Common questions, tips, and help with Surveys and Feedback.
- Why is the widget not appearing or why am I no longer receiving responses?
- Why is my widget not translating the questions when I select another language?
- Why does the widget look distorted or have missing icons?
- How do I disable or hide the Feedback widget?
- Can I customize the color/style of the widget?
- What if I have multiple widgets set to target the same page?
- Can I customize the placement of the widget?
- How do I change the Privacy Policy URL for consent?
- Why am I getting feedback responses with no message from the user, only an emoji?
- Can a Survey be answered more than once if the Survey type is changed?
Why is the widget not appearing or why am I no longer receiving responses?
Your Hotjar Ask plan will determine how many responses you can collect each month.
Check out How the Ask Plan Response Allowance Works, for more details on how your monthly response limits are applied. For more information about plan limits check out our pricing page.
To work out why your Survey or Feedback widget is not appearing, here are some key checks to make:
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Are there still responses available for this month in the response allowance for your subscribed Ask plan?
When the response allowance limit for your Ask plan is reached, the Survey or Feedback widget will stop showing on your site. Inside Hotjar, a banner above your Survey or Feedback widget indicates when you’re at 50% and 100% of your response allowance. The widget will reappear when your response allowance is reset the next calendar month or if you upgrade in the meantime, making more responses available. To check response allowances across our Ask plans, visit the Hotjar pricing page.
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Has the widget been created on the correct Hotjar Site?
If you have more than one Site, ensure your widget was created on the correct Hotjar Site. You can switch between your Hotjar Sites by clicking on the building icon in the top-left corner inside Hotjar.
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Is the Tracking Code installed on the page where you're wanting to show the widget?
Use the Verify installation tool and check your target URL to test this.
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Is the Survey/Feedback widget set to Active?
Your widget will be in a draft state (Inactive) and won't appear on your live site until you set your widget to Active in the last step of the set up process for your widget.
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Have you already answered, or previously taken an action on the live widget?
Depending on the widget and settings, Hotjar stores a cookie when you answer or close a widget so that the same widget doesn't show again. Use a Chrome Incognito browser, which does not store cookies, to test this. This rule does not apply to Feedback tool widgets.
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Does your browser have enhanced security settings enabled?
If you're using a Private or Incognito browsing mode, check to see if enhanced security settings are being enabled. These might be preventing some Hotjar tools from loading.
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Does your browser have cookies enabled and is a supported browser?
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Is your Content Security Policy blocking any aspects of Hotjar on the page?
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Are there other Surveys or Feedback widgets targeting the same page with a greater level of priority?
If multiple widgets are targeting the same URL, only one can be displayed at a given time.
Why does the widget look distorted or have missing icons?
If your widget isn't showing correctly on the targeted page, or if fonts and layouts seem off, your site's CSS may be overriding the Hotjar widget's CSS. Review the site's CSS to prevent it from targeting the selectors used in the Hotjar widget.
A possible fix for this would be to have your developer add a :not() pseudo-class to the affected CSS selector. This would apply the styling to all buttons except for those which match the argument set in :not().
Hotjar widget elements have a class applied beginning "_hj", so for most sites you can apply a :not() which says, "don't apply this CSS to anything that has a class starting with '_hj'".
For example, if your CSS is targeting a button element, your CSS rule could be button:not([class^="_hj"]). There are other ways to resolve this, so consult with your web developer to determine the best options for your site!
How do I disable or hide the Survey or Feedback widget?
You can deactivate any Survey or Feedback widgets by switching the status from Active to Inactive.
Can I