The user experience and web usability is becoming more important, in addition, many digital marketing decisions are based on the variety of data collected from user behavior.
The tool that we are going to present today can provide even more valuable information to optimize your site and better understand your audience.
Tools that visually show where your visitors click the most, what content is ignored, and how the mouse moves across your website.
Index
- What is Hotjar? and What is Hotjar used for?
- How to register on Hotjar?
- How can Hotjar help me improve my business strategy?
- Main features of Hotjar and its strengths
- Conclusions
What is Hotjar? and What is Hotjar used for?
Hotjar is an online data analysis tool that provides insights into user behavior on a website.
It is important to make it clear that this tool is not intended to replace Google Analytics at any time, that is, one can complete the other. Google Analytics is the most robust free web analytics platform, but Hotjar has features that complement the data and make your analysis even more comprehensive.
Then we will see well all the functionalities of Hotjar.
What differentiates Hotjar from other digital platforms is the information on the actions that the user performs on our site through heat maps, from the moment they start browsing until they leave it, which is why it has gained momentum among marketing teams, and product managers, with UX designers.
Heat maps and user motion Hotjar recordings visually show how the visitor behaves and which points on the website deserve more attention.
This facilitates the understanding of user interactions with web pages, in addition to facilitating decision-making regarding the design and architecture of the website, it also facilitates commercial strategies and digital marketing strategies.
There is a free version of Hotjar, which collects data from sites with up to 2,000 page views per day, as well as subscriptions, Hotjar pricing starts at $39 per month for all site sizes.
How to register on Hotjar?
We have known what Hotjar is for and what Hotjar is, but it is time to explain how to use Hotjar to get the most out of your website and optimize conversions. Let’s see by points how to do it
- Register on the Hotjar website, and you can try the free version
- Once registered, it will give us the Script code, which we must include in our content manager so that all movements and clicks on our website are recorded.
- If we have problems, in Tracking or Tracking active, we can copy the code that we must include in the content manager. Once copied, we go to our page and paste it. Where? In appearance>Editor>Search in files of the child theme header.php>header of the theme>search in the file the closing of the header “</head/>”> we paste it just before that tag> we click on the update file> button you save. From that moment on, the tool will be able to analyze all the movements on the web page.
- In the same box that appeared before to copy the Script, we have an installation verification box, to verify that everything works correctly.
- If you do not understand code, and it has not been clear to you how you should include the code in your content editor, do not worry, there is a plugin. We explain it to you in the next section.
- Once everything is correct, you will be able to analyze and check how users act through various functionalities. These features are explained in detail throughout the article.
How can Hotjar help me improve my business strategy?
But can Hotjar really help with Digital Marketing strategies?
The answer is a resounding yes, as there are several ways to apply the features of the tool to optimize a site, improve the user experience and drive more conversions for the business. It is important to say that Hotjar has a plugin that can be adapted to Prestahop and wordpress, because the job is much easier that way.
Thanks to this, you can install the tracking code on your website. In addition, the situations in which Hotjar can help you are the following:
- Conversion rate improvement:
Visitors to a website are just visitors, however, if they fill out a form or make a purchase, the situation changes.
In other words, what you need is for them to convert so that they become clients or business opportunities.
Businesses can use Hotjar to optimize their site’s conversion rate by analyzing key elements at the purchase or form submission stage.
How are heatmaps created?
Funnel analysis shows exactly which pages are losing visitors and therefore conversions. On an e-commerce site, for example, this evaluation is necessary.
In addition, form analytics also improve the experience and increase submission rates, which means more conversions.
For example, by looking at scrolling on Hotjar heatmaps, we can identify whether the user is navigating well, missing important information, or lost on the site. This makes the conversion infeasible and never takes place due to several possible causes. One of them could be that the buttons and links are “cold” or that the user wanders aimlessly through the page.
That is, the web page has many distracting elements and makes it difficult for the user to find what he is looking for.
To improve this, you can use Hotjar’s questionnaires to understand exactly how difficult it is for visitor to find what they are looking for.
What are hotjar heatmaps
A heat map makes it possible to identify behaviors in visual form: either the clicks of visitors on your pages or the movements of their mouse (and the scroll), which reveal the “areas of interest” on the page.
