Heatmaps: a practical guide

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. This guide covers what heatmaps actually involves, where it usually goes wrong, and how to tell whether yours is in reasonable shape.

Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. Nothing below assumes a large team or a large budget — most of it is a decision somebody has to make and then write down.

Why this earns attention

They show where attention goes, not why. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

For most businesses the question is not whether this matters but how much of it is worth doing right now. That depends on what you are trying to achieve in the next few months, not on best practice in the abstract. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding.

What good looks like

Best used to generate hypotheses. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. The version that works in practice is usually less elaborate than the version described in the guides.

Combine with recordings for context. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

A working checklist

If you want a quick read on where you stand, work through this. Anything you cannot answer confidently is where to start.

• They show where attention goes, not why
• Best used to generate hypotheses
• Combine with recordings for context
• Someone is named as the owner, not just assumed to be
• There is a date in the calendar to review it again
• The decision and the reasoning behind it are written down somewhere findable
• You could explain the current setup to a new hire in five minutes

Warning signs

The most common failure is not doing this badly. It is doing it once, during a launch, and never revisiting it. Circumstances move, the setup does not, and the gap widens quietly until something breaks or somebody notices the numbers.

• It was configured during a launch and has not been touched since
• Different people in the business believe different things are true about it
• There is no way to tell whether the last change helped or hurt
• The only person who understands it has left, or is about to

More dashboards rarely produce more decisions. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped.

How we approach it

On our projects this gets handled during the build rather than added afterwards, because retrofitting it costs several times more than including it. We write down what was decided and why, so the next person to touch it is not guessing.

If you are working with someone else, the questions worth asking are simple: who owns this, how will we know it is working, and what happens when it needs to change?

A reasonable first step

Pick the single item from the checklist above that would cause the most trouble if it turned out to be wrong. Fix that one, confirm it worked, then move on. If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.