Heatmaps explained: rage clicks, dead clicks, and scroll depth

A heatmap turns thousands of anonymous interactions into a single picture of how people actually use a page. Instead of guessing what visitors notice or ignore, you see it. Here's what the different heatmaps show and how to read the signals that matter most.

The three main types of heatmap

• Click maps — where people click (and tap). Bright spots are what draws attention; cold zones are ignored.
• Scroll maps — how far down the page people get. They reveal where most visitors stop reading — often above content you assumed everyone saw.
• Move maps — where cursors travel, a rough proxy for where attention goes on desktop.

Rage clicks: frustration you can measure

A rage click is a burst of rapid clicks on the same spot — the digital equivalent of jabbing a button that isn't working. It almost always marks something that looks clickable but isn't, or an action that's too slow or broken. Rage clicks are one of the fastest ways to find friction that's actively costing you conversions.

Dead clicks: the invisible dead ends

A dead click is a click that produces no result — on an image people expect to expand, a 'button' that's just text, or a broken link. Individually harmless; in aggregate, a clear sign your interface is setting expectations it doesn't meet.

How to actually use heatmaps

• Start with your highest-traffic and highest-value pages (home, pricing, key landing pages).
• Use scroll maps to check that your main call-to-action sits where people actually reach.
• Hunt rage and dead clicks first — they're the clearest, cheapest wins.
• Pair heatmaps with session replay to watch the specific sessions behind a hotspot.

A note on privacy

Heatmaps should be aggregate and anonymous — no personal data required to see where people click. VisitVerity's heatmaps are cookieless, and its replay masks inputs in the browser before capture, so you get the insight without the risk. Try it free.