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Hotjar

Hotjar

Overview

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar is a conversion rate optimization tool for digital marketers. Features include heatmapping, visual session recording, conversion funnel analytics, form analytics, feedback polls and surveys, and usability testing. The tool is used by digital analysts, UX designers, web developers and product…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Hotjar has proven to be extremely valuable in a variety of use cases. Users have found success in utilizing Hotjar to solicit feedback …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Hotjar Observe - Plus

$39

Cloud
per month 100 daily sessions

Hotjar Ask - Plus

$59

Cloud
per month 250 monthly responses

Hotjar Ask - Business

$79

Cloud
per month Starting from 500 monthly responses

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.hotjar.com/compare-our-plans

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

Hotjar Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Hotjar is a conversion rate optimization tool for digital marketers. Features include heatmapping, visual session recording, conversion funnel analytics, form analytics, feedback polls and surveys, and usability testing. The tool is used by digital analysts, UX designers, web developers and product marketers. Hotjar was acquired by Contentsquare September 2021, and is now a Contentsquare brand.

Mixpanel, Crazy Egg, and Lucky Orange are common alternatives for Hotjar.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.7.

The most common users of Hotjar are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(334)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Hotjar has proven to be extremely valuable in a variety of use cases. Users have found success in utilizing Hotjar to solicit feedback from clients through polls and surveys, allowing them to gain a comprehensive understanding of how design changes affect content consumption. Additionally, marketing services teams have relied on Hotjar's analytics and user behavior insights to review site performance for clients and provide high-level audits during the sales process. The continual user feedback collected by Hotjar has brought immense value to product design and engineering teams, empowering them to make data-driven decisions that improve the overall user experience. Similarly, agencies have leveraged Hotjar's heatmaps and session recordings to track and analyze user behavior on client websites, uncovering valuable insights for optimization initiatives. Growth specialists have also found great value in using Hotjar to analyze user behavior during critical engagements like browsing, lead generation, and checkout. This provides them with invaluable insights into landing page effectiveness and helps identify any technical glitches that may be impacting conversion rates. Furthermore, digital analytics and optimization departments have utilized Hotjar to glean insights for optimization or debugging purposes, enabling them to understand how people react to design or functionality changes in order to drive improvements. Marketing teams have found detailed reports generated by Hotjar particularly useful in identifying user struggles and interactions with different elements on their websites. CRO teams have also benefited from using Hotjar as a way to educate clients about areas of opportunity on their websites. Overall, Hotjar has become an essential tool for tracking visitor behavior, understanding user patterns, identifying areas of improvement, and optimizing website usability and user journeys. Whether it's through heatmaps, scroll maps, video playback, session recordings, or surveys, Hotjar provides users with the data they need to make informed decisions based on real user opinions and behaviors.

Valuable customer insights: Users have found Hotjar to be a valuable tool for gaining quick customer insights. Multiple reviewers mentioned that it provides important data for improving their own software, and some users felt that the product offers a practical way to reveal the online behavior and voice of users.

Effective heat mapping: Hotjar's heat mapping feature was praised by multiple reviewers for its accuracy in representing website traffic and providing accessible data. Some users particularly highlighted its ability to quantify the success of page copy rewrites and identify areas where visitors engage with the content. The visual representations provided by Hotjar's heatmaps were also seen as helpful in understanding user interactions and optimizing website layout.

Useful session recordings: Reviewers have found Hotjar's user session recording feature to be highly useful. Some users described it as a real-life view of users navigating through the website funnel, allowing them to retrace the user journey and identify potential stumbling blocks. The recording features provided by Hotjar were also mentioned as valuable in understanding user behavior, addressing usability issues, and enhancing the overall user experience.

Confusing and Clunky User Interface: Multiple users have expressed frustration with the user interface of Hotjar, describing it as confusing and clunky. They have mentioned that it requires too many clicks to navigate, making it time-consuming and inconvenient to use.

Difficulties in Troubleshooting and Lack of Customer Support: Some users have mentioned difficulties in troubleshooting issues with Hotjar, citing the lack of a direct line for customer support. This absence of immediate assistance can be frustrating for users who encounter problems.

Limited Plan Tiers and Restrictions: Users have found the limited plan tiers of Hotjar to be restrictive, particularly in terms of the number of recordings available. This limitation hinders users who need to gather sufficient data for analysis.

