Hotjar Review: Discover The Ultimate Visitor Insight Tool

Heatmaps, surveys, feedback polls, conversion funnels and visitor recordings are all tools used by conversion experts every day.

Without these it would be close to impossible to dig into the mindset of site visitors, and uncover why they are not converting.

Finally we now have an all-in-one analytics and feedback tool. Hotjar does it all, for a fraction of the cost.

Hotjar is a very new analytics platform for your website. It was designed by a team of marketers, web designers and web developers, lead by Dr. David Darmanin, a former CRO consultant for Conversion Rate Experts (for which I am a consultant myself). The main purpose of Hotjar is to combine all of the analytics and feedback tools you’ll ever need into one platform for your CRO efforts.

In 2014, Hotjar ran an invitation-only beta test for its platform. The service officially opened in early 2015. The amount of features it has is astounding. PLUS, the price is just as jaw-dropping. Basically you’re getting the same services you pay hundreds a month for at other websites all in one place.

We’ll split this Hotjar review into sections that outlines each of the features of their platform. I’ll tell you the benefits of these features, and then I’ll tell you how much it'll cost to get started with them.

Let’s get started.

Hotjar Review: An Overview of Hotjar’s Features

Hotjar has a lot of features. After all, it was built to be an all-in-one analytic and feedback solution for business and website owners.

Here are the main features of Hotjar:

• Heatmaps
• Feedback Polls
• Surveys
• Conversion Funnels
• Form Analytics
• Visitor Recordings
• Recruit User Testers

Those seven features each have distinct benefits when used on your website. They can all be used together to help you to truly understand your visitor and improve your website.

Feature #1: Heatmaps

Heatmaps allow you to see the parts of your website that your user interacts with while they are on your website. They’ll show up like actual heatmaps. You’ll see the most popular parts of your site in red/yellow. The least popular parts of your website will appear in green/blue.

A heatmap is a great analytic tool. You can see whether visitors have an interest in the new features of your website. For example, let’s say you moved your signup form from the top of your website to the side, or below your posts. The heatmap will let you see if users are interacting with it.

You can also see how they scroll through your page, what they click on and what they ignore. So if you moved your signup form, and it’s not popular, it’s going to show up in blue.

Confused? There’s a scale on the right side of the heatmap that show you how to read the colors that makes it super easy. You can use a heatmap on any part of your website and with one click you can filter traffic from desktop, tablet or mobile.

As an added feature, Hotjar provides you with the percentage of visitors that has reached a specific point on your page, letting you see if you have issues like a false bottom or where your traffic is bouncing/exiting.

Feature #2: Feedback Polls

Feedback polls give you a way to directly get inside of your user’s head.

Let’s say you want to learn why your users are bouncing so frequently. Set up a feedback poll and ask. Your visitors will be honest with you.

The good thing about the feedback poll is it isn’t limited to a few questions. The amount of questions you can ask are unlimited. You can ask for as much or little detail as you like.

Feedback polls are also great because people love to express their opinion. You can ask questions like:

• “Is there something preventing you from making a purchase with us today?”
• “What’s stopping you from signing up for our newsletter?”
• “Is there a reason you haven’t left a comment?”

[see this article for more questions you can ask]

The answers you get from these questions can help you to improve your website so that more people will complete the action you want them to complete. You can also run multiple surveys on your website. This gives you the opportunity to address multiple problems at once.

In fact, I recently asked 12 conversion experts how they use survey tools like this.

Feature #3: Surveys

I love sending actual customers surveys to understand their purchase decision or process. These often contain gems that lead to terrific wins.

While a feedback form usually focuses on a specific action (i.e. making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter – SPECIFIC TO A SINGLE PAGE), a survey focuses on user experience and higher level mindsets.

You can ask questions like:

• How satisfied are you with our services?
• How would you rate the information you found on our website?
• How would you rate your user experience with our website?
• How likely are you to recommend our website to a friend or family member?

These questions all help contribute to improving user experience on your website. But you aren’t limited to just these questions. Like the feedback form, you can place an unlimited number of questions on your survey. And you can run multiple surveys at the same time.

Look for specific language used by your customers, you can leverage this in your copy. Also, these surveys are often golden to find high-quality testimonials.

Creating these surveys in Hotjar is easy. The editor is drop-dead simple. The responses are collected in real time, and they’re mobile friendly. You can see the results as they come in from any an every device.

In my Qualaroo review I discuss how important surveys and feedback are. The difference between Qualaroo and Hotjar is that Qualaroo only focuses on surveys and feedback. Hotjar gives you multiple analytical tools, including surveys and feedback forms.

Feature #4: Conversion Funnels

Have you ever wondered why your sales funnel isn’t converting?

Hotjar can help you answer that question with conversion funnels. Conversion funnels help you to track the user through your sales funnel and find out where they’re dropping off at.

When you pinpoint the exact spot where your users are leaving, you’ll be able to immediately improve that part of your funnel. The results come in percentages of the total number of sessions recorded. So if there are 100 sessions, and 50% of them drop out of your funnel on the landing page, you know that’s the point that needs to be fixed.

This is a great tool for marketers. It makes A/B split testing a lot easier. Instead of just scrapping an entire funnel, or guessing at which part is failing, you’ll have your answer. Once you fix the problem, you can use another conversion funnel to see how well it’s working.

Feature #5: Form Abandonment Analytics

Like conversion funnels, form analytics tell you why people aren’t filling out your form. But they go into a lot more depth than that.

The form analytics tell you how many people left your website without visiting the form. It’ll also tell you at what point the people who did fill out your form dropped out. There is a timer on each of the form’s sections that records how long it takes to fill out each part of the form. You can also see which parts of the forms are left blank.

Once you see the results of the form analytics, you’ll be able to improve your forms. You can drop the parts that people aren’t filling out, and fix the parts that people are dropping out on.

The timing shouldn’t be ignored either. If a form isn’t easy to fill out most people are going to abandon it. If it takes too long to fill out, they probably aren’t going to bother. Granted, sometimes you do need a lot of information, especially if you’re trying to gather new clients. But the form analytics can help you simplify the process.

Feature #6: Visitor Recordings

This feature is really cool. Hotjar lets you record the sessions of random visitors on your website. You get to see what they do once they get on your site. Where does the mouse go? Do they click on any of your links? What did they search for? Did they buy anything?

Watching these recordings can help you to pinpoint problems right there on the spot. It will also let you see what your user actually experiences once they get on your website.

Sometimes, as business owners, we think we have good ideas about where things should go on our website or what kind of content we need to write. Then we set up our website. We think that everything we’ve done will give people an awesome user experience.

This is especially true if we followed all the “best practices.” This expert says only this should go above the fold, so that’s what you do. This expert says put your keyword in your content this many times, so that’s what you do. But then you follow all this advice and find out your website isn’t making conversions the way it should.

Why?

In truth, only the user can tell you whether their experience is awesome or not. They’re the ones using the website. Everyone’s target audience doesn’t react the way we think they should. You aren’t targeting the same people as everyone. Your audience is totally different, so you must design your website and content around your user’s experiences, not theirs.

But some users don’t want to fill out surveys or give feedback. You may be able to see exactly what they did on your website with the visitor recordings. (I say “may” because sometimes users don’t interact with your page at all.)

Feature #7: Recruit User Testers

If you need to do some testing, you can recruit testers through Hotjar. You can collect their information and offer them a reward for helping you. This is perfect for adding new parts to your website, or trying out a different design for your pages.

Hotjar Review: Pricing

At the beginning of this Hotjar review I told you that the pricing for this service was jaw dropping. Well, now I’m going to tell you exactly how much it is.

You can start out for free.

Yes, you read that right. For $0 a month you can use all of Hotjar’s features. However, I recommend you upgrade to the Pro version for $29 a month. The free account is limited to 3 of the feedback tools (surveys, polls and recruiters) and 3 of the analysis tools (funnels, heatmaps and forms). You’ll only get 300 visitor recordings, and your sample size is limited to 2000 pageviews a day.

With the pro version you get unlimited use of the feedback and analytic tools. You also get a sample size of 10,000 page views a day. Both plans will let you store your data for 90 days.

There is also a business plan that allows you to remove the Hotjar branding, and get unlimited use of the tools. You get a sample size of 20,000 pageviews a day and you keep your data for 6 months. That plan costs $89 a month.

The sampling is the reason that these plans are so cheap. See, unlike its competitors, Hotjar does not record every session. It records random sessions from your users spread out evenly throughout the day. This is a good thing. You won’t have to spend hours looking through useless information just to find out what a problem is.

So the sample sizes are actually how many pageviews they will collect your data from. That means if you get 100,000 page views a day, but you’re using the free plan, the data they collect will only be from 2000 pageviews. The number of sample sizes goes up with each plan. By limiting the number of sample sizes, Hotjar makes it easier to target problems and keep its prices affordable.

In this Hotjar review, you saw all of the features Hotjar had to offer. For a fraction of the price of all of its competitors, you can access incredible features without dealing with anything unnecessary and burdensome. I recommend Hotjar for anyone who is serious about improving their website and giving people the best user experience they can have.

Click here to see for yourself how Hotjar works.

If you have questions or comments about this Hotjar review, Hotjar services or your experiences with Hotjar, please leave a comment below.

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