Hourly Heat Map

An hourly heat map reveals when your audience is most likely to click — turning timing from guesswork into data.

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Definition

An hourly heat map in link analytics is a grid visualisation showing the distribution of link clicks across hours of the day and days of the week. Each cell in the grid represents a specific hour on a specific day; colour intensity represents click volume — higher volume = more intense colour. The pattern reveals when clicks are concentrated, identifying the audience's peak engagement windows.

How to Read an Hourly Heat Map

The typical heat map layout:

• Rows: days of the week (Monday through Sunday)
• Columns: hours of the day (0:00 through 23:00)
• Cell colour: intensity indicates relative click volume for that hour on that day — lightest cells = fewest clicks, darkest cells = most clicks

Reading the heat map: look for clusters of high-intensity cells. These represent the hours and days when this specific link's audience most actively engaged. A B2C consumer audience might show high intensity Tuesday–Thursday at 19:00–21:00 (evening browsing). A B2B professional audience might show high intensity Tuesday–Thursday at 09:00–11:00 (morning work hours). A news or media audience might concentrate around morning commute hours and lunchtime.

Using the Heat Map for Send Time Optimisation

The heat map translates directly into send time decisions for future campaigns:

1. Review heat map data from previous campaigns distributed to a similar audience
2. Identify the 2–3 peak engagement windows (day + hour combinations with highest click concentration)
3. Schedule future email sends and SMS campaigns to arrive 30–60 minutes before the peak window — so recipients receive the message just before their peak engagement period begins
4. Schedule social media publications at the beginning of peak windows, as social content is consumed in real time
5. Compare heat maps between campaigns to identify whether peak windows are consistent across this audience or variable based on content type or offer

Heat Map Patterns by Audience Type

These are general patterns. The hourly heat map from your own link analytics with your own audience is always more reliable than generic benchmarks. Audiences vary by geography, demographics, content type and relationship to the brand.

Availability

Hourly heat map is available in Cuttly from the Single plan and above. It provides link-level timing granularity that is not available from most email or social platform analytics, which typically report daily totals rather than hourly distributions.

Related Terms

• Link Analytics
• Click Tracking
• Aggregated Analytics
• Time to Click