Users of Hotjar have made several recommendations based on their experiences with the product. The three most common recommendations are:

  1. Start with the free version: Many users recommend starting with the free version of Hotjar to track visitor activity on website pages. This allows businesses, especially small businesses or new startups, to gather valuable data on user actions and understand customer behavior and interaction on their website.

  2. Use it as part of a larger data strategy: Hotjar is often recommended as a tool that provides great insights and should be used in conjunction with other software tracking tools for result comparison. Users suggest integrating Hotjar into a larger data strategy and utilizing its features to track user actions and improve marketing plans.

  3. Try before you buy: Several users suggest using the trial version of Hotjar to understand its value and determine if it meets their business and marketing needs. They advise spending more time in Hotjar to improve understanding of users and overall marketing strategy before considering the paid plans.

Overall, users find Hotjar to be an easy-to-use and fully functional tool for understanding website visitors and their behavior. While some caution is advised in drawing unbiased conclusions from the data if there aren't many visits, Hotjar is considered a valuable tool for gathering website analytics and customer feedback.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 39)
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October 12, 2022

Hotjar Review

Rachel Harrison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is being used by the CRO team. We then use it on our client's websites to educate and inform them of any areas of opportunity. Other teams such as Client Services use Hotjar, however they browse rather than set anything up via the tool.

Hotjar helps to view any problems with the site, any areas that could be improved, or any issues that users are having with particular pages/fields.
  • There's a lot of filtering capabilities within session recordings, which allows you to be able to find videos/users who meet your needs.
  • It is an easy product to be able to use in terms of navigation/UI.
  • The support team always seems to be on hand to provide any assistance and support.
  • There should be capabilities to do numerous session recordings on different areas of the site at once.
  • Other tools I have used in the past (Decibel Insight) had the ability to automatically set up heatmaps on all of the pages - which would be good if it could be done on Hotjar.
I'd recommend Hotjar if a colleague needed to get further information and insight as to what is happening on a website and wants to have an idea of ways that they would be able to improve this.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is used with the purpose of collecting continual user feedback, which is important for any product to listen to the user's voice, especially to pain points. This capture of user sentiment over time, in recurring surveys or video recordings, is crucial for teammates who work in product, design, or engineering to make decisions on how to innovate their product for a better user experience.
  • Remove assumptions by providing in the moment, contextual insights.
  • Tracks user sentiment over time.
  • Ability to quickly and easily launch an intercept survey.
  • Link up hotjar recordings to a particular a/b experiment or event trigger for specific feedback.
  • Difficult to troubleshoot Hotjar issues since there is no line to call.
  • Limited plan tiers restrict the number of recordings available.
  • Multiple workspaces can be created for one website which can be redundant.
Hotjar is good for a first pass at understanding user sentiment or locating potential usability issues. There are features such as "rage clicked" which shows recordings or instances when a user rage clicked or had an issue with your site. Hotjar has also been helpful to launch intercept surveys on mobile, desktop, and app, which not all competitor software allow. Hotjar recordings are fun to watch. "Watching Hotjar like Netflix" is a favorite pastime at work.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to understand how users behave within a wireframe/mockup. The service provides a Heatmap: it allows to see what captures users' attention. It allows observing movements, u-turns, and rage clicks. But most importantly it gives us back Feedback so that we can hear what users actually think about each of our pages.
  • Provide heatmaps
  • Provide recordings of the sessions
  • Provide feedback from users
  • More user friendly heatmaps
  • Longer lasting heatmaps
  • Incomplete tracking
Combining polls and heatmaps with a/b testing tools allows me to pick apart exactly why a specific optimization on a page is working and understand any consequences of a user experiencing a new change compared to a user who did not. We run many different campaigns and often like to experiment with A/B tests to ensure that we are doing everything we can to optimize our conversions. By using Hotjar, we are able to get insights that we simply cannot get elsewhere
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is used for almost all of our clients, including ourselves. The tool allows us to make recommendations for our client's website to optimize them for areas of improvement or opportunity. By collecting data so quickly, we are able to make informed decisions that allow our customer to optimize their website.
  • Navigation and UI easy to use
  • Realtime feedback
  • Recorded sessions
  • The heatmap accuracy
Hotjar allows users to test specific areas on your website by clicking different parts of the page and analyzing where the user is drawn to on the page. We have very few negative things to say about Hotjar, the tool is user-friendly and easy to navigate and it complements other tools such as Google Analytics.
Mohamed Saied | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Hotjar as it gives us a lot of insights about user behavior on specific pages of our website via its awesome heatmaps. It's a super handy tool for optimizing your content page and landing pages. I always use it along with other a/b testing tools for CRO tasks.
  • Generating heatmaps to track users' behavior on your online platform.
  • The ability to share screen recordings.
  • Improve the UI and UX of our platform.
  • Glitchy screenshots that occurs frequently.
  • The inability to view the user's screen recording instantly. You need to wait for a 30-day window.
I use Hotjar in almost all our a/b experiments. It provides unparalleled insights about your user like where they like to click on your specific page if they like your CTAs or not, and what parts of your page they like more. What I like most about Hotjar is its easy setup process that takes only 5 minutes and the plethora of apps that it can integrate with. The performance needs to be more user-friendly and they adjust their pricing scheme as now there're many apps that provide almost the same functionality for free like the heatmaps options in the Bing webmasters tool. However, Hotjar is still the best overall in this area up to now.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We (the product design team) use Hotjar to collect a mixture of qual and quant data quickly through our site. Hotjar has a wide range of tools within its suite that we make use of on a daily basis. Hotjar allows us to collect data incredibly quickly without needing to recruit users and design a lengthy research plan.
  • User recordings
  • Surveys
  • Heatmaps
  • Incoming feedback
  • Billing
  • Incoming feature
  • Survey question types
Hotjar is great for collecting qual and quant feedback quickly without needing to setup specific tracking or writing a test plan and recruiting users. The mixture of tools within the Hotjar suite work well together by allowing you to view recordings of users that have left feedback via surveys which is an awesome touch.
Akhil Gupta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is used as a product experience insights platform in Small Market business market.It enables to deliver outstanding digital experience for its custoers. After its acquisition by ContentSquare, they have enabled newer features which make it even more pleasurable to use like understanding people's behavior online, interaction with the product, and obstances which they are dealing with.
  • provide product insights
  • showcase people behavior online
  • help identify customer obstacels
  • better user experience
  • provide public API for people to make it easier to integrate
Hotjar is well suited when you have a scheduled rollout planned for your product and want to test new features. You can integrate with features and get great insights on how the people are integrating with the product. It helps you to identify behavior anamoly and also determine where people are getting stuck.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Hotjar for analyzing both landing pages we need to test for different campaigns, and also for the rest of the website for ongoing measurements. Also, we use the recordings tool to analyze individual behaviors to see if there are any particular roadblocks. And when we need to conduct a quantitative survey we also use the survey tool.
  • Very easy heat maps setup
  • Great for running quantitative surveys
  • Combined with individual recording of website visits
  • Pricing model is a bit of a hassle
  • Would like to see more integrations to have a really complex look at the data
  • There used to be more free features as for some small projects you did not need the paid plan in the past...
I love the easy setup via a tag manager. Even some not really tech-oriented people in my company had almost no problem setting it up. Which is a great use for SMB clients/companies that just need some basic measurements to see where they are at. You can have it easily set up on your website and start collecting data within an hour.
July 06, 2022

