Why SWOOP for SharePoint Doesn’t Include Heatmaps (Yet)

Heatmaps are a feature we’re often asked about, especially by customers looking to better understand user interaction with their intranet pages. While we recognise their value—particularly in redesigning homepage navigation or evaluating link placement—we’ve made a deliberate decision not to include traditional heatmaps in SWOOP for SharePoint at this time.

Background and Rationale

There are already third-party tools available that generate heatmaps, and we’ve considered what unique value SWOOP could add beyond those. Heatmaps typically show which links are clicked on a page, but that’s only part of the story. We’re more interested in helping users understand broader engagement patterns—like whether people reach the bottom of a page, which sections are visible for longer periods, and how users navigate from one page to another.

One of the main reasons we haven’t built a heatmap report is security and privacy. Traditional heatmap tools require storing an image of the page to overlay click data. We’ve opted not to store page images, as they contain sensitive content. Instead, our preferred approach is to use a browser plugin that can sit on top of your own content and show link clicks directly on the live page. This method avoids storing any page content and keeps everything within your environment.

Current and Future Alternatives

We already offer several features that provide similar insights:

• Experience Reports: These include data on headings, paragraph structures, and general content layout.
• Visited Links Reports: These show which external links are clicked most often.
• Accessibility Reports: These highlight issues like unclear or repeated link text, which can affect usability and navigation.

Looking ahead, we’re actively working on a User Journey Report. This will allow you to select a page, such has your homepage, and see where users go next after visiting it for the first time. It will layer down the pathways users take and help you understand whether your navigation is working as intended. We would consider it matters less which link they use to get somewhere compared to how they got there and if that was where they need to go.

Heatmaps via Plugin: A Future Possibility

Once the browser plugin is fully developed, we plan to explore adding heatmap-like functionality to it. This would allow users to see link click data superimposed on their own pages without compromising content security. It’s not something we’re actively building right now, but it’s on our radar as part of a broader effort to improve user journey insights.