The heat map then uses colors to indicate the “cold” (bluish) areas, which attract the least interest…and the “hot” (reddish) areas, which attract attention.
This allows you to draw very concrete conclusions: move this or that element (newsletter form, etc.) to where the user is most likely to see it; identify which type of title attracts the most attention; identify the visuals that most encourage action…
It can also help identify problems: for example, you see that people are trying to click on elements that are not clickable; that they dwell on one element to the detriment of another…
You can create a heatmap specific to each device (computer, tablet, smartphone) to also study differences in behavior.
Thanks to Hotjar, you can better understand site visitors and define the buyer persona more precisely.
Therefore, heatmaps and visitor recordings help to identify what their main interests are and how they behave.
Analyzing clicks, for example, can help you see which topics are most engaging for visitors, so you can spend more time producing content on those specific topics.
Furthermore, with scrolling analysis, you can also identify if your audience often reads your blog articles to the end, and you will be able to identify the size of the content that your visitors are most likely to read.
- Design and usability decisions
Hotjar’s features are ideal for redesigning and evolving site design and making better usability decisions. Hotjar heatmaps are responsible for showing which areas of the site are being ignored. If an important item is in a cold area, it should be placed elsewhere, for example.
It is also important to make decisions with trading strategies in mind, as mentioned before. If the company’s flagship product receives fewer clicks, it may be at the same level of hierarchy as the others, and not stand out from the rest.
Therefore, design changes must be made to emphasize that element and encourage sales.
Thanks to the revelation of usability problems of the site, we can detect buttons that do not work, defective pages, delays in action, difficulty in finding a menu item… Based on this information, changes must be made to optimize and improve the website. .
Main features of Hotjar and its strengths
- Heatmaps (heat maps):
This is the most prominent feature and functionality and what Hotjar is best known for. Hotjar heatmaps show, on a color scale, locations of the highest and lowest user interactions on the web page.
What are heatmaps used for
The “hotter” red, the more visitors interact with that area.
Heat maps report on three types of interactions
- Click heatmaps (areas with the most clicks)
- Move heatmaps (areas where the user has moved)
- Scroll heatmaps (how far the visitor scrolled on the page)
The tool has the possibility of viewing maps online or downloading them (PNG or CSV) to share them externally, in addition to being able to differentiate the interaction of users on different devices.
How to configure recordings in Hotjar?
It starts collecting data when the Hotjar tracking code is installed and session capture is enabled. Data is collected from each page of your site where the tracking code is installed. You don’t need to manually start and stop the recording tool.
Verify that session capture is enabled by clicking the traffic coverage widget in the upper right corner of the page.
The traffic coverage widget displays information about daily session capture settings, which apply to both recordings and heatmaps. If session capturing is not enabled, you will see a yellow message Session capturing is currently disabled at the top of the page.
Recording filters
Filters are based on session data and can help you focus on specific subsets of your users. You can also save filter configurations to records as segments. This allows you quick and repeated access to your most relevant records by saving your favorite filter criteria for regular use.
Hotjar Observe Business and Observe Scale clients have additional filters for user attributes, as well as advanced behavioral filters.
- Visitor recording:
This feature is the recording of screens with the movement of a real visitor, that is, the tool records the mouse path, clicks, scrolling, pages visited and any actions that the user performs during the visit to the site.
In the report, Hotjar shows a video screen recording of the entire visit, with all of these mentioned. In addition, it reflects the user’s location, the date of the visit, the device, the browser and the operating system used.
In addition, you can add tags and annotations to videos, share them externally and filter the list of Hotjar recordings to see only what you want, such as people who viewed a single page, or visitors from a specific device…
With this information, problems of usability and navigation of the site can be collected. For example, if the user takes too long to find information, it means that it is an alert of a problem with the site.
- Conversion funnels:
This functionality is great for knowing where on the site your visitors leave. Yes, we know that this information can be taken from Google Analytics, but with Hotjar you will be able to know and understand why, since the recordings of the visits reveal the information. With this tool, you can identify distractions that drive the user away from the site or problems that prevent conversions.