Hotjar review

Jasper van der Zwaan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Hotjar for heat-mapping new landing pages and observing current pages to identify opportunities for improvement on our webpages and campaign landing pages. We also use the feedback tool from time to time to gauge usability of our client portals and landing pages with lead forms.
  • Heat mapping
  • Page behavioural recordings
  • Feedback widgets
  • Larger amount of recordings
  • Display user recordings in simulated viewports i.e. iPad, Galaxy, iPhone, etc.
  • Different heatmap views
Hotjar is a very useful tool to analyze new and current web pages through heat mapping. The recording feature provides even more in-depth insights on user behavior on webpages and lead forms. The feedback widget tool is also very helpful for quick deployment of such widgets on any page without utilizing internal development resources.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
User Testing Heatmaps User recordings to test new designs Finding issues with website Optimization
  • User recordings
  • Heatmaps
  • Segments for recordings
  • User experience
  • User interface
  • More capabilities
  • Integration with Google Analytics
  • Better heatmap accuracy
Well suited for small companies starting to scale Good pricing Not for enterprises
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The digital marketing team uses HotJar to conduct website testing. We test user behavior on different pages of our site by looking at heatmaps and watching users' sessions. The heatmaps show us where users are clicking most and how far down the page they are actually scrolling. This gives us a good idea as to what content to put above the fold.
  • Heatmaps.
  • Continuously collecting data.
  • Watching users' sessions.
  • Ability to work with iframes.
If you are looking to test specific pages on your website for how users interact/click with different parts of the page/navigation, then HotJar is a must-use platform! We haven't had any negative issues using HotJar thus far. The only issue we've had is testing landing pages that use an iFrame because HotJar can't access the content in an iFrame, which is understandable.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Hotjar to improve the user experience on our website. We primarily use the confetti mapping tool, but the user action recordings and heat mapping are also useful. We have used Hotjar for over two years and it continues to deliver actionable insights on scroll rates, click-through rates, engagement rates, etc. The ability to watch user interactions and have the clicks highlighted is also tremendously insightful.
  • Map how website users interact with various pages on our site
  • Arrange navigation to be as intuitive as possible
  • See recordings of real users on our website
  • Gauge what content is meaningful and what is wasted
  • More robust A/B testing features would be nice
  • Better exportable reporting would be great - the jpg confetti mapping, for example is not very easy to use
Hotjar is great if you are trying to make minor tweaks to your website (ex. navigation order). It is not great if you want to rebuild your website from the ground up or if you don't know how to make use of the data. If you have hypotheses to test, Hotjar is a great tool to use to see whether or not your assumptions are accurate.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is a powerful tool. You can see how the users are responding to your webpage. The heat map is a great feature to see how the users navigate, where they click, scroll and drop off. This data is used for further testing and optimizing.
  • Heat Map
  • Recordings
  • Instant feedback
  • Test many pages once
  • Save the recordings on the tool until you delete
Hotjar is well suited for testing the landing/ web pages and, to make sure your users are converting and taking desired actions. This data helps to make changes to the page and template to improve results.
Aline Gonçalves Rodrigues | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

Hotjar has been used to support the analysis of user experience on websites and landing pages. In this way, we can show customers, in a visual way, the difficulties and problems that we encounter on their websites.

It is currently being used almost exclusively by the CRO department.

Hotjar helps us with website interaction and engagement issues. Thus providing insights that can justify improvements.

  • Generation of scroll heatmaps
  • Recordings of user interactions
  • Generation of clicks heatmaps
  • Good image quality of downloads
  • AMP sites/pages
  • Interface of incoming feedback
  • React sites

Suitable -Measure the quality of user interactions. On content sites, it is very useful to know how far they are reading. It is also useful to know which elements users are clicking on, without the need to tag them.

Less suitable - For less static sites that contain lots of interactions like carousels, menu and search.

