Understanding how your website visitors behave is essential to the success of your online business. The best way to measure your website’s performance is through the use of web analytics tools. These tools will help you improve your website and increase conversion by offering insights into how your users behave, where they click, and whether or not they’re satisfied with their experience.

If you are looking for a seamless way to record your website visitors’ sessions, we encourage you to check out FullSession – it’s a web analytics tool that we are passionately building. We’ve analyzed dozens of tools that provide similar features to ensure that our customers’ experience with the product is top notch. Feel free to give it a try!

Hotjar is one of the tools we’ve analyzed. Today, we are happy to share our in-depth Hotjar review. Check it out and feel free to share your thoughts with us!

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Track how users interact with your website

Hotjar is a web analytics tool that helps you analyze the user behavior on your website and identify usability issues. Hotjar came as a solution to remove the guesswork from website or landing pages creation.

Hotjar captures all of the user actions and saves them in a database. It provides instant visual feedback that helps you see what your real users are doing, why they come to your website, and how they interact with it. The goal is to help you make informed decisions to improve the customer experience and ultimately reach your business goals.

For example, Hotjar might record the following user actions:

  • Clicking on a link to another page within your site
  • Clicking on the back button and moving backward through your website
  • Scrolling down or up in a long webpage, such as an article page
  • Moving the mouse over a link on your page
  • Clicking or tapping on images, buttons, and other interactive elements

It complements traditional analytics tools such as Google Analytics (check out our review of Hotjar vs Google Analytics for more details), helps you track user sessions in real-time, and gives you a full picture of the user journey. If you want to know how Hotjar compares with other web analytics tools, you can also read our Hotjar alternatives review.

Understand your site visitors with Hotjar

Hotjar is a quick and easy-to-use tool. It is suitable for beginner-level users, but advanced digital marketers can use it as well as an addition to their marketing analytics software. Hotjar has a user-friendly interface and visual representation of the data it provides, making it easier for you to understand why your users behave as they do.

The downside of this solution is that it has default options, and there isn’t much customization available. This means you can only customize some elements of Polls, Incoming Feedback, and Surveys widgets. Also, some of the users can find it hard to use some of the features. Luckily, Hotjar provides guides, tips, and tutorials to help you overcome these challenges.

Exactly what you can do with Hotjar

Businesses that have implemented Hotjar use it to acquire, convert, retain, and grow their audience. It offers a set of features that allow you to know your audience better. Using Heatmaps, Forms, Visitor Recordings, Funnels, Polls, and Surveys, you can receive high-quality feedback regarding your website’s features, features that are trending, and overall user experience without having to worry about the technical side of things.

Make good design decisions with Hotjar

Hotjar is a good tool for speeding up and streamlining the usability testing process. It is a great option for not only small and medium-sized companies but startups too!

It is a good solution for your business if you have:

  • Product team
  • Design team
  • UX team
  • Digital Marketing team
  • Support team

What made Hotjar different

While Hotjars competitors, such as Crazy Egg, have started to release similar features, Hotjar was the first to offer session recordings, combined with many feedback collection features from the CRO platform that allow you to see what you need to improve in your product or multiple sites.

Hotjar also provides feedback regarding lead generation, user engagement, sales, and customer support. These are all actionable insights that are vital to an online business’s success.

In summary, Hotjar brings a web analytics tool full of features, offers an intuitive interface, and has a fair pricing structure. Let’s discuss each feature to see how it can improve your web app.

1. Heatmaps

Heatmap

By using Hotjar heat maps, you can identify which page elements are catching your users’ attention. Hotjar heatmaps track where your users scroll or click on the individual page and their mouse movements as well.

The software gathers data based on users’ interactions with your site on any device and presents it visually. Analyzing this data will show where you need to make page elements, layout, or content changes to improve the customer journey.

You can also share this data with your team members for further analysis. By implementing corrective measures, you will improve your sales funnels and create high-converting landing pages or websites.

Hotjar heatmap feature lets you know:

  • If a user is not able to find a specific feature
  • If key elements of your web page are not accessible
  • If users aren’t scrolling to key sections
  • If users click on your CTA
  • If a specific feature is confusing your users

Hotjar tracks your users’ behavior anonymously. You can see how visitors move through your site and what they spend the most time on, but you will never find out their names or anything that could identify them. This way, Hotjar protects user privacy while still giving you the information you need to improve your web app.

2. Visitor recordings

Visitor recordings

How can you make sure your site is working well? Visitor recordings will let you know. This feature allows you to see clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements during real user sessions. With this information, you can identify usability issues and fix them to avoid any future headaches.

Video recordings help you see exactly what is happening during visitor sessions. You can use the replay sessions feature to pinpoint any specific problem on individual pages or multiple websites.

