Using Heatmaps Dashboard in VWO

Heatmaps dashboard in VWO is the central place where you can generate heatmap reports, manage heatmap data collection settings, compare heatmaps, and create and manage views. In the heatmap dashboard, you can view the report for a page(s) and apply segments to look at data for specific visitor groups. To access the heatmap dashboard, go to INSIGHTS > Heatmaps.

Using the heatmap dashboard, you can typically do the following:

• Enable data collection for heatmaps 
• View Heatmaps for a URL 
• Select the Visualization mode
• View Data for Specific Visitor Segments
• Filter heatmaps by date range
•  Filter heatmaps by test campaigns
• Compare Heatmaps
• Create views
• Configure heatmap settings 

Enable Data Collection for Heatmaps

If you are using the Heatmaps for the first time, you must first enable the VWO heatmaps to collect data for your website. Once you enable it, VWO automatically starts collecting data on all the pages that have VWO SmartCode. 

Procedure

1. Go to INSIGHTS > Heatmaps.
2. To enable the heatmaps feature, click ENABLE NOW.
   Note: This option only appears if you are using the heatmaps view for the first time.

View Heatmaps for a URL

To know how to view the heatmaps for a URL, refer to How to View a Heatmap for a URL? 

Select the Visualization Mode

Choose a visualization type to explore user behavior such as click and scroll activity on your webpage. VWO offers multiple ways to represent user activity, helping you analyze user engagement from different perspectives. Select the most relevant view from the following options to gain actionable insights tailored to your analysis goals.

• Heatmaps - Visualize where users click the most on a page using color intensity.
• Clickmaps - Show the exact clickable elements users interact with, like buttons or links.
• Clickarea - Highlight clustered click regions to identify hotspots on grouped UI areas.
• Scrollmaps - Reveal how far users scroll down the page, helping you gauge content visibility.
• Zonalmap - Aggregate user interaction by defined zones or sections of the page.
• Element list - List all clickable elements along with their click counts and engagement metrics.
• Frictionmap - Detect areas causing user frustration through erratic clicks or repeated interactions.

View Data for Specific Visitor Segments

Using the Select Audience and Traffic option, you can generate heatmaps based on the data collected from a specific visitor segment. You can create visitor segments per different conditions such as geographical location, user device, and other user behaviors. You can select from over 20 segment conditions such as source URLs, referral type, visitor IP address, technology, time, etc. To learn more about defining customer segments, refer to How to Define Custom Visitor Segments.

Procedure

1. Go to INSIGHTS > Heatmaps. 
2. In the heatmaps dashboard, enable the option to Select Audience and Traffic to select the visitor segment you want to target. 
3. From the options that appear on the page, you can select VWO default segments or create your custom visitor target segment that meets your requirements. 
4. Click VIEW HEATMAP to view the heatmap corresponding to the selected segment.

Filter heatmaps by date range

You can filter the heatmaps reports based on the dates and segments if you have enabled the segmentation option for the goal.
To filter reports within a specific date range, check the Select a date range checkbox. Select the date range for which you want to view the reports and click VIEW HEATMAP. By default, the heatmap report displays data for the last 30 days.

• Last 30 Days: View reports of the last 30 days from today.
• Last 7 Days: View reports of the last 7 days from today.
• Yesterday: View yesterday's heatmap data.
• Today: View today's heatmap data.

Filter heatmaps by test campaigns

You can filter heatmaps by selecting one or more test campaigns to compare user interactions across variations. This section lets you choose a specific campaign and its variation view to compare heatmap data. It’s especially useful when you're running A/B tests and want to analyze user behavior for different versions of your web pages.

To filter variations across a specific campaign:

1. Check the Select a test campaign checkbox.
2. From the Campaign dropdown, select the campaign you want to analyze.
3. From the Variation dropdown, choose the control or specific variation.
4. Click Add another campaign to add other campaigns. You can add a maximum of 3 campaigns.
5. Click View Heatmap to generate and view the heatmap for the selected variation.

Compare Heatmaps

For information on comparing heatmaps, its use cases, limitations, and best practices, see Compare Heatmaps.

Create Views

To learn more about Views and how to create them, refer to Creating a Heatmap View.

Configure Heatmaps Settings

Click the Settings gear icon to configure the URLs where you want to plot heatmap data. By default, the heatmap will run on all pages where the VWO code is present. However, if you do not want to collect data from certain pages (such as the Contact Us page, which may not be important for the test), you can use the Exclude URLs option.

More Options

In the heatmap dashboard, you can also perform the following:

• To stop the heatmap, click PAUSE DATA COLLECTION.
• Post this, VWO will stop collecting data for the views you have created on the URLs.If you want to clear all existing data from the heatmap, click FLUSH ALL DATA option.
• Click the email icon to share the report.

To learn more about the heatmap dashboard, refer to our Heatmap Dashboard blog.