10 Best Heatmap Software Shortlist
It's painful when you see users bouncing from your website and graphic elements aren't doing what you want them to, while you sit and wonder why it's happening. What do you change? How do you know what is a problem? Why is the user not clicking? Thankfully, you can find answers to your questions using heatmap software.
What Is Heatmap Software?
Heatmap software is a tool that uses a color-coding system to display data visually. This data represents a customer journey with your product throughout user sessions. You can use heatmaps to analyze user behavior on specific apps, web pages or landing pages in various forms of analytics.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Heatmap Software
You can use the simple overviews below to understand how each tool stands out from other heatmap software.
Mouseflow
Best for website owners seeking to understand user behavior and optimize their website's user experience
Mouseflow is a web analytics tool that caters to website owners seeking to understand user behavior and optimize their website's user experience through its ability to provide heatmaps, session replay, and funnel analysis tools all in one platform.
Why I picked Mouseflow: One of Mouseflow's standout features is its ability to provide session replay with keystroke logging, allowing businesses to see how users interact with their site down to the smallest detail. Additionally, Mouseflow's heatmaps and funnel analysis tools provide valuable insights into user behavior, allowing businesses to identify areas for improvement and optimize their website's user experience.
Mouseflow is best suited for website owners, ecommerce businesses, and digital marketers seeking to improve user experience and increase conversions. Its standout features include session replay with keystroke logging, heatmaps, funnel analysis, and form analytics.
Mouseflow’s Standout Features and Integrations
Features include session replay, six types of heatmaps, conversion funnels, form analytics, user feedback, and friction scores.
Integrations include Kameleeon, Adobe Analytics, Intercom, Optimizely, HubSpot, Tealium, Google Optimize, Segment, Google tag manager, and Google analytics.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Scroll heatmaps
Cons
- Too expensive for small teams
FullStory
Best for optimizing user experience through session replay
FullStory is a digital experience analytics platform that empowers businesses to understand and optimize their user's experience through session replay, best serving ecommerce, SaaS, and content websites.
Why I picked FullStory: FullStory offers advanced search capabilities that allow users to easily find specific sessions based on various criteria, such as page URL, browser type, and user actions. Furthermore, its analytics and reporting features offer valuable insights into user behavior, empowering businesses to make data-driven decisions that optimize the user experience.
FullStory is ideal for businesses and organizations that want to optimize the user experience on their websites or apps. It is particularly useful for user experience designers, product managers, and customer support teams. With FullStory, users can quickly identify pain points and opportunities for improvement to enhance the user experience and boost customer satisfaction.
FullStory Standout Features and Integrations
Features include session replay, conversion funnels, advanced search capabilities, customer management, analytics and insights, and searchable session data.
Integrations include management apps like Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Optimizely, Google Analytics, Segment, Amplitude, FullStory API for custom integrations, Zendesk, Trello, and more via Zapier.
Pros
- Advanced session search
- Robust analytics
- Personalization features
- Easy integration
Cons
- Expensive
- Limited mobile support
Hotjar
Best for understanding user behavior with heatmaps and recordings
Hotjar is a user behavior analytics and feedback tool that helps marketing teams, product teams, product managers, UX designers, and researchers understand user behavior through heatmaps and recordings.
Why I picked Hotjar: Hotjar has an all-in-one approach to user feedback and behavior analytics. In addition to heatmaps and session recordings, Hotjar also offers surveys and feedback polls, giving businesses a complete picture of their users' behavior and preferences. This unique combination allows teams to make data-driven decisions and create customer-centric products and designs.
Hotjar works well for website owners and designers who want to gain insights into how their website is being used and how to improve its user experience. Its standout features include its easy-to-use interface, heatmapping capabilities, and ability to collect user feedback through polls and surveys.
Hotjar Standout Features and Integrations
Features include heatmaps, recording, conversion funnel analysis, filtered insights, and segmentation of visitor data.