Also, Hotjar makes it easy to share or download session recordings and their metadata as a CSV or XLSX file. In addition, you can also take notes on visitor recordings to provide feedback and share them with your team members to improve collaboration while working on the same project.

Hotjar offers data retention for up to a year. It is a good option if you want to know what’s happening on your website for a long period.

Visitor recordings is one feature that we’ve polished in FullSession. Apart from advanced filtering options and in-depth analytics, FullSession doesn’t slow down your website unlike Hotjar. As you may know, loading speed is a ranking factor for Google so keeping your website fast and furious is one of our priorities. Try it for free and let us know your thoughts! 

3. Conversion funnels

Conversion funnels

If you’re running an e-commerce site, funnel-testing can help you see how easily your user can complete the checkout process. It can show you where your users drop off on your landing page or website and which page elements are more or less effective. Helping your users reach their goals, you are reaching your goals too!

One of the best ways to improve your conversion rate is to do A/B testing on your landing pages, websites and conversion funnels. A/B testing can help you figure out what elements work best for your product or service.

Data will help you optimize your landing page or site to get more people to sign up for your email list, buy your product, use your service, or take any action you want them to take.

4. Form analytics

The first step to fixing any problem is identifying the problem.  Hotjar includes form analytics as part of its conversion rate optimization platform so you can see how your potential leads are interacting with your forms, how long they are taking to fill them out, and where they are having issues that lead to decreased conversion rate. With its form analysis feature, Hotjar will provide a basic visual report and give you data on successful or unsuccessful submissions.

If you want to dig deeper into your form data, you can’t do that with Hotjar. One of the disadvantages of Hotjar is that it doesn’t provide in-depth form analysis, and it doesn’t let you split data by date ranges. If you need this type of information, you’ll have to turn to more advanced analytics tools.

5. User feedback polls

ser feedback polls

Why do people take certain actions on your website? The best way to find out is by using feedback polls. Feedback polls are a great way to generate feedback forms and let your users leave feedback directly on your website or landing page.

When users scroll, click, or tap on your website, you can show them your feedback polls as pop-ups. This way, you can allow your users to give you feedback easily, and you can incorporate this feedback into the next iteration of your website or landing pages.

6. Incoming feedback

Incoming feedback

Feedback is a significant part of any project, but unfortunately, it can be hard to get sometimes. That’s why it’s vital to make yourself accessible to your users all the time. One way to do this is by adding the Incoming Feedback widget on any page of your website.

You can place an incoming feedback widget on your website to allow users to share their opinion in real-time. It will help you learn how they feel when they use your web app.

Incoming feedback will help you collect actionable data about how they are engaging with your website, what they are responding to, and what elements they are ignoring. This information will help you improve your conversion funnels and increase your conversion rate.

7. Surveys

Surveys

Hotjar Survey is a very helpful feature for SaaS companies. These surveys allow you to ask your site users any questions to get the information you need. You can also survey an unlimited number of respondents. Later you can see the survey results in Form analytics.

Surveys can come in many different forms: they can be a part of your web page, come up in a pop-up, take over the whole screen, or even appear externally.

You can ask multiple questions in one survey, allowing users to focus on one question at a time and give them enough time to type their responses. Also, if you are using Hotjar’s Business plan, you can customize the look and feel of your surveys.

8. User testing recruitment

 User testing recruitment

Recruiting user testers is an easy and non-intrusive way to get meaningful user feedback. Your customers will be pleasantly surprised that you’re asking them to share their thoughts and opinions about your site, and the Hotjar widget allows them to sign up effortlessly. They can also remove the widget if they want to.

9. Other features

Hotjar is more than just a heatmapping tool. It contains many features you can use to improve your website. Below are some of the other less-known features that Hotjar provides. You can:

  • Invite multiple team members or clients without additional fees
  • Use different options for targeting visitors
  • Collect feedback in more than 40 languages
  • Test your website across all device types
  • Feel safe because your privacy is secured
  • Export and share feedback in CSV or XLSX
  • Easily install the Hotjar script
  • Integrate Hotjar with other tools

Compare and contrast: Hotjar vs Google Analytics

You can use both tools to measure website traffic and visitor engagement. They have some similarities however there are also some differences between these two solutions that may be important to consider. Google Analytics collects raw data about your visitors, while Hotjar captures visitor behavior in a visual way.

Hotjar is a popular tool that lets you track visitors on your website.  It’s great for understanding what pages and areas of your site are most effective at converting visitors into customers.

GA gives you detailed information about the traffic your website gets.  It shows you how many visitors came to your site, what pages they visit and where they spend the most time on the site.

Both tools are good at giving you valuable information about your website’s visitors.  However, if you want to understand the behavior of your website’s visitors in more detail, then Hotjar is probably a better choice for you.

