What these tools show
Heatmaps aggregate behaviour on a page; session recordings replay individual visits. Tools such as Microsoft Clarity provide both, with masking of sensitive content (Microsoft Learn). They answer what visitors do on a page, never why.
Reading heatmaps
| Type | What it shows | Good question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Click map | Where people click or tap | Are people clicking things that aren’t links? Missing the real button? |
| Scroll map | How far down people get | What important content sits below the point where most stop? |
| Move / attention map | Where the cursor or attention lingers (desktop) | Treat with caution; cursor position is only loosely related to attention |
Always look at mobile and desktop separately, and at a period long enough for a few thousand page views.
Watching recordings efficiently
Don’t watch random sessions. Filter first:
- Visitors who left from the leaking step
- Sessions with rage clicks, dead clicks or errors
- One segment at a time (new mobile visitors from paid search, for example)
Watch with one question in mind (“What do people do just before leaving checkout?”) and note patterns in a simple table: behaviour, how many sessions, an example timestamp.
Traps to avoid
- Over-reading heatmaps. A cold area isn’t necessarily useless; it may be read but not clicked.
- Generalising from one recording. Patterns need several sessions.
- Ignoring dynamic pages. Heatmaps on pages with changing layouts (carousels, personalisation) can be misleading.
- Privacy. Keep text masking on, never record payment fields, and respect consent: in many regions recordings need opt-in consent like other analytics (EDPB, 2020).
Turning patterns into evidence
Each pattern becomes a finding: “7 of 10 mobile visitors who left checkout scrolled back up to the order summary first.” Combine it with survey answers and analytics, and you have the evidence for a hypothesis.
Recap
Heatmaps for patterns on a page, recordings for individual behaviour, both filtered and question-led, never as the only evidence. Next lesson: reviews and support insights.
Practical exercise
Open a scroll heatmap for your most important page on mobile. Mark where 50% of visitors have stopped scrolling. List everything important that sits below that line. Then watch 10 recordings of visitors who left that page and note what they did last.