Getting started with heatmaps
The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. A short on-ramp to heatmaps for teams who have not touched it before.
Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
What it costs to ignore
They show where attention goes, not why. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Best used to generate hypotheses
- Change one thing and measure it
Combine with recordings for context. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
In practice
More dashboards rarely produce more decisions. Three things worth confirming about heatmaps before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- They show where attention goes, not why — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.