If you want to learn more about the differences between these two solutions, you can read our full Hotjar vs.Google Analytics review.

Hotjar pricing

Hotjar cost can vary. Its pricing model is based on a monthly subscription. According to Hotjar reviews, it comes with a free version that is perfect for small businesses, startups, bloggers, and freelancers.

This personal, basic plan allows you to capture up to 1,000 pageviews/heatmap.  You can use this plan to test the tool and see how it works.  However, if you want more information about visitors’ actions on your site, then you’ll need to upgrade to the paid plan.

Hotjar pricing includes three paid plans – Plus, Business and Scale:

  • Plus plan is a good option if you have a small team. You can capture up to 100 daily sessions. It offers a free trial and costs $39/month.
  • A business plan is best suited for growing companies and websites and starts at $99/month.
  • Scale plan is best suited for large enterprises and starts at $389/month.

What we liked

We hope you like our review so far. We wanted to share this insight with you so you can see if Hotjar fits your needs. Now we’re going to talk about what we like most about Hotjar.

1. Quick and easy installation

Hotjar offers a simple and easy-to-use tool you can integrate into your website or product in minutes. It takes no time to set up and does not require extensive time and effort to use.

2. Integration options

Hotjar integration with other tools will help you find the insights you need faster. It helps you see all your data in one place. It eliminates the need for multiple software, which will save time and resources for your business. You can integrate Hotjar with:

  • Slack
  • Segment
  • Hubspot
  • Google
  • Optimize
  • Omniconvert
  • Optimizely
  • Zapier

3. Low learning curve

The first and most important feature of Hotjar is its user-friendly interface. It has a low learning curve and enables you to understand what your users are doing on your website fast.

It provides guides and tutorials that can help you understand how to use Hotjar and good customer support that will answer any questions you might have about the tool.

4. Visual reports

Hotjar helps you analyze your website’s traffic with an interactive dashboard that shows you real-time user behavior. Visual data reporting shows you how people interact with your site and gives you a better idea of what they’re looking for. It provides insights on how to improve your user experience and keep the bounce rate low.

5. Continuous improvements

We like that the Hotjar team continues to improve their product. They do this by adding new features and improving the old ones, making sure that you’ll be able to use them in the future as well.

What we didn’t like

We like the idea behind the Hotjar, and we think it has a lot of potential. However, there are also some downsides as well as features it lacks. We think you need to know about it before making your sign up decision.

1. Hotjar is not compatible with mobile apps

If you want to use Hotjar to collect user feedback for your mobile app, you’ll need to choose a different solution. You can use Hotjar primarily for websites or web apps, so it’s not compatible with mobile apps.

2. Hotjar can get pricey as you grow

Hotjar is a powerful way to collect feedback from your visitors. Its free version is a good option for smaller organizations, but as the number of website visitors grows Hotjar can quickly get very expensive.

3. You can’t create custom reports

Hotjar’s reporting interface lacks some crucial features that can make your life easier. You can’t create custom reports that summarise data from multiple elements on the page or even create a custom report that focuses on one particular page element.

4. Surveys have basic customization options

Surveys can be a great way to get your customers’ feedback, but Hotjar doesn’t offer advanced customization options. Currently, you can only change the background color, button color, and font color or add your logo.

5. It’s hard to tell if Hotjar measures all website traffic

Hotjar can’t track every user, but it equips itself with the latest technology to capture as much data as possible. The company tries to improve its performance and provide you with the most accurate information.

Reasons to switch to FullSession web analytics software

FullSession enables you to measure, monitor, and analyze the effectiveness of your website. You can also identify what types of content are performing best on your site and segment it for improved targeting strategies.

FullSession lets you conduct a more in-depth analysis of your website visitors compared to HotJar. Without affecting your site speed, it enables you to identify trends in user behavior and provides super accurate data to help you make strategic business decisions regarding your product development.

Create seamless digital user experience with FullSession

Companies need to recognize that the customer is at the center of their business, and they need to make sure all aspects are in place for an exceptional user experience. In other words, the process from beginning to end of the user journey should feel natural and simple for your visitors.

Seamless digital customer experience is the result of a full-stack approach to web analytics. FullSession has been able to bring together different parts of this process and give businesses an omniscient view of their website’s performance.

It allows companies to make informed decisions about their marketing strategies by having access to information from all angles and without missing any detail regarding how people are experiencing their products or services online.

Learn from a powerful behavioral analytics tool

FullSession lets you discover the data that drives your business. The idea of using behavioral analytics tools is to identify users’ behavior by analyzing their online interactions and pinpoint growth opportunities.

You can gain insight into which pages users access most often, where they come from, what links they click on, and what they do when they get there. You would be able to see the exact path they took on your website, how long it took them to make their decision and what products or services caught their attention.

