Heat Map / UX Terms Heat Map A heat map is a visual tool that represents user activity on a webpage by using colour gradients to show where people click, scroll, move their mouse or spend time. Warmer colours such as red and orange indicate high levels of interaction, while cooler colours like blue and green show lower engagement. Heat maps help marketers, designers and UX teams understand how visitors navigate and engage with a page, making it easier to identify what draws attention and what gets overlooked. There are different types of heat maps depending on the behaviour being tracked. Click maps show where users click most frequently, including buttons, links or non-clickable elements. Scroll maps reveal how far users scroll down a page, helping identify whether content is being seen or ignored. Move maps track where users move their mouse cursor, which often correlates with visual attention. These insights are generated by tools such as Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Microsoft Clarity or FullStory, which collect anonymised session data and overlay the results on your actual web pages. Heat maps are valuable for optimising page layout, content hierarchy and call-to-action placement. They highlight design elements that confuse users or fail to attract attention, helping teams make informed changes based on real behaviour. For nonprofits, this might mean adjusting a donation page layout to boost conversions. For SaaS and B2B brands, heat maps can guide how product features or contact forms are positioned. Heat maps complement analytics by showing not just what users do, but how and where they do it.