placed below the fold or not perceived as interactive |
| Shipping/returns accordion | 2–8% | >15% | Critical info buried — pull it above the fold |
| Logo / header nav | 5–12% | >20% | Confused visitors restarting their journey — page isn't answering intent |
Use clickmaps as a starting point, not a verdict. A red zone on a non-clickable image is a hypothesis ("make it clickable" or "add a CTA here"), and you validate it with an A/B test — not by shipping the change directly. Pair clickmap data with session replay to see the context around the click and you'll cut a lot of false positives.
Clickmap FAQs
Heatmap is the umbrella term for any density visualisation of behaviour. Clickmaps are one type — they show clicks specifically. Other heatmap variants include scrollmaps (depth reached), movemaps (cursor movement), and attention maps (estimated viewport dwell).
Aim for at least 2,000–3,000 sessions per page per device type before drawing conclusions. Below 1,000 the visualisation is noisy and a handful of outlier users can create false hotspots.
Yes — they record taps the same way they record clicks. You should always segment desktop and mobile clickmaps separately, because layout and finger-vs-cursor behaviour produce very different patterns.
A click on an element that has no interactive behaviour — a non-linked image, decorative text, or a broken button. Dead clicks are the highest-value finding in a clickmap because they directly reveal perceived-affordance gaps.
Lightweight modern snippets add a few kilobytes and run asynchronously, so the impact on Largest Contentful Paint is usually under 50ms. Older or fragmented stacks running multiple recording tools are where speed problems show up.
Clickmaps aggregate behaviour across many visitors into one view — great for spotting patterns. Session replay shows you one individual journey in detail — great for understanding why a pattern exists. You use them together.
Yes, and you should. Recording clickmaps for both control and variant during a test tells you not just which version won, but why — whether the new CTA placement actually pulled click share toward itself.
High logo clicks usually mean visitors are restarting their journey because the current page isn't matching their intent. Treat it as a signal to audit the page's relevance to its inbound traffic source rather than as a navigation pattern.
If you have the volume, yes. Paid social visitors click very differently from organic search visitors — they have less context and need more on-page guidance. Segmented clickmaps reveal which traffic source is actually struggling with the page.
Treating a hotspot as a conclusion instead of a hypothesis. A red zone tells you something is interesting to visitors, not why it's interesting or what to do about it. Always pair the observation with a structured test before changing the page.
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