If you observe that your heatmap report is not tracking any clicks or showing lesser clicks than actual page visits, the following are some of the most common reasons:
Hidden or Elements inside Navigation Menus
By default, heatmap reports show clicks on the elements that are visible on the page. Often, the pages where you are tracking a heatmap are located under navigation menus and thus the report does not display the clicks. For example, let us say that the “Shoes” page under the “Products” menu receives the maximum traffic. However, when you view the heatmap report for the Products page, you don’t see as many clicks because most clicks are captured for the Shoe sub-page.
Visitor Sampling
VWO tracks visitors who land on every page of your website that has VWO SmartCode added and becomes eligible for sampling. Visitors to your website become eligible for getting sampled for Insights as soon as they visit one of the pages defined in the Included URLs list. The only visitor that meets the criteria becomes part of the visitor sample and VWO tracks their data for heat maps and other visitor research. To understand how sampling works, click here.
Only First Three Clicks are Captured by default
VWO records only the first three clicks from a user in a particular session per page for generating a heatmap report. For example, when a user lands on a test page, the first three taps or clicks by the user on the page are captured in a heatmap.
Test running on multiple URLs or URLs having the same template
Let’s say multiple pages of your site have the same layout and visitors land on the page with some unique parameter or value in the URL. For example, a registered user lands on the page with the URL www.example.org/user/XYZ123. The value in the URL will be different for every user even though they are able to see the same page layout. Now, if you enter the test URL for user XYZ123, you will only see the heatmap only for the user and not for all the pages.
To view collective heatmaps for multiple pages sharing a similar structure, select URL Matches Pattern in the Heatmaps, use * as a wildcard, and then click Go. The heatmap is refreshed, and you can view click data for all pages, which match this URL pattern. This method is also useful for scenarios where a unique key or token is present in the URL.
The website runs on both HTTP and HTTPS
If your website opens on both HTTP and HTTPS, use the URL Matches Pattern to consolidate data for both the versions of your site. Insert * after HTTP to use it as a wildcard, and then click Go.
Elements updated or removed from the actual page
VWO records click by element ID, class, and CSS Paths of an element. If the tracked element is not found on the page, no heatmap is tracked. For example, you update your website by changing or removing an element, then the clicks on such elements are not tracked by VWO Heatmaps.
URL Redirection
Heatmaps cannot be tracked if your original website page is now redirected to another URL, because VWO Heatmaps is set up for the original URL, which now does not open in the heatmaps view.
Dynamic IDs
In case certain elements on a page have dynamic IDs or their CSS paths are changing on different or the same URL, data of such elements cannot be aggregated and their heatmap clicks are not be plotted.