What Are Website Heat Maps?

Website heatmaps allow a web designer to visually communicate the intent of his or her website content to its visitors. In the past, webmasters had to rely on tables and graphs that provided relative data on the internal state of their site, such as how many pages were active, the browser type that it was using, and so forth. The use of these tools provided an easy way for webmasters to track the progress of their websites in relation to their goals, but this visual tool was limited because it only provided a relatively abstract view of the site's performance. Website heatmaps replace these tables and graphs with more detailed representations that can provide a webmaster with the means to more accurately depict the status of his or her site to its visitors.  Click here to learn more about website heatmap.

A website heatmap is essentially a map of a website's performance based on different criteria. These criteria can include such things as the total number of unique visits, most page views over a period of time, and the highest wage rate. These things are usually related to the average number of people who have visited a site, but they can also measure performance based on different criteria, such as the average time a visitor spends on the site. The presence of an interactive heatmap enables a web designer to show the visitor exactly which pages are causing the greatest amount of action.
It should be noted that although many people consider website heatmaps to be a waste of time and an unnecessary headache, they are actually an extremely useful marketing tool. By providing a web designer with a visual way to better understand the performance of his or her website, heat maps can help drive traffic to a site. Although they do not offer any sort of technical guidance on how to optimize a website, they do allow a web designer to see which pages on the site are attracting the most interest from visitors. This allows the designer to make the necessary adjustments on his or her site to improve user experience. 

Webmasters who wish to take advantage of heatmaps in their effort to improve traffic to their websites typically use them to find broken links, which is a common problem on the Internet. Other uses for heatmaps are when a webmaster wants to provide a more customized browsing experience to his or her site visitors, by customizing what the browser shows when a visitor arrives at a page on the website. For instance, a webmaster might use heatmaps to show the search engine results page when a visitor types in a term, instead of the standard, box-based search results page. View here for more info about the benefits of heatmaps. 

Websites that feature a form of graphic content, such as charts or graphs, are particularly well suited to the use of heatmaps. Many of these types of graphics, such as graphs and charts, are difficult to read unless the website visitor has mastered a specific set of reading strategies, such as a basic guide to web navigation. In addition, if the website visitor has difficulty seeing the information presented on a chart, he or she may simply click away from the page, rather than looking at it. If the visitor does not return to the site, the business will not be able to capitalize on the increased sales brought about by the new visitors that clicked on the charts or graphs.
Website heatmaps can help a webmaster customize the way he or she presents the information on their websites. A user can choose to see only the most important charts and graphs, or allow all of the information on a webpage to be displayed. A heatmap, if used correctly, can draw a user's attention to certain areas of a website that they had not previously noticed. However, it must be remembered that the purpose of a heatmap is to increase traffic to a website, and not necessarily to bring in new customers. If the goal of a website owner is to sell more products, then the heatmap should only be used to highlight items that are selling well, without an overall focus on sales.
You can get more enlightened on this topic by reading here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_visualization.