A guide to click heatmaps in Maze

A click heatmap is a visual representation of where your testers clicked on a particular screen. Click heatmaps give you insight into your testers' behavior in your prototype.

Maze allows you to view the clicks on a screen from each tester on mission/live website testing blocks. When viewing a click heatmap, you can also filter the information to only display the data you need for your analysis.

In this article:

• Access your heatmaps
• Aggregated path heatmaps
• Screen heatmaps
• Individual tester heatmaps
• Filter the information on heatmaps
• Display options
• Screen metrics
• Download heatmaps

Access your heatmaps

To access click heatmaps in Maze, you need to test your live maze with testers. Once you start receiving responses, they will appear on the Results dashboard of your maze.

Click a path or a screen on the Results dashboard in order to view the heatmap. You can see heatmaps for aggregated paths, specific screens, or individual testers.

Aggregated path heatmaps

Aggregated path heatmaps display tester clicks based on the mission outcome: direct success, indirect success, or give up/bounce.

To access the aggregated path heatmaps:

1. Open the relevant mission block on your Results dashboard.
2. On the mission results section, hover over any path and click View path heatmaps.
   
3. The heatmaps for each screen on that aggregated path will be displayed.
   

Use your keyboard arrows to quickly navigate through the heatmaps:

• Left (←) and Right (→) to open the previous or next aggregated path
• Up (↑) and Down (↓) to move to the previous or next screen

Screen heatmaps

Screen heatmaps display tester clicks based on each individual screen.

To access the screen heatmaps:

1. Open the relevant mission block on your Results dashboard.
2. On the mission results section, click the Mission results aggregated by dropdown and select Screens.
   
3. Click one of the screens.
   
4. The heatmap for that screen will be displayed.
   

Individual tester heatmaps

Tester heatmaps display clicks for each tester who completed your mission.

To access the tester heatmaps:

1. Open the relevant mission block on your Results dashboard.
2. Scroll down to the Tester paths section.
3. Click one of the tester rows.
   
4. Hover over the tester's path and click View path heatmaps.
   
5. The heatmaps for each screen for that individual tester will be displayed.
   

Use your keyboard's Up (↑) and Down (↓) arrows to quickly navigate to the previous or next screen.

Filter the information on your heatmaps

Filter clicks

Using the top navigation bar, you can narrow down the clicks that are displayed on a heatmap.

Click the drop-down to toggle between all clicks or selected clicks. This allows you to see clicks in the order they were performed by testers, and how many testers performed every click type. For instance, you can use this option to identify where your testers clicked first on a particular screen. 

Filter testers

Using the top navigation bar, you can also opt to display only specific testers' interactions.

Click the drop-down and toggle between all testers and selected testers. The drop-down will also show you the following details about each tester's session: unique tester ID, time spent on that screen, and number of clicks and misclicks the tester made on the screen.

This allows you to take a more granular dive into the behavior of specific testers. For instance, if you notice that a particular tester had a higher than usual time on screen or misclick rate, you can view only their heatmap to understand what might have caused that.

Display options

There are three ways to view a click heatmap:

• Heatmap (): A graphic representation of clicks on the screen.
• Clicks (): Actual click position for each click on the screen.
• Image (): A plain image of the screen.

To toggle between the different heatmap display options, hover over the screen to reveal the menu.

Screen metrics

To the right side of the heatmap, you'll see a summary of usability metrics for that screen:

• Misclick: The misclick rate is the percentage of clicks in a non-clickable area (i.e. outside a hotspot). In a live product, a misclick would have taken the user to an “incorrect” page.
• Time spent: The average time testers spent on that particular screen. Too much time spent on a screen may indicate that something needs to be improved.
• Testers: Number of testers who interacted with that particular screen in that context (e.g. within a specific path, or with a specific filter applied)

Click areas

Use Click areas to show screen metrics for specific areas on your heatmap.

To create a Click area, click and drag on the screen. You may create as many areas as you need. The areas you create will appear on the right side of the screen. 

Download your heatmaps

To save image files of every click heatmap to your device, hover over the heatmap and click Save as image () on the options menu.