The Clickmaps tab gives you powerful insights into user behavior by showcasing exactly where participants clicked while navigating your prototype. This tool helps you uncover patterns in user interaction and better understand how your interface is being used.
With Optimal, exploring clickmaps is simple. Start by selecting the task you want to analyze from the dropdown menu. From there, choose your preferred view—whether it’s a heatmap for a visual overview or a detailed selection view for deeper analysis.
A heatmap is a visual representation of where your participants clicked on a particular screen when navigating to or from that page of your prototype.
The clicks on the heatmap your participants made are recorded as either a ‘hit’ or a ‘miss’.
A hit is a click that landed on a clickable area and led the participant to a different page. A miss is a click on a non-clickable area, a high amount of missed clicks would suggest that your participants aren’t navigating the prototype in a way that you expected or prepared for.
You can also see the time spent on each page, if a page has a high average time, then participants may be finding it confusing and are unsure where they should click from there. Bear in mind that time spent on the page could also be affected by the page loading times. Similarly, if the page set as the destination has a high time spent on a page, then it might be that your participants are having trouble identifying the page as the destination they are looking for.
A large spread of clicks might mean that your participants were confused about where to click to successfully complete the task. Areas with a high concentration of clicks might indicate a level of consensus among your participants that clicking in that area would lead them on the correct path.
To change the page you are viewing on the heatmap, scroll down and click on the page you would like to view. If you set a correct pathway, the pages on that pathway are marked. You can sort these pages by most page visits, most misclicks, or most time spent.
In your clickmaps tab in the heatmap dropdown, you also have the option of ‘selection’ view mode. If you want to get even more granular with your clickmap analysis, the selection mode will show you each individual click made on that page. While in selection mode, use your cursor to draw areas over the clicks on the page to view the percentage of total clicks that are in that area and the exact count.
You can also filter the clicks on your heatmap by using the ‘All page visits’ drop down box by the first, second, and third-page visits. Some participants may end up clicking on a page multiple times if they go the ‘wrong’ way and have to backtrack.
