Incoming Feedback allows you to get visual and instant feedback from your users. Ask your users directly which elements of your site they love and which they would like you to improve. This removes the guesswork from improving your user experiences.
Need help setting up Incoming Feedback?
For a step by step guide on setting up your Incoming Feeback widget, head to How to Create your First Incoming Feedback Widget.
The Incoming Feedback Widget
The placement of the Incoming Feedback widget is configurable in your settings, and the appearance adjusts depending on the location chosen.
When placed at the bottom of the screen, the Incoming Feedback widget contains a short welcome text which is customizable. If placed on the left or right of the screen, your users will see a Feedback indicator. Widgets placed on the bottom of the screen show a welcome message. Widgets on the left/right are more compact.
Your users can activate Incoming Feedback by clicking on the widget. If they don't want to leave feedback they can click the X to minimize widgets on the bottom of the screen to take up less space.
Hotjar sets a cookie on the user's browser
This is done when a user minimizes or completes Incoming Feedback. The next time the user goes back to the site or navigate to another page, the Incoming Feedback will load as minimized immediately. Learn more about the cookies we store.
If your user chooses to leave feedback, they are first asked to rate their experience on your site from Hate all the way up to Love, giving a valuable first impression of user experience with your site.
In addition to the rating, the prompt asks to provide a longer description of exactly what made them rate your site in this way. Optional custom text can also be added to the footer of the widget, to direct your user to other resources if needed.
Prompt for your users to add more detail to their feedback.
As part of the additional feedback, users are also given the opportunity to take a screenshot of the specific elements on your page that prompts them to provide feedback to you.
Users can provide a screenshot of a specific element that has prompted them to provide feedback.
The User can then add their email to be sent to you in if they would like to be contacted about their response or for further feedback.
This can be useful if you need further information from their visit to solve a problem identified with the site, to notify them once something has been fixed, or if you just want to say thanks personally.
Once your user submits their feedback, they will receive a final thank you message and the Feedback widget will return to a collapsed state.
Widgets placed on the bottom no longer show the welcome message once they have been completed — or after they are closed by your user. This keeps the widget out of the way but still allows your users to provide additional feedback in the future.
Customization options
Incoming Feedback can be customized in a number of ways, including:
- 4 different positions where the widget appears on the page
- Accent and alternate light/dark colors for the icon and other features
- The ability to automatically capture full page screenshots with every submitted feedback
- Language support for non-customizable elements
- Targeting to desktop, tablets or mobile users specifically
- Target specific pages by URL
- Optionally collect email from users giving feedback
- Optionally add custom text to the footer of the feedback widget
- Forward feedback containing an email address to a specific email account
- Target a specific % of users available on Plus plan or higher
- Target using Javascript events available on Plus plan or higher
- Toggle Hotjar branding, only available on Business plans
- Customize emoticon styles or use a five-star rating scale, only available on Business plans
Responses and results
If multiple Incoming Feedback widgets are set up, these responses can be viewed by clicking the grey View Responses button in your Incoming Feedback dashboard.
Incoming Feedback list view
Incoming Feedback responses view
The toolbar at the top allows you to select between viewing individual responses or a graphical view of results over time.
In the Responses view you will see a list of all received responses from your users, together with a screenshot, if provided, a rating and a message. If there is no message, only the rating and screenshot will show.
See each user's feedback in Insights with a rating, attached screenshots, and text.
Hover over an individual response to see the device, browser, and operating system for that user.
The Results view gives you the big picture, allowing you to track user happiness over time. Ratings you've received are displayed as a timeline graph of average feedback rating. The total counts for each rating and percentage of each are also shown on the right-hand side.
You can also find summary statistics of feedback over time.
Just like for the Responses view, here you can also filter the responses to only include those that have occurred within a specific timeframe, or those whose URL matches a particular pattern.
This can be useful to see the effects of changes you've made to your site on user satisfaction with specific pages or the whole experience.
Try it out!
Get a feel for Incoming Feedback by giving us feedback. Our widget is located on the right of the page. If you like what you see, head to How to Create Your First Incoming Feedback Widget to get started.