How to Enable and View the SlimStat Heatmap

SlimStat Free 6 includes SlimStat → Heatmaps, a list of pages with recorded clicks. Pro 3 opens visual click and scroll heatmaps inside WordPress, with device previews, visitor segments and CSV downloads. Additional heatmap recording is off on upgraded sites and on sites that add Pro after Free, until an administrator starts it. A new site set up with Pro already active, or settings reset while Pro is active, starts with All clicks and scroll depth on every page instead.

What Free and Pro show

Feature	Free 6	Pro 3
Pages with recorded clicks	Clicks, pageviews, clicks per pageview, device split and last click	Included
View heatmap	Expands the page’s five most-clicked links and buttons	Opens the visual page viewer
Click and scroll views	Top-click list only	Phone, tablet and desktop previews
New capture	Existing eligible link/button events	Optional sampled element clicks; full mode also records scroll depth and dead/rage-click signals
Investigate and share	Search, sort and dates on the page list	Goal/campaign/saved-filter segments, per-element CSV and Heatmap insights email

Existing link and button clicks can populate the list immediately. They keep their Events and Goals behavior. Historical clicks do not acquire scroll depth or newly captured element information retroactively.

Open a page’s heatmap

Open SlimStat → Heatmaps, or use Heatmap beside Online in the admin bar. On your site, the toolbar shortcut opens the current page.
Choose dates, search for a page and check what its recording column says is available.
With Pro active, select View heatmap to open the viewer in wp-admin.
Choose a phone, tablet or desktop preview, then inspect clicks or scroll depth where available.
Use the most-clicked elements and Show me insight links to locate something worth investigating.
To see clicks on the live page instead, open it while logged in and use the admin bar’s Heatmap menu. The overlay loads only for people who can view reports. It places each click on the element it hit even when your window differs from the visitor’s; clicks on blank space appear only for visits with your window size, and the viewer says how many clicks could not be placed.

Viewing requires SlimStat report access. Restricted authors see only their permitted content, including cached results. Administrator permission is required for capture configuration and deleting heatmap data. A viewer with report access does not automatically gain those settings permissions.

Opt in to additional recording

Keep Free 6 and Pro 3 active. Administrators can start from the recommendation on Heatmaps, or configure Settings → Pro Options:

Heatmap tracking → Off: stops additional capture. Eligible ordinary link/button events still work.
Main actions: captures interactions with interactive elements.
All clicks and scroll depth: adds non-interactive element clicks and scroll measurements, including signals used for dead/rage-click insights.
Tracking rate: chooses the sampled share of pageviews. Lower rates reduce storage, but also reduce the evidence available for smaller segments.
Pages to track: leave empty for all pages, or enter one address per line; * is a wildcard.

Save, clear cached pages and test an eligible visit through your site’s consent flow. The additional tables are created on first use. If table creation fails, resolve the displayed database error; ordinary link/button history remains available.

Capture follows tracking eligibility, consent and Do Not Track. It stores no text typed by visitors. Removing the Pro viewer also stops accepting capture batches from stale cached pages. This feature is not session replay.

Interpret the evidence

Counts come from recorded pageviews, and sampled heatmaps are not a census of every visitor. Compare the same page, dates, device, segment and capture level. A sparse result may reflect sampling, denied consent, exclusions or missing earlier instrumentation.

Dead-click and rage-click signals suggest places to inspect; they do not prove frustration or explain why someone left. Scroll depth shows recorded reach, not attention or comprehension. Every click keeps the screen size it was recorded at, so points land where people clicked on phones, tablets and desktops; the preview still uses your page’s current layout, so theme changes can affect how historical clicks appear. Previews start as soon as the page is ready and retry with a fresh frame; a page that redirects or whose images never finish loading says so.

Use the visitor filter to compare people who reached a goal, did not reach it, came from a campaign or match a saved filter. Small segments may have little usable data. Download CSV exports the displayed page/device/date/visitor scope, one row per element. Pro’s Heatmap insights email summarizes the ten most-clicked pages in its period; it is excluded from per-author mail.

Front-end overlay and data controls

The front-end Heatmap menu also offers the overlay and its filters. It places recorded clicks on their elements on the exact page you are viewing and filters by browser, operating system, country, language, channel or source. It loads without blocking the page and only for people allowed to view reports. Pages your theme cannot preview in wp-admin explain why, offer a retry and fall back to this overlay with your device, dates and filters kept.

Heatmap capture rows follow the site’s retention period and personal-data erasure. Administrators can select Delete heatmap data on the Heatmaps page; the confirmation explains that ordinary link/button history is kept. Disabling capture does not erase stored history. Uninstall removes the data only when SlimStat’s delete-data option is selected.

For an empty view, check dates, capture level, sample rate, page selection, report permissions and consent before expecting new results. Configure retention, test tracking or activate Pro.

How to Enable and View the Heatmap