Clicking on a map is one of the fastest ways to see what works on a website, and what aren’t and where you might be missing the opportunity.
Once you know how to interpret click-through data, it’s easy to find user experience (UX) issues, less engagement sections, and dozens of potential moves to improve conversions – about 20-30 minutes per week.
You can learn this very quickly and use click-to-click maps to provide clear, easy-to-understand visuals that allow everyone to access the same page. Clicking on the map can be shared with the design team, freelancer, or anyone who wants a clearer reason for your website changes.
Click on the map basics
What is clicking on the map?
Clicking on a map is a visual representation of a user clicking on a website (on a mobile device). It only focuses on clicks and taps – not scrolling, hovering or moving.
Click each user’s map for a given time period (days, week) and map it to the exact coordinates on the page. The data is then summarized and visualized in the ClickMap report.
In the confetti click map above, each point is a separate click. You can immediately find patterns in clicks, for example:
- Ignore elements: Important buttons or links that users completely ignore.
- Angry click: Repeat click on the non-responsive element.
- Dead click: Click on the non-interacting element.
- High/low density: Click on many areas, sparsely click on areas.
If an important button is not touched, if you didn’t expect to see a lot of engagement, or if the user clicks on the dead point – clicking on the map will show up immediately.
Filter click map data
In addition to showing you the exact location of each click, you can filter the click data through different factors to gain a deeper understanding of who is actually completing all clicks. Most tools allow you to filter click data based on the following factors:
- Equipment Type
- New and Return Visitors
- nation
- Time of day
- Source of traffic
- Activity
Any of these factors can reveal trends or problems worth solving. You may find that late night shoppers have more content than working hours visitors. There may be an opportunity to optimize conversion rates for this segment.
The ability to compare performance between device sizes is indeed helpful. For example, buttons that perform well overall may be significantly underperforming Android users. If you’re just looking at the overall click-through rate, you’ll miss it.
By filtering data, clicking on the map allows you to zoom in on these potentially valuable differences between segments. We will explain the functionality of this feature in the section explaining the click map data.
What is the difference between clicking on a map and a heat map?
I’ve noticed that people often use click maps and heat maps interchangeably, treating them as the same thing. Not exactly. Strictly speaking:
- Click on the map: Track and display the actual click interaction to accurately display where the user clicks on the web page.
- Website hot map: Use color gradients to visualize aggregated user behavior, such as click, mouse movement, or scroll depth.
It seems simple – these are two different tools.
However, in casual, daily use, people call clicking on maps called heat maps. Searches about “Click Map” are spent on most pages, talking about hot maps, which only exacerbates the confusion.
Web analytics tools such as Crazy Egg (pictured above) provide click maps as a subset of its website Heatmap features. Crazy Egg calls click maps a confetti report, so there is no misunderstanding.
Many people use both tools as part of analytical performance and user experience. Click on maps, heat maps, and other reports provide a variety of perspectives and other contexts to guide your decisions.
Set up click map tracking on your website
The process is very easy. You don’t need a developer to enable click-to-map. Here are the basic steps:
- Select Click Map Tool: The one you use confidently, provide the required reporting depth and integrate with your website with ease.
- Install tracking scripts: Most tools require adding a small code snippet to the website’s title (copying it is not difficult).
- Test to ensure it is effective: Open your website and interact with it to confirm that the click has been recorded.
That’s it.
Now you need to wait for the data to roll. Once you have a few days or week of click data, it’s time to start extracting reports and searching for insights.
Tips for reading and interpreting click-through map data
Getting the most benefit from clicking on the map data requires analytical thinking and creative problem solving. The data itself is objective – the user clicks at a specific location, or they don’t click – but your evaluation of that data is always subjective.
What does the data imply about user behavior? How do you use this insight to drive conversions, reduce confusion and satisfy users?
Talented people on reading click maps often draw on knowledge from a range of disciplines – UX design, web development, copywriting, data analysis and a lot of psychology.