FullSession current features

It’s often said that usability testing is an “all-or-nothing” process, but in reality, it’s a process of revisions that includes many steps:

  • Conducting usability testing
  • Evaluating findings and working to address them
  • Studying the results
  • Repeating for as many rounds as necessary

Making simple changes to your web app can make it more comfortable for your users with no major impact on your site performance. It is where FullSession comes in handy. We provide you the tools to test the most challenging ideas with ease. Continue reading and learn more about our current features.

1. Session recordings

Session

Session recordings allow you to log user’s actions such as clicks, taps, or mouse movements in real-time. The more time your users spend on a web page, the more likely it is that the site delivers value to them. This data will help you better understand your users’ needs.

2. Session replay

fullsession tools

The great thing about session replay is that you can see exactly what users do when they use your site or app, and you can play the recordings over and over again to pinpoint a specific problem.

Once you’ve identified an issue, you can start figuring out how to solve it. You can then use these findings to further improve your web app and fix problems before they affect your users.

3. Advanced user filtering and segmentation

fullsession advanced filtering

At some point, you have probably realized that your users were using the site in different ways. Maybe they had different needs, or came from different backgrounds, or were based in different countries. Advanced segmentation can help you understand digital engagement for each group of your customers.

4. Digital engagement

Fullsession advanced segmentation

It’s important to monitor your digital engagement and spot pain points, issues, and bugs that your users are facing, and spot solutions instantly. It’s never too soon to start gathering feedback from your users, and it’s never too late to implement changes and updates to improve your site performance

Features we plan to launch next year

We’re not done yet! Though we’ve achieved a lot in the past few months, there are still many new features on our list to launch next year. Exciting things are in store for you.

1. Real-time and interactive heatmaps

Interactive Heatmap

You no longer have to wait for your heatmap tool to process data. Instead, view it in real-time. This way, you can get accurate insights and stop relying on aggregated data.

User experience is crucial. When websites have complicated menus, it can create frustration for the user. With our interactive heatmaps, you can see which areas need improvement and decrease your bounce rate. It means more conversions!

Analyze your users’ journey through your site. It’s important to understand where they are dropping off.

2. Customer feedback

Customer feedback

FullSession tracks user interactions with your site or app and then provides you with visual feedback on how they’re using your product in real-time. You can then use that data to ask your users questions, figure out what they’re having trouble with, and then solve those issues.

Also, you can learn why customers left bad feedback by viewing recordings of their past sessions.

Why choose FullSession over Hotjar

It’s really hard to get a sense of what you do and don’t do well just by looking at your product. Since we’re serious about improving our solution, we deep-dived into the Hotjars tool and compared it with FullSession. Here is what we do better:

  • FullSession uses more sophisticated analytics tools to help you identify and eliminate friction points. It will help you improve conversion rate, increase revenue, save costs, and improve customer retention.
  • FullSession helps you understand which steps in the sales funnel are critical. You can see exactly how many leads you have converted and how many leads have dropped out from the sales funnel.
  • FullSession has advanced filtering options to find sessions that interest you and do more research. It will help you create a better experience for your customers.
  • FullSession will help you identify major events inside one session and save your time by getting to the essentials.

Oh, this is interesting. We found that your website becomes significantly slower when you use Hotjar. It’s not worth it because the data you’re gathering would take forever to load. In contrast, FullSession empowers you to determine the right customer experience without affecting the site’s performance.

Does FullSession have a free plan?

Fullsession free plan

Yes, FullSession is free! There are no hidden or upfront costs, no time limitations, and you don’t need to enter your credit card information to begin using the service. FullSession is:

Accessible: a useful service for everyone, no matter how much time or budget you have to spare.
Free and easy: you can get started with a few clicks.
No strings attached: we don’t ask for any personal information. We only want to help you improve your website’s usability!
To sign up for FullSession visit this page, simply enter your email address and password, and click on the “Sign Up Free” button. FullSession will then send you a confirmation email to activate your account within a few seconds. You can deactivate the account at any time you want.

Get all your questions answered

We’ve done some research and created a list of the most common questions we found on Google about Hotjar. We’ve answered them all for you.

Is Hotjar safe?

Your site and its data are safe with Hotjar. They take many steps such as end-to-end encryption, SSL technology, etc to ensure your data security and your users’ privacy.

Does Hotjar record all visits?

It is possible that some specific users will not be tracked. However, Hotjar should capture the majority of them in Heatmaps and Recordings.

How do you use Hotjar effectively?

You can use Hotjar for conversion rate optimization and conversion research. With it, you can measure and optimize conversion rates and sales funnels, and you can improve any type of website, from eCommerce websites to startup websites.

Who uses Hotjar?

It is best suited for large enterprises that need advanced functionalities or employees working as Product Managers, Product Designers, or Researchers.

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