Integrations include Slack, Google Analytics, Microsoft teams, Optimizely, Segment, HubSpot, Google Optimize, and Omniconvert.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Insightful visualization
- Customizable filters
- Multiple heatmap types
Cons
- Limited data points
- No real-time tracking
- No click attribution
Looker
Best for data analytics, business intelligence, and data visualization
Google Looker is a cloud-based data analytics and business intelligence platform designed for organizations seeking centralized and intuitive data insights.
Why I picked Google Looker: Looker's unique semantic layer sets it apart from other tools by allowing non-technical users to easily explore and understand complex data sets and derive insights to inform strategic decision-making. Additionally, Looker's collaboration features make it easy for teams to share real-time data and insights.
The main use case for Looker is for businesses of all sizes seeking a scalable and powerful data analytics and BI platform. With its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and collaboration features, Looker works well for organizations that want to centralize their data. Some of the standout features of Looker include its semantic layer, which makes it easy to explore and understand complex data sets, as well as its powerful visualization capabilities and collaboration features.
Google Looker Standout Features and Integrations
Features include LookML, embedded analytics, Looker blocks and actions, Looker extension framework, Looker alerts, Looker security and Persistent Derived Tables (PDTs), and incremental PDTs.
Integrations include Looker studio, Google Cloud, Google Ads customer match, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft SQL Server, Snowflake, Oracle, Salesforce, Marketo, and Zendesk.
Pros
- Intuitive interface
- Powerful visualization capabilities
- Collaboration features
Cons
- Not ideal for small teams
- Expensive to scale up
LiveSession
Best for insightful user behavior analysis for websites
LiveSession is an effective user behavior analysis tool that caters to website owners and marketers seeking to gain actionable insights by replaying sessions, creating heatmaps, and building conversion funnels.
Why I picked LiveSession: One cool feature of LiveSession is its ability to automatically detect and mask sensitive user data, such as credit card numbers and passwords, to ensure user privacy and security. Additionally, LiveSession's custom events and tagging capabilities allow users to easily track specific actions and behaviors on their website.
LiveSession is a tool designed for website owners, marketers, and customer experience professionals who want to understand how website visitors interact with their websites. It works well because it provides a range of visualizations that allow users to track visitor behavior and identify areas for improvement.
Standout features of LiveSession include its ability to track user behavior across multiple devices, its integration with popular marketing tools, and its AI-powered error detection, which alerts users to potential problems on their website.
LiveSession Standout Features and Integrations
Features include heatmaps, session replays, conversion funnels, event tracking and tagging, and automatic data masking.
Integrations include Google Analytics, Intercom, HubSpot, Segment, Zapier, Amplitude, FullStory, Salesforce, Mixpanel, and Pipedrive.
Pros
- Automatic data masking
- Custom events and tags
- Integrations with popular tools
Cons
- Limited features on free plan
- Expensive for large teams
- No mobile app available
Lucky Orange
Best for website analytics and optimization with real-time data
Lucky Orange is a web analytics vendor that caters to website owners and marketers looking to understand user behavior on their sites through its ability to provide session recordings and dynamic heatmaps for user interactions.
Why I picked Lucky Orange: One of the coolest features of Lucky Orange is its dynamic heatmaps, which provide insights into how users interact with a website in real-time. The tool also offers session recordings that enable website owners to see exactly how users navigate their site and identify areas for improvement, all while ensuring user privacy.
Lucky Orange is best suited for website owners, marketers, and ecommerce businesses looking to optimize their website's user experience. Its standout features include real-time analytics, funnel tracking, and conversion tracking. Additionally, Lucky Orange's easy-to-use interface and intuitive dashboard make it accessible to users of all levels of technical expertise.
Lucky Orange Standout Features and Integrations
Features include session recordings, surveys, dashboard insights, form analytics, dynamic heatmaps, live chats, conversion funnels, visitor profiles, and announcements.
