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Hotjar, warmly recommended for these 7 reasons

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What is Hotjar?

In early 2015, one year after David Darmanin founded the company, Hotjar launched an appeal to test the beta programme, which was already promising at the time. After many positive comments, the final programme went live in April of that year, and Darmanin's brainchild has continued to grow ever since. The reason behind this success lies mainly in the fact that Hotjar is not just the umpteenth analysis tool of thirteen in a dozen, but is just an enormously versatile and relatively inexpensive tool for many a marketer.

Hotjar logo

Nowadays it's no longer enough just to attract a lot of visitors to your website, you also have to be able to convince them of your product so that you can move them towards that coveted conversion. For all those who want to further increase their conversion rate - and admittedly, which one of us doesn't? - It is therefore useful to have as much and as accurate data as possible, a matter of being able to correctly assess how visitors are working on your website and where and how this whole process can be improved. Measuring is knowing, so it is best to activate a few feedback and analysis tools on your website. Or maybe it's even enough to launch just one, because Hotjar combines a lot of these functionalities in one whole. At Calibrate we have long been convinced of the added value that Hotjar has to offer, so we are happy to explain all the advantages for you.

Nowadays it is hip to unpack with a product that is '2-in-1' or even '3-in-1', but Hotjar adds a scoop to that. However, don't hesitate to call it quite a scoop, because in total the programme combines no less than seven handy tools that can give you more insight into how your website works. Previously you needed all kinds of different programmes to look at all these things separately (think of Clicktale for mouse and click tracking, Qualaroo for surveys and Crazyegg for heatmaps), and therefore you had to invest several times in all kinds of tools, Hotjar offers all these handy tools under one roof. We briefly list Hotjar's seven functions.

Heatmap

1. Heatmaps

In the sports world these days, they are commonplace to find out which player has walked over the pitch where, but in the digital world, heatmaps can also provide real added value when it comes to tactical analysis. After all, by setting up heatmaps on your pages, you can follow exactly what your visitors are looking at or clicking on. Thanks to the three different types of heatmaps, you can also analyse specific parts of the behaviour of your visitors. For example, a click heatmap will keep track of where and how often a page is clicked, the mouse heatmap will give a more general picture of all mouse movements (and therefore the points your visitors are looking at), and finally - as you could already guess - scroll heatmaps take into account the scrolling behaviour of your visitors and which parts of your page are therefore most often visible.

Recordings plus

2. Visitor Recordings

Are heatmaps not enough and would you like to dig a little deeper into the surfing behaviour of your visitors? Then you can always opt for visitor recordings. These will not only show the clicking behaviour and mouse movements, but will also keep track of complete visitor sessions. This way, you can find out even more precisely and in more detail how and where your visitors are and how they experience your website. By juxtaposing different recordings, it will eventually be even easier to find out where your strong and weak points are and respond to them. In addition, all stored recordings can easily be further filtered. For example, you can filter on the number of visited pages, specifically visited pages, the browser or operating system used to surf, the country from which the page was visited and the visitor's device. In this way you can analyse specific target groups even more accurately.

Conversion Funnel

3. Conversion Funnels

If you would like to take a closer look at the entire process from arrival to conversion, you can go to the conversion funnels that Hotjar offers you. Through this conversion funnel, you can mould all the steps that visitors to your website take into a funnel shape, to see who decides where to leave for conversion. We don't claim that Hotjar invented hot water with this - Google Analytics can offer you a fairly similar tool - but especially in cooperation with the visitor recording above, it can offer you the necessary useful data. Set your funnels in the conversion funnel properly and you immediately know where your visitors drop out, combine that with the visitor recordings and you immediately have a razor-sharp picture of which visitor takes which way towards conversion - or where he/she ends up.

Forms

4. Form Analysis

Conversions often include a web form. Whether it's an online purchase (for example, where you have to fill in the delivery address or your bank details) or to subscribe to a newsletter (for which you usually only need your e-mail address), you will almost always have to fill in a form to arrive at the end result. That is why it is also important to know whether the forms on your own website work properly. Thanks to this analysis tool, you can check how long it takes visitors to fill in each individual field and where they leave the whole process or not. Very handy to find out whether you are missing out on some conversions due to a poorly drafted web form.

FeedbackPolls

5. Feedback Polls

Getting the opinion of your visitors without being too intrusive, you can arrange that via Hotjar's feedback polls. In this way you only ask your visitors one (specific) question, so that they are not put off by a whole laundry list of questions. You can set on which page(s) the pop-up should be shown, and whether it appears on the left or right side of the screen. If you fine-tune your settings, you can also choose on which device and at which moment (immediately after loading, after a few seconds or when almost leaving the page) the question will appear. If you want to get relevant feedback from your visitors quickly and efficiently without taking up too much of their time, you will certainly be able to indulge yourself with this part of Hotjar.

Hotjar survey

6. Surveys

Feedback polls have their value, but you cannot use them for in-depth feedback research. Then surveys are a more convenient way to ask for the opinion of your visitors in more detail. Again, it is not the intention to keep your visitors glued to the screen for a long time with 1001 questions, but you can already ask an extra number of questions. Again, just as with the feedback polls, you choose where and when the pop-ups appear on the screen. In order to prevent participants from experiencing the survey as long-winded or disruptive, you can also add an incentive or clearly state that it is part of the plan to make your website even better and more user-friendly.

User recruits

7. Recruit Test Users

Last but not least, you can also invite people for user tests, newsletters and other feedback tests via Hotjar. Here too, visitors are shown a pop-up where they can fill in their details. All this data can easily be exported afterwards, so you can simply send an e-mail to all participants containing your newsletter or other invitations. Just like with the previous two feedback tools, you can choose on which devices the pop-up will be shown, and you can also adjust the introduction text to your heart's content to make a possible incentive stand out immediately.

Not a budget drainer

As you probably already know by now, you can go a lot of directions with Hotjar. With seven different tools that can help you analyse your website down to the smallest detail and provide the necessary feedback, you already have a very powerful tool in your hands to provide your digital project with just that extra bit of fuel. The even better news, especially for those who are interested in the financial side of the story, is that Hotjar doesn't leave a crush on your budget either. After all, the basic version, which gives you quite a few options, is free of charge, but the two paying versions have also been given an attractive price tag. The plus version will cost you €29 per month, while an even deeper business account will cost you €89 per month.

Maybe Hotjar doesn't know how to be as specialised in each part as if you would use a separate tool for each part, and also in terms of layout and content it is not the most flexible program on the market, but that doesn't outweigh the advantages. For a relatively low price, you get seven analysis and feedback tools that can take you a long way. Moreover, Hotjar also scores high in the field of user-friendliness, and each time you get a clear picture of all analyses or feedback. We at Calibrate are already fans, and warmly recommend Hotjar!

Convinced of Hotjar?

Would you like to take your analysis process to a higher level, in order to obtain maximum ROI through your website? Contact Calibrate for more advice on Hotjar, as well as for the integration and analysis of the results.