On the platform, you must indicate which pages make up the visitor’s path to a conversion (sale, quote request, form…). In this way, in the report, Hotjar will indicate the bounce rate on each page and how many users reach the final conversion. Hotjar recordings of the visits help to discover the reason for the abandonment, as we have mentioned before.
- Form analysis:
From the simple subscription to the newsletter, to the payment of a purchase, filling out forms is a crucial point for the conversion rate of a site.
Hotjar helps you increase the success of your forms. With this feature you can identify which fields take the longest to fill out, need to be filled out more than once, are left blank, or cause the user to leave the page.
In the report, you can also see how many users left the page without completing the fields and how many were unable to submit the form.
- Feedback pools (feedback surveys):
This is very interesting because the Hotjar tool doesn’t just want to point out problems without knowing what to do about them. In other words, the platform helps you identify the reasons why the conversions are not taking place, so that you can solve the problem.
For this, there is the feature of feedback surveys. To do this, you need to set up multiple response types.
These searches can be included directly on the pages where the user is having difficulties. That way you are likely to get a response and achieve more conversions.
- Incoming feedbacks:
With this feature, you can include quick questions on your own pages for users to express their opinion about some element of the layout, on a sentiment scale.
In the report, the platform gathers users’ feelings about each page of the site, so that it is understood which ones they love or reject the most.
- Surveys:
There is the functionality to do a larger investigation with deeper answers. This option is the surveys, that is, longer questionnaires so that you know your audience better, not only with quick answers, as the previous features offer.
With a simple editor, you can quickly create a survey with different types of questions and answers and a responsive design for any device. Hotjar offers a visual report for survey results, as well as making it easy to capture data and share it with your team.
- Recruit test users:
Hotjar offers the possibility that the changes be tested before being released but by the users themselves. Directly on the site, you can enter registration forms for visitors to request to test your pages and then make a selection according to the desired audience profile.
In addition, a fee may also be offered in exchange for your help. At the end of the day, they deserve it, it is helping your business to be more successful on the internet.
Visitor recording section
Hotjar earned its fame by being the first analytics tool to offer visitor logs. It records user sessions screen so you can see how web visitors interact with different elements on a page, such as scrolling.
As an online business owner, you get insight into how visitors are using your content. This helps you better understand what issues are preventing them from making a purchase.
1. All users
This is a general category; you can use it to show the number of users who have left your website in the last period. You can also show the number of new users who have joined your site in the same period.
2. Returning users
This section shows how many people returned to the site after having left it for a certain period of time. This is an important data point for marketers because it shows how many people are interested in your products or services and are willing to return to your website once they’ve had enough of it.
3. Mobile users
Mobile users are the first to be affected by a product failure. This is because they have limited internet access and must reach out to the company as soon as possible. To deliver the best customer experience, companies must keep their customers updated about the issue and its resolution.
4. Page clicked
This metric measures how many times a user has clicked on a mobile version of your website. It helps you evaluate if you have created an app that is easy for mobile users.
Pricing
Hotjar gives you the option to pay for your plans annually.
When the annual payment is set up in the application with a credit card or Paypal. A 20% discount excluding tax is added to your invoice.
Note that this reduction is not applicable when paying by invoice.
Conclusions
Like many other tools, Hotjar is essential for your digital marketing strategy, however, it stands out from the rest for all the possibilities it offers. Heatmap hotjar and visitor recordings are highly valued to provide the optimal customer experience.
In such a competitive world, with so many companies, so many channels, and above all, so much information, it is essential to stand out, make a difference and offer the customer the best.
A well-satisfied customer may be recurring, however, a failure could condemn our website for life. Don’t take risks, and choose, according to your company and market, the best possibilities to make the most of and optimize your time and that of your clients.
Multiconversion is the first digital marketing agency in the US to specialize in Multichannel strategies. We have accompanied dozens of companies over the last 15 years in their digital strategies so that they meet their marketing objectives. Our continuously improved methodology consists of putting the customer at the “customer-centric” center and offering them the most appropriate channels at every moment of the path that the “customer journey” takes.
Through a solid multichannel strategy, Multiconversion will accompany you to meet your goals.
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