Using Heatlens

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1. Campaign management
2. Targeting, quotas and permissions
3. Sampling and devices
4. Reports, filters and legend
5. Render width and limitations

This guide covers daily use and the settings reference. To get started, follow configuration and integration first.

Campaign management

Heatmaps → Manage heatmaps opens a searchable campaign table with status filters. Search matches names and descriptions. Click a campaign name to open its report; row actions respect your site permissions. All heatmaps returns to the table. The form groups campaign details, targeting and collapsible advanced settings. Each setting pairs a field on the left with native Matomo help on the right; on small screens the help follows its field. URL validation sits in the targeting help panel. Collapsed values are preserved; an invalid field opens its section automatically.

The native Heatmaps menu lists the ten latest campaigns for the accessible site, including paused/completed campaigns. Management retains all campaigns. Reload Matomo after creating, renaming or deleting campaigns to refresh menu entries.

Targeting, quotas and permissions

Target paths, URLs or query parameters. Exact /pricing differs from /pricing/. Query parameters can be evaluated in the browser; stored page URLs omit query and fragment. Configuration patterns themselves are stored: do not put secrets in them. Use the URL validator before saving. Combine up to ten rules using all/any and negation. Regex support is deliberately restricted. Optional country targeting, snapshot URL, capture delay, hidden selectors and repeat interval are available. A snapshot URL restricts the qualifying visitor capture; it does not launch a crawler.

The cap counts all recorded pages since campaign creation. Pausing/resuming does not reset it. Copying duplicates settings, not recordings. New snapshot revisions preserve earlier revisions. View access reads reports; write/admin access manages campaigns, including write access on the destination for cross-site copies.

Simple URL equality ignores http/https, www, query and fragment. Exact URL equality includes query and fragment after origin normalization. Query values also support starts/ends/regex. Case sensitivity is configurable for values, not parameter names; existing campaigns retain case-sensitive matching. Regex uses the shared safe PHP/JS subset: no groups, alternatives, backslashes or brace quantifiers, and at most one repetition. The form URL validator uses the same semantics. Query/fragment data stays in the browser; the server checks the public URL and browser match attestation.

Sampling and devices

The 1–100% sampling rate applies to each eligible page view. The cap accepts 1–10000 pages. Width breakpoints classify pages as mobile, tablet or desktop; they do not identify a hardware brand. Choose breakpoints for the site layout. Report render width does not reclassify previously recorded visits.

Reports, filters and legend

Select campaign, device, revision and metric. Matomo dates and segments filter recorded pages, while the quota counter stays cumulative. An empty report with a nonzero quota counter can be a filter mismatch: try the full collection, another device or an earlier revision. Changing filters does not delete recordings.

Blue to red indicates relative click/movement intensity. Scroll colors and labels show the share of pages reaching that depth. The dashed line is the mean initial viewport height, not a median or each visitor's position. New interactions carry an element identity: hover to see its count and share of filtered interactions. The top 20 clicked elements can be selected to highlight and locate their target. Legacy points without element identities remain visible without cell tooltips. Coverage shows how many clicks can be linked to this snapshot. JSON includes elements and relative coordinates; PNG exports the reconstructed snapshot with the selected overlay and fold line.

The report sidebar shows page views for the selected device and the distribution across all devices for the same dates, segment and snapshot revision. Scroll milestones apply to the selected device only. The average fold is labelled in pixels on the map and PNG export. The quota counter remains cumulative.

Clicks, Movements and Scroll switch the metric; Desktop, Tablet and Mobile filter visits. The compact toolbar shows the colour scale and dashed fold sample. “Help and zoom” opens the legend explanations, keyboard instructions and zoom.

Hover or tap the map to display the element, interaction count and share in a tooltip; scroll mode shows depth and the proportion of visits. With the keyboard, focus the map with Tab and use the arrow keys. Escape closes the tooltip.

Report dropdown widths follow their contents. Click/movement tooltips only appear on elements with a positive count for the selected metric. Old unanchored data remains drawn without cell tooltips. Scroll depths with no visits have no tooltip.

Render width and limitations

Snapshots are sanitized reconstructions, not exact screen recordings. Protected or unavailable images, embedded frames and media can become placeholders. Large captures have limits and warnings. PNG exports are bounded to 2000 px width, 32760 px height and 16 million pixels. Reports keep at most 20000 distinct cells per metric and flag truncation. Review complex pages before production use.

Render width accepts 240–3000 px and recomputes layout independently of zoom. Clear the field to restore the original width and rendering. Changing width does not change the device filter or selected visits. PNG uses the displayed layout with the usual size bounds; JSON retains original report data.

New points follow elements with relative coordinates. Legacy or unmatched points remain visible at original layout; they are omitted at a custom width with an explicit count. Old snapshots without responsive metadata remain readable; create a new revision for future captures without deleting previous data.

Accessible, permitted CSS rules, media queries, flex and grid are supported. No scripts or external stylesheets run in the report. Cross-origin unreadable stylesheets, CSS variables, complex functional selectors, layers/containers and content absent or hidden during capture limit fidelity. Ignored rules produce a warning. Validate actual pages, especially viewport-height units and external fonts. Element keys are structural paths without original attributes or user text. DOM restructuring can remove a target or change its meaning: use a new revision after a page redesign. Labels use only already sanitized snapshot text.

Manual capture and rendering styles are covered in the integration guide. After replacing the plugin, follow the update procedure, including tracker regeneration.