Thomas Pittman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it for heat map tracking for both clicks and scrolling. This information is used in identifying user experience problems and improvements. We also use the recorded sessions to track and identify usability issues with the site and how to improve the website. We then feed all this information into design iterations.
  • Heat map tracking for website clicks.
  • Heat map tracking for scrolling.
  • Recorded life user sessions for UX improvements.
  • Visitor analytics and tracking segmentation.
  • Easier filtering on recorded sessions.
  • Reporting interface with custom reports.
Perfect for any company that constantly strives to improve the usability of their website and to run constant AB testing of new page designs.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using Hotjar for various pages where we see issues with the conversion. It is mainly used by the marketing and UX/tech team. Sometimes the designers also look at it to understand which images do the users find more attractive. It is an excellent tool to gather learnings where Google Analytics fails to give you results.
  • Heatmaps are great to understand which areas of the page are relevant for the user
  • Heatmaps also reveal how far the users scroll
  • Video recordings of user sessions can help in understanding the user thinking & issues they run into
  • Summary for video recordings are required. Too many videos to screen through
  • Come up with a solution for the app tracking
Hotjar is a cheap but very effective tool that I would recommend for every marketeer to use. It is great to understand what issues could your users be facing and helps the UX & design team to come up with a page that caters to users' needs. Great for testing new features on the website and see how users respond to it.
Duane Thompson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is the all-in-one tool that we have connected to our website to acquire customer feedback and analyze their behavior through surveys, heatmaps and session recordings. A/B testing has been very helpful in identifying pages that are underperforming, identifying key user segments to develop optimized marketing strategies. We get to see what visitors are doing instead of guessing.
  • Recording visitor sessions and seeing where they are clicking
  • Identifying areas/steps where customers are dropping off
  • Collection of feedback from specific site visitors to hear out their thoughts
  • If there is a way we can download session recordings, that can be really helpful
Hotjar has robust features that are useful in collecting customer feedback and way to hear the customer thoughts directly and instantly. Using Hotjar uncovers vital information that is used to improve user experience by examining what users are interested about and seeing what actually they are seeing on our site.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is being used by Marketing, Clients Operations and Product Departments. We use practically all the functions of it: website analytics, collecting feedbacks and conducting polls. We uncover user insights, track customer satisfaction, ask the questions to understand deep customers' pains and gains. It is also used to understand whether a certain initiative worked or not.
  • Heatmaps
  • Division into mobile, desktop and tablet versions
  • Click, move and scroll maps
  • Screen recordings
  • There is a pretty functional free version
  • Polls and surveys
  • Make an organization dashboard. Not a separate site dashboard.
  • Add some user stories and best practices into the website interface.
  • Add some expert recommendations on using Hotjar collected data.
Hotjar is great if you need to quickly:
  • find out users' behavior
  • find out what is more important on a webpage for a user
  • ask a question
  • find out if a user was satisfied
Hotjar is less or not appropriate to:
  • analyze website traffic - it is not a Google Analytics replacement
  • conduct A/B testing, split testing
  • make decisions on how to rebuild a website's content if you have no experience in product and/or marketing
Halima Satheya | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I currently use Hotjar to get real customer insight and data and to be able to understand our customers pain points and frictions. Using the insight gathered from Hotjar I am able to define my roadmap and strategy for A/B testing. It is used across several departments in the business for example the product teams, marketing, digital and development.
  • Quick customer insight
  • Ease of use
  • Continously improving the features of the software
  • Would be great if you could schedule polls/surveys to go live
  • Be able to QA poll and surveys on your IP
Really great way to get that qualitative feedback from real customers which is just invaluable. For example you may see a reduction in a specific area but unable to identify what it may be but Hotjar allows you to easily watch screen recordings of actual customers using your site and identify the fricition point along with polls being able to ask the customer what may be the issue etc.
Zach Ettelman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As the director of a marketing services team, we leveraged Hotjar to review site analytics and user behavior for all of our clients that came to us for a website project. We would also use Hotjar in the sales process to provide a high-level audit to our prospective client. Hotjar is used for our own marketing websites, our client sites, and was also used to help in product-related projects.