Integrations include BigCommerce, Google Analytics, Google optimize, HubSpot, Square, Shopify, WordPress, Adobe DTM, and Zapier.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Impressive visualizations
Cons
- Data is not archived
MapBusinessOnline
Best for business mapping and location analysis for sales, marketing, and operations
MapBusinessOnline is a cloud-based mapping software that is ideal for businesses looking to perform location analysis and market planning.
Why I picked MapBusinessOnline: I picked MapBusinessOnline because of its user-friendly interface and robust set of features, including its ability to perform sales territory mapping and customer analysis.
This tool is best suited for businesses that require location-based analysis and planning, such as sales, marketing, and operations teams. MapBusinessOnline's standout features include its ability to create optimized routes, generate heatmaps, and visualize data layers.
MapBusinessOnline Standout Features and Integrations
Features include sales territory mapping, MapPoint replacement, business maps visualizations, and business listings.
Integrations include Microsoft Excel and Salesforce.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Robust features
- Useful data visualizations
Cons
- Limited integrations
Matomo
Best for website owners looking for an open-source, privacy-focused analytics platform
Matomo is an open-source analytics platform that offers a secure and customizable solution for website owners prioritizing privacy and data ownership, with a user-friendly interface and powerful data visualization tools.
Why I picked Matomo: Matomo stands out for its commitment to data privacy and ownership, with the ability to store all data on your own servers or in the cloud, as well as providing an option for completely anonymizing visitor IP addresses. Additionally, its customizable reporting and dashboard features enable users to tailor analytics data to their specific needs and requirements.
Matomo is designed for website owners and businesses of all sizes who want to track and analyze their website's performance and user behavior in a secure and private environment.
It works well because it is an open-source platform that allows users full control over their data and offers advanced security and privacy features.
Matomo Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a real-time visitor world map, Google analytics importer, enhanced insights, and an open-source platform.
Integrations include WordPress, PhotoDeck, Drupal, Magento, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, Symfony, Laravel, Mailchimp, and Campaign Monitor.
Pros
- Open-source
- Customizable
- Privacy-focused
Cons
- Self-hosting
- Steep learning curve
Contentsquare
Best for analyzing and optimizing digital customer experiences for businesses
ContentSquare is a digital experience analytics platform that caters to ecommerce, travel, and financial services industries by providing user behavior insights to optimize customer engagement and revenue generation.
Why I picked ContentSquare: I picked ContentSquare because it stands out in the digital experience analytics space for its AI-powered automatic insights, which can help businesses quickly identify and understand user behavior patterns. These insights are particularly useful for ecommerce, travel, and financial services industries, which rely heavily on digital channels to engage with customers.
One of the standout features of ContentSquare is its ability to provide a visual representation of user engagement through heatmaps and session replays, allowing businesses to gain a deeper understanding of how users interact with their digital platforms. Additionally, the platform allows for tracking user journeys across multiple devices and channels.
ContentSquare Standout Features and Integrations
Features include automatic insights, journey analysis, heatmaps, session replays, conversion analysis, and A/B testing.
Integrations include Google Tag Manager, Adobe Launch, Tealium, Dynamic Yield, Monetate, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Google ads, and Facebook ads.
Pros
- Automatic insights
- Multi-channel tracking
- User-friendly interface
- Comprehensive features
Cons
- Pricing not visible
Freshmarketer
Best for small and medium-sized businesses looking to track marketing performance
Freshmarketer is a powerful all-in-one marketing automation platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses, allowing them to easily track and optimize their marketing campaigns.
Why I picked Freshmarkerter: Freshmarketer's visual funnel builder allows users to visually map out their customer journey and optimize conversions at each stage. Its powerful A/B testing capabilities enable users to test multiple variations of their campaigns and easily identify the most effective messaging. And its AI-powered email personalization helps users create hyper-targeted campaigns that resonate with their audience.
Its standout features include a visual journey builder for creating personalized customer experiences. It works well for businesses that want to improve their lead generation, conversion rates, and customer engagement.
Freshmarketer Standout Features and Integrations
Features include personalized experiences and communications through email, WhatsApp, Apple messages for business, and Facebook messenger.