Now, you don’t have to be UX Designer Or expert. Putting yourself on the user’s shoes and adding some common sense will go a long way. Bring what you know to the table, stay curious, test your ideas and perfect your approach over time.
Here are some simple tips to get you started.
Learn from waste clicks
Ask yourself why people click on any powerless element. What do they want to accomplish? What do they expect to happen?
If you gather a lot of dead points on one element, it might indicate that people expect links, help, more information – and you are not giving them at the moment. Perhaps this element is too obvious, it is a siphon click from a more ideal position. Maybe you added a link and now the element is consistent with the user’s expectations.
Scattered clicks can indicate hesitation, uncertainty, where to go next, and what to do. Again, this is another opportunity to clear content, improve your message, or redesign your design to guide meaningful elements on your website.
If rage clicks on the cluster around the slow load button, it is definitely a performance issue. Make your website fast It rarely disappoints users.
Comparison of click distribution across devices
User behavior varies between desktop and mobile devices – so it makes sense to analyze each click-through map separately to find any meaningful differences.
On the desktop, users rely on precise cursor movement, while on mobile devices, they navigate through tapping and scrolling. This means that elements such as buttons, menus, and links should be large enough to easily click on mobile devices, but not oversized, that they overwhelm the desktop user.
So if you notice that an important button has much less clicks on mobile than desktop clicks, it may be too small, too low on the page, or too close to other tapable areas. Any of these factors makes it harder for users to move.
Also note that some faucets on mobile devices do not indicate real engagement. Users can click just to stop scrolling, which can create misleading click clusters in non-interactive areas.
For example, if the background part gets a lot of faucets but only comes from a mobile user, it might be the user trying to pause their scrolling. If you see the same click of desktop users missing in the same area, then this could be a real sign that people are confused.
Intent to consider different traffic sources
Visitors from organic searches may arrive with clear goals. People from social media may be curious. They behave differently on the website due to intent. Are you serving two users who are clicking on your website purposefully? What about those who browse it casually?
The goal is to be able to optimize the experience for each audience by matching content with intent. Does the paid search clip fall at any specific point? Are they less involved than other segments in a specific field? This may indicate a mismatch between the ads’ introduction of search traffic and messages on the website.
Turn click on map data into real victory
These are the things I want to do every time I analyze click mapping:
- Find out the user’s struggle: Determine dead clicks, angry clicks and other problematic patterns to discover navigation problems, broken links and unclear design elements.
- Find the winning element: Find which CTAs, images and navigation elements attract the greatest interactions in order to double the content that already works.
- Fix poor performance elements: Determine which areas and elements the user ignores, whether it is a buried link, an unlit button or content that cannot be participated in.
- Improve conversion rate: Find where clicks leaked to non-essential areas instead of critical CTAs and adjust placement, design, or messaging.
- Tell content strategies: Discover richer content (such as videos, images, or deep text) helps to attract users, and places that may be unnecessary or overlooked.
If I could follow any of these goals, it was a measurable victory for the site.
Suppose I find that no one is involved in our specific features on the website. Amazing. We can eradicate it and put time into the website feature where users spend time.
The end result of all this work is to make a website smoother for users and more consistent with their expectations.
Click-to-map analysis that complements other tools
When paired with other visualizations and reports, click on the map is the strongest. They show the interactive modes themselves, but they leave blanks that you can fill with with other tools.
Website hot mapFor example, it can help you better understand how much time people spend on pages. Where is the highest intensity? Your phone should be there.
Use click on the map Session Recording Let you understand how visitors navigate before and after clicks, which can help you determine the points of hesitation or frustration. Web Analytics Tools Add context by showing bounce rates, exit pages, and the time spent on the website, helping you understand if users find what they need or leave too early.
Viewing clicking on the map is a great way to add A/B Test. Comparing click distributions can provide rich insights into testing performance. Why do new changes win? Where can I get the clicks that the control does not have?
The more you use clicks on the map, the faster you can learn what is going on on the website and what can be done to make it better.