  • Quick and easy installation via Google Tag Manager.
  • Intuitive, easy-to-use user interface makes adding tags extremely easy and quick.
  • Hotjar provides heat mapping and user session recording to see how users interact with your website.
  • Hotjar is primarily used for web-based experiences. Not that easy to use on mobile apps.
  • I'd love to see Hotjar integrated with Google Analytics for an even deeper view.
  • Hotjar is primarily used by smaller organizations...pricing can get steep quickly for larger organizations.
Hotjar is well suite for organizations that want to get a good glimpse into user behavior on their websites. The tool is easily installed through Google Tag Manager, and then users simply select which pages or paths they want the tool to analyze. After a few days, users can start seeing patterns develop, helping them understand what areas of the user journey flow they need to test out and improve. Hotjar is primarily for web-based experiences, not for mobile applications and other non-web digital applications.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
HotJar is a heatmap and feedback software and it is used mainly by our marketing department and in particular by our webmasters and digital marketers. We make frequent changes to our website with new landing pages and content and HotJar is a great tool to see if the changes we make work and how effectively we engage our visitors.
  • Before HotJar we had to purchase at least three separate software to obtain the same data (Crazy Egg, Qualaroo and Survey Monkey).
  • I particularly like the "Recording" section where you can capture each and every session of your visitors when they hit the website and you watch over their shoulders.
  • The HeatMap feature is great and it is essential when you design new landing pages. You can get valuable insights on what areas of your site people are spending time on.
  • The Poll feature is great and people give us feedback on our site and we can gain valuable insights. The only drawback is that sometimes people ask a specific question and don't leave their contact (because it's just a poll) so we can never get back to them with the answer.
  • The Funnel Feature is good but it could be improved. I find it a bit too simplistic and it should have more data.
  • The “Recruiters” feature is very interesting in theory but I don’t think it really works in real life. It basically allows you to recruit some of your visitors and invite them to a live user test via screen sharing (Skype) to truly see what they are thinking. The problem if you have to find people that want to do it and I don't think people will do it unless you give them a gift back.
It's great for any company that has an in-house marketing department and people are very hands-on and they are interested in testing all the changes to a website. Less appropriate for people that are not very interested in digging deeper into data and insights.
Veronika Baranovska | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is a new tool that we've recently started using to better understand our user journeys, both on our website and our product. More recently, we upgraded our accounts to get more data so that our findings have statistical significance when it comes to testing different types of page designs and implementing improvements. With Hotjar, we mostly use their heat mapping tools and screen recordings.
  • The heat mapping tools in Hotjar are outstanding. By knowing how far our website visitors explore the pages, we have been able to quantify how successful a page copy rewrite has been by merely proving many more people now engaged with the rest of the page!
  • The ability to record videos of how our website users interact with key pages has helped us reduce friction and, ultimately, increase our conversion rates.
  • Feedback polls have been useful for our product/development team when releasing new features and collecting feedback about their experiences.
  • The funnels feature could be improved. I've found this to be largely inconsistent when comparing to data we get from the funnels we build in Google Analytics.
  • The feedback polls and incoming feedback surveys could look a little nicer. I'd then be more inclined to use them on our website to see if our visitors, as well as leads, are enjoying their experience.
  • It would be great if the heatmaps on blog home pages could tell me more about which new articles are more popular (every time we add a new blog, the order changes, so new articles replace old ones).
If you're at the stage where you'd like to pursue CRO (conversion rate optimization) and improve UX (user experience) for your website visitors, then Hotjar is one of the tools you should have in your toolkit! Here are a few ways we use Hotjar that has been useful:
  • Set up heatmaps on crucial conversion pages on your website (if you're in SaaS, that's your /pricing or /features page).
  • Create a space where you can record your findings (we use a project management tool to do this, but you can create a Google Doc if you wish).
  • With the heat maps, track the data about the fold, how far people scroll, # of clicks, and others.
  • Come up with tests/experiments to run on a bi-weekly basis, and record them in the same space.
  • Then, compare your data from two weeks before with the current averages, make observations.
  • Rinse and repeat until you've exhausted test ideas! :)