Integrations include API access, Marketplace, Shopify, and Segment. You can add more apps through Zapier.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Customizable
- Multi-channel support
- Automated workflows
Cons
- Expensive for larger teams
- No social media integration
- Limited mobile app features
The Best Heatmap Software Comparison Chart
Here is a table that includes all the tools we just covered in the overviews, so that you can compare them.
Tool | Trial Info | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Mouseflow Best for website owners seeking to understand user behavior and optimize their website's user experience | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $39/month | Website |
2 | FullStory Best for optimizing user experience through session replay | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $199/month | Website |
3 | Hotjar Best for understanding user behavior with heatmaps and recordings | 15-day free trial + free plan available | From $59/month | Website |
4 | Looker Best for data analytics, business intelligence, and data visualization | $300 in free credits | Pricing upon request | Website |
5 | LiveSession Best for insightful user behavior analysis for websites | 14-day free trial available | Plans start at $65/month | Website |
6 | Lucky Orange Best for website analytics and optimization with real-time data | 7-day free trial + free plan available | From $18/month | Website |
7 | MapBusinessOnline Best for business mapping and location analysis for sales, marketing, and operations | 30-day free trial available | Plans start at $500/year | Website |
8 | Matomo Best for website owners looking for an open-source, privacy-focused analytics platform | 21-day free trial available | Plans start at $21/month | Website |
9 | Contentsquare Best for analyzing and optimizing digital customer experiences for businesses | Free demo available | Customized price upon request | Website |
10 | Freshmarketer Best for small and medium-sized businesses looking to track marketing performance | 21-day free trial available | Plans start at $19/user/month | Website |
Other Heatmap Software Options
Here are a few more website heatmap tools and other options that didn’t make the top, but are worth considering if you are expanding your tool search.
- Maply
Best for interactive and engaging heatmap creation for businesses and events
- Smartlook
Best for website and app owners seeking real-time user behavior analytics
- Crazy Egg
Best for website owners seeking to improve user experience and conversion rates through visual data analysis
- Tableau
Best for analysts, data scientists, and business users seeking interactive data visualization
- NotifyVisitors
Best for creating and managing website notifications to engage with website visitors
- Browsee
Best for session replay and heatmaps to optimize website or application design
- JMP
Best for statistical analysis and data visualization for scientific research and business analytics
- Mapbox
Best for creating custom maps and location-based applications for web and mobile
- eSpatial
Best for creating and sharing interactive maps and visualizing data
How I Picked The Best Heatmap Software
To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of best heatmap tools with positive user ratings and reviews.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of product management experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best heatmap software for this article.
Usability
Ease of use was a top priority in selecting the best heatmap software tools. I considered the user interface, the onboarding process, and the overall experience of using the tool.
Standout Features
I looked for heatmap software with standout features such as scroll mapping, and A/B testing capabilities. I also considered tools with advanced filtering and segmentation options and the following key features:
- Click and scroll tracking: Functionality that tracks user engagement with a website or application.
- Data visualization: Presentation of data in a user-friendly and visually appealing format.
- Real-time tracking: Provides up-to-date and real-time insights on user behavior.
- Heatmap segmentation: Allows for the breakdown of data by segments or groups.
Software Integrations
Integration with other tools and platforms was important, so I evaluated heatmap software that could easily integrate with popular website builders, CMS platforms, and analytics tools.
Pricing
Pricing was a key factor, so I considered heatmap software with transparent and flexible pricing models. I evaluated tools with a range of pricing options, from free plans to enterprise-level solutions.
Heatmap Software FAQs
Find answers to common questions other people ask about this topic.
What is a heatmap?
What type of data is best visualized with a heatmap?
What are the benefits of using heatmaps?
What are the different types of heatmaps?
What other product manager software should I use?
What’s Next?
Using the right heatmap software is crucial for any product manager looking to optimize their workflow and improve their team's productivity. And while we are on the topic, I would invite you to read about product usage analytics to find out how important quantitative and qualitative data is to user journey analysis.
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