Heatmaps and Session Recordings: Qualitative Analytics
Quantitative analytics (numbers) tell you what is happening — heatmaps and session recordings tell you why. These qualitative tools provide direct visual evidence of how real users interact with your product, revealing friction, confusion, and unexpected behaviour that numbers alone cannot expose.
Heatmaps
- Click heatmaps: Show where users click — revealing what they think is clickable (and what they miss), and which CTAs attract the most attention
- Scroll maps: Show how far users scroll — indicating where page content falls below the "fold" of typical user behaviour
- Move maps: Track mouse movement — a proxy for eye tracking, indicating where attention is focused
Session Recordings
Session recordings capture anonymised video replays of individual user sessions — mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, form interactions, and navigation. Watching recordings of users encountering a specific page or completing (or failing to complete) a specific task reveals UX friction that no quantitative metric captures.
Privacy Considerations
Session recording tools must be configured to mask personal data — all form inputs should be masked by default, and recordings should be subject to your privacy policy and GDPR consent framework. We configure masking rules as part of all session recording implementations.
Tools
- Hotjar: Industry standard — heatmaps, session recordings, surveys, and feedback widgets
- Microsoft Clarity: Free tool with heatmaps and session recordings — GDPR-compliant, no sampling
- FullStory: Enterprise session intelligence platform with powerful search and analysis