P.S. I'd also recommend setting up the recordings on key pages - this feature is most useful for product teams, BUT, by seeing where people click (when there's no link) and how they move through the page, you can make quick adjustments to help your website visitors discover more useful content.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We're using HotJar to see where our web visitors are clicking on key pages. This allows us to make informed decisions when we want to test out new content or reorganizing content. We're also using HotJar's click-tracking software that shows videos of how users are scrolling and clicking through the site.
  • Heatmap Tracking - Seeing where users click is very important.
  • Click Tracking - Watching videos of user actions shows us where they're getting hung up.
  • Interface - Once logged into HotJar, it takes a few clicks to get to where I want to go. Shortcuts on the landing page would be helpful. But this is a minor complaint.
  • Removing clicks that take place on a drop-down menu, or showing the menu separately would help.
  • Make it easier to remove the monitoring of the clicks that close out the Privacy Policy alert.
HotJar allows you to be more informed about the activities on your website. Anyone that wants to learn more about their users should use this tool. If you think your users are getting hung up on a particular area (i.e. the checkout process), you can use the video feature to see where they're abandoning the process.
March 28, 2019

Hotjar for agencies

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is used by the UX & CRO department of my agency, which provides digital marketing services. It helps us understand how users are behaving on our client's websites, letting us see what sections of pages are valuable to users, and any technical issues they may have. It adds an extra layer of insight to data gathered via Google Analytics.
  • Heatmaps.
  • Session recordings.
  • On-site polls.
  • More control in URLs heatmaps/session recordings/polls and more advanced URL options.
  • Certain content doesn't load in Hotjar, eg iframes, reviews widgets, maps.
  • Sometimes heatmaps don't seem to load properly so that less than 50% of users appear to make it to the average fold marker (normally most would make it to the average fold marker).
Hotjar is well suited to seeing how actual users of your site behave on a page, rather than user research which can be quite artificial. It also allows you to poll your users. It's good for top-level, brief overviews of behavior, rather than in-depth analysis.

Hotjar is less suited to very specific targeting of polls/heatmaps, as URL targeting is quite limited. It's also unsuitable for in-depth user research via the polls, as many users find the pop-ups annoying and don't answer properly. Focus groups/moderated user research would be better for gaining deeper insight into what users think about your website.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is currently being used by the UX & CRO department and is included in most, if not all, UX & CRO campaigns. It is used to inform test recommendations and quick fixes to the site which may be hard to add to the dev queue without the data from Hotjar/other user research.
  • Split heatmaps by device.
  • Session recordings.
  • Polls.
  • Filters within session recordings.
  • Allowing us to see elements/JS/CSS within the heatmaps so you can be more specific where users have clicked.
  • Date ranges.
It is good for providing supporting stats.
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