Analyze Visitor Attention using Hovermaps

Overview

Hovermaps show you where visitors are paying attention on a web page by tracking where their mouse cursor pauses. While standard heatmaps track where users click, hovermaps track where users pause their mouse cursor.

VWO detects intentional hovers by capturing a combination of mouse travel and meaningful pauses. The system identifies and defines a hover event when a visitor's mouse cursor stops at a specific position for at least 350 milliseconds. Mouse hovers of this duration indicate where the attention was focused, making hovermaps a reliable way to track user attention and analyze behavior.

Using hovermaps, you can:

• Understand which elements catch a user's eye, even if they do not result in a click.
• Analyze how users engage with non-clickable elements.
• Gain insights into what users are reading or looking at based on their mouse pauses.
• Spot areas where users hesitate or spend time reading without taking action.
• Differentiate between users who just scroll past an element and those who actually pay attention to it.

For example, imagine you run an e-commerce site. You notice that visitors are not clicking the Add to Cart button. By checking the hovermap, you see a high density of hover points over the shipping cost information text near the button. This information indicates that users are reading the shipping details but dropping off, suggesting that high shipping costs might be the friction point.

Access Hovermaps

Prerequisites

• Ensure you have installed the VWO SmartCode on your website.
• You must have desktop traffic data available. Hovermaps do not work for mobile or tablet traffic.

To access the Hovermap visualization, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your VWO account.
2. From the navigation menu on the left, go to Insights > Heatmaps.

3. [Optional] Use the Date Filter, Visitor Segments, or Campaign filters to define the timeframe and segment for which you want to generate hovermap insights.

   Note: Ensure you select a segment that includes Desktop traffic. If you choose a segment restricted to Mobile or Tablet, the hovermap option is disabled because the feature relies on mouse interactions.
4. In the Enter the URL field, enter the specific URL of the page you want to analyze.
5. From the Visualization dropdown menu, select Hovermap.

6. Click View Heatmap. Alternatively, click Compare to view two heatmaps side by side. This allows you to compare user attention across different date ranges or variations.

   Tip: Use the Compare mode to view a hovermap and a clickmap side by side. Comparing this data helps identify elements that users look at (hover) but do not interact with (click). Note that, in Compare mode, if you select Mobile in the device filter, the Hovermap visualization becomes unavailable.

Use Hovermaps for Analysis

Once you generate the hovermap, it opens in a new browser tab. VWO plots colored points on the webpage to represent hover events. You can analyze this data using the following features:

Visualize Density

Hovermaps use a color scale similar to standard heatmaps. Areas with a high density of hover events appear hot (red/orange), indicating high user attention. Areas with fewer hovers appear cold (green/blue).

Control Hover Scope

By default, hovermaps load only the latest 5,000 hover events. This default view helps the hovermap render quickly and ensures smooth performance, while still providing reliable insights into overall visitor attention. To analyze all recorded hovers, you can adjust the hover scope settings.

To adjust the hover scope:

1. In the hovermap view, click Hover scope.
2. Toggle off the Only show latest 5,000 hovers option.
3. Click Apply.

The hovermap will now load all recorded hovers.

View Recordings

You can review the visitor sessions that contributed to the hover activity in a specific area on the page.

To view the session recordings:

1. Select an area on the hovermap.
2. A panel appears, displaying the number of hover events captured in the selected area and the corresponding number of associated session recordings.
3. Click against a recording to watch the visitor’s interaction and understand the behavior that resulted in the hover events.
4. To view the complete list of recordings for that area, click View all Recordings.
   

Viewing recordings corresponding to hover data helps you correlate hover activity with actual user behavior and identify patterns such as hesitation, exploration, or friction.

Analyze Zonalmap Metrics

You can leverage hover data to perform advanced zonal analysis on the web page. By analyzing hover rates alongside engagement rates and metric conversions, you can determine if visitor interest (hovers) is effectively translating into action. It also helps you visualize metric conversion from hovers to clicks, allowing you to understand how attention translates into action. You can use the Zonalmap visualization to quantify visitor attention on specific elements of the page. For more information, see VWO Zonalmap: Optimize User Engagement and Conversions.

Troubleshooting

FAQs

• Is there a minimum duration required for VWO to collate and display hover data?
  No, there is no minimum duration required. VWO starts plotting the hover data as soon as visitor interactions are recorded.
   
• Does hover tracking impact page performance?
  No. Hover data is captured asynchronously and has negligible impact on page load or runtime performance.
   
• How does VWO handle hover tracking inside iframes?
  Hover tracking works only if the iframe content is same-origin and contains the VWO SmartCode.
   
• Can hover data be skewed by users leaving the cursor idle?
  No. VWO does not record passive cursor idling, such as when the pointer remains stationary and only shifts due to scrolling, as hover events. Only intentional pauses at a fixed position are counted, ensuring hover density is not artificially inflated.
   
• Is hover data retained for the same duration as other Insights data?
  Yes. Hover data follows the standard VWO Insights data retention policy.

Need more help?

For further assistance or more information, contact VWO Support.