Hotjar
Introduction
Hotjar is a web analytics tool that helps businesses gather data about how their users engage with their website and allows for improvement of the user experience. It features interactive heatmaps for clicks and actions, recordings of user sessions, surveys, funnel conversion reports, polls, user testing and live feedback.
All of these features, both separately and together, maps out the users’ behaviour and needs and in turn, help businesses understand their users and give them the information needed to optimize the website.
Brief History
- Hotjar was founded in June 2014 by conversion rate optimization expert David Darmanin.
- The first product offered by Hotjar was the heatmap tool that gave website owners information about where their users were clicking and scrolling.
- In September 2014 Hotjar launched the beta version of their site.
- By January 2015 Hotjar had 7000 users.
- In April 2015 ended their free beta version and Hotjar got their first paying customer.
- The new version of the product was now offering user recordings, feedback polls, surveys, funnel and form analysis, and recruiting user testers.
- Within 6 months Hotjar hit $1M in ARR.
- The company’s headquarters is in Malta and operates on a fully remote basis with a global team of over 200 people who work throughout Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia.
- Hotjar is used by 1,148,546 websites in 180+ countries.
- In 2021 Hotjar got acquired by global technology giant Contentsquare.
Features
Hotjar is a thorough web analytics and user feedback tool that provides several essential features to assist businesses in enhancing the user experience and optimizing their websites. Hotjar’s primary features include:
Heatmaps: Hotjar’s heatmaps show visually where users are clicking, tapping, and scrolling on your website. This information enables businesses to identify popular areas and adjust their layout, design, and content as necessary.
Session recording: This feature records and replays user sessions in order to learn more about user behaviour and identify any website usability issues.
Feedback Polls: ask for comments and recommendations from website users on a variety of topics, such as the organization, content, and style, using Hotjar’s feedback polls.
Conversion Funnels: conversion funnels monitor website users behaviour and spot user abandonment points and in turn increase conversion rates.
Surveys: get more precise feedback from website users with Hotjar’s surveys, including information about their demographics and opinions on particular features.
User Recruitment: the user recruitment function, finds volunteers for user testing, surveys, and other research projects. This enables businesses to gain insightful input from the target market.
Form Analysis: the form analysis tool finds out where website users are having issues filling out forms on the website, which can help optimize forms and enhance user experience.
These are some of Hotjar’s core features, but the platform has much more to offer in terms of web analytics, user feedback, and user research.
Strengths
Hotjar offers user-focused analytics, enabling businesses to understand the preferences and behaviour of the people who are visiting their websites. This enables them to evaluate the website’s effectiveness and make data-driven adjustments to improve the user experience.
Provides a variety of feedback options, including polls, surveys, and session recordings, allowing businesses to get quantitative and qualitative feedback from website users. With so many choices for providing feedback, businesses may learn about their users and identify areas that could use work.
Hotjar is simple to use and simple to set up, with a user-friendly interface and many utilities that are simple to use.
Hotjar is a versatile tool that can be used for many different things, such as improving user experience, identifying opportunities for optimization, and performing user research. This makes it a flexible tool that a variety of experts, such as web designers, marketers, and user researchers, can employ.
An affordable solution for small enterprises and startups thanks to its flexible price options, which include a free plan with fewer capabilities. As a result, it’s possible to use a lot of Hotjar’s features without spending a fortune, which makes it a desirable choice for people on tight budgets.
Hotjar is a well-liked tool for website optimization and user research because of these benefits, which help companies better understand their customers and enhance the user experience.
Weaknesses
Hotjar’s data segmentation capabilities are relatively constrained. While you can divide your data by device, country, and other criteria, you might not be able to segment it as precisely as you would like. This can make it challenging to gain a clear sense of how various audiences are interacting with your website.
One of the features that Hotjar lacks is a predictive analysis available in companies similar to Hotjar. Google Analytics is a similar tool that efficiently provides predictions based on the data available and helps users take action on the predictive nature of the audience. This might be why Hotjar does recommend using both their service and Google Analytics.
Hotjar has only a few A/B testing options. While you can use Hotjar to monitor the performance of various pages and elements, you might not be able to do comprehensive A/B testing that lets you choose which version of a page or element performs better based on data.
Comparison
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg features a heatmap and A/B testing tools and can monitor how users engage with a website. It has features like scroll maps, click maps, and user recordings that can help businesses improve the conversion rate of their website. They don’t offer any free plan.
Mouseflow
Mouseflow is an additional website analytics tool with features like heatmaps, user recording, and form analytics. It also features a range of conversion rate optimization tools, including A/B testing and funnel analysis. They also offer a free plan for up to 500 recordings/per month.
Lucky Orange
Lucky Orange is a real-time website analytics solution which includes features like user recordings, heatmaps, live chat, pop-up announcements and conversion funnels. Businesses are able to see in real time how users engage with their website and identify areas for improvement. They also offer a free plan for up to 500 views/per month.
Each of these tools has distinctive qualities and advantages. Hotjar stands out for its accessibility and low cost, although it might not provide all the sophisticated capabilities that some companies need.
Summary
Hotjar is a website analytics application which features functions like heatmaps, visitor records, conversion funnels, form analytics, and polls for user input. Hotjar is a useful tool for web developers since it gives them information about how users engage with their websites. Developers may identify areas for development and optimize their websites for better user experience and conversion rates by monitoring user activity with heatmaps and visitor recordings. Developers can also find and correct problems with their forms, such as poor completion rates or errors, by using Hotjar’s form analytics.
Also, developers can gather feedback directly from users of their websites using Hotjar’s feedback polls, which can help them in prioritizing new features and improvements. Developers can also use the tool’s conversion funnels to understand how users move through their website and identify any problem areas.
Web developers who want to improve the functionality and user experience of their websites should consider using Hotjar. For businesses of all sizes, its user-friendly interface and cost make it an appealing alternative.
Credits
- Birgitte Vedaa (@piiito)
References
https://www.hotjar.com/blog/the-hotjar-story-part-1-from-idea-to-60000-beta-signups-in-6-months/
https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/how-hotjar-works
https://davidwalsh.name/hotjar-analytics
https://www.ecommerce-nation.com/what-is-hotjar-advantages-disadvantages/
https://seriouslysimplemarketing.com/hotjar-what-it-is-and-why-you-should-be-using-it/
https://www.afterdigital.co.uk/insights-and-updates/hotjar
https://thetechprint.com/pros-and-cons-of-hotjar
https://www.smartlook.com/blog/hotjar-alternatives/
https://help.hotjar.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052309573-A-B-Testing-with-Hotjar