In this article, we'll step through how to set up a Feedback widget inside Hotjar. It's important to remember that when creating a feedback widget it will be in a draft state (Inactive) until you set your feedback widget to Active in the last step of the creation process for your widget.
If you're getting started, you can run through the set up in the order presented below, starting at Step 1. Otherwise, if you're editing an existing feedback widget you can use the links below to skip to a particular step.
- Step 3 - Modifying your Feedback widget's appearance and screen position
- Step 4 - Adding questions and messages to show your users
- Step 5 - Configuring the targeting conditions for showing your Feedback widget
- Step 6 - Forwarding responses to email or Slack
Only our Ask Business and Ask Scale plans allow for color customization of Surveys and Feedback
Customizing the color of Surveys and Feedback is not available on Ask Basic or Ask Plus. Visit our Hotjar Plans article to find out more about what's included in each plan.
Click on New widget from the Feedback dashboard.
In the Details section, give your widget a Name and Description
A name will help you identify the widget internally. You can also add a description (optional). The description and name won't be visible to your users, but it will be visible to team members within your Hotjar Organization.
Customize your widget's Appearance.
Customers on an Ask Business or Ask Scale plan can also customize the widget label, color, remove the branding, and change the reaction style.
The language selected here only affects the components of the widget which are not customizable. This includes the rating labels, input placeholder text, and Send or Skip buttons. All customizable text in the widget will need to be manually written in your desired language.
Hotjar does not automatically translate text based on a user's preferred language settings.
A feedback widget or survey can only be set to appear in one language translation at any given time. In order to show the same survey in different languages, you would need to create a copy of the survey for each desired language and ensure the correct survey was targeting the desired users.
For the position of the widget, selecting "Bottom left" or "Bottom right" will cause the widget to appear like the one below, with a short, customizable welcome text. Note that this message will not appear when the widget location is placed in the middle of the screen.
If you select the "Middle left" or "Middle right" position, the widget will be more compact and will not show the welcome text. The label text will vary based on your language choice. Custom placement of the widget other than what is in the drop-down menu is not available at this time.
Accent color controls the appearance of the widget and other elements on your site. You may want to customize it to match the colors or theme in use on your site or choose a color to make it stand out.
For the Accent Color, either click to select from a color picker or paste the hexadecimal color code directly into the box.
The Alternate Color allows you to customize the color of contrasting elements in the widget.
Choosing to hide the branding, customize color, and change the Reaction Style of the emojis is currently only available on our Ask Business and Ask Scale plans.
In the Steps section, customize the messages shown to your users.
In this section, you'll be able to customize the messages and prompts that display to your users as they interact with the widget. These options include the following:
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Main Question: Customize the text that appears above the reactions and choose to automatically include a screenshot with the user's feedback with every response. When disabled, no screenshots will be captured unless the user specifically selects an element for their screenshot.
- Optionally, you can select the Display additional message checkbox to enable additional text. This allows you to display and customize the text that appears in the footer of the widget.
- Email Request: Customize the text that prompts a user to share their email address. This can be enabled or disabled.
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Thank you message: Customize the text that appears when the user has submitted their feedback. Beneath the Thank you message are two additional options:
- Show your site's legal name and privacy policy: this information comes from your Site Settings page in the Site information section.
- Connect Feedback Responses to Recordings
Set up Targeting criteria.
In this section, you can determine when the Feedback widget should be activated on your site. Determining when a widget should be shown can be based on a number of factors, including: the user's device type, the pages being visited, the attributes of specific users (based on the User Attributes feature available on Ask Business or Scale plans), or the based on the execution of a Javascript event during the user's session.
If you opt to show the widget on specific page URLs, rather than all pages, you have a number of customizable targeting options that you can learn about in our article: How to trigger Surveys or Feedback based on URLs or Events
Those on a paid Ask plan have the Traffic coverage option. This option allows you to only show the Feedback widget to a percentage of your users, instead of all users who would normally match your targeting criteria. This feature can be helpful to sites with very high traffic response rates, by reducing the volume of users who can see and respond to the widget. The percentage set in this setting will have no impact on your users ability to see other widgets that might be active on your site.
Can I use the % targeting for A/B testing?
The "% of users that will be asked for feedback" configuration on a Feedback widget will have no impact or association with the "% of users" configuration on another widget. This is true, even if both widgets are targeting the same page URL. Because of this, the "% of users" feature will not work for A/B testing.
Forward Feedback responses to email or another platform.
If you have opted to collect emails from users giving feedback, feedback messages can be forwarded to an inbox when users provide an email address. This allows you to receive this feedback directly, and respond back to the user. If you're on an Ask Business or Ask Scale plan, you'll have the option to push Feedback responses to Slack or Zapier as well!
In the Summary section, review and activate your widget.
In this section, you'll see an overview of your Feedback configurations. You'll have the option to make the widget active, by selecting the radio button next to Active. Once you're satisfied with your configurations, you can click Start Feedback (for new widgets only), Save changes, to remain on the configurations page, or Save & close to leave the page. After you've collected some responses, be sure to check out our article on Viewing your Feedback Responses.
You can set up multiple Feedback widgets across different pages of your site
This might come in handy if you want to display the Feedback widget in different styles across different page types, or if you have a website that offers content in more than one language and want to talk to your audiences in their native language.
Having Issues?
Check out our Troubleshooting FAQs for Feedback Widgets article if you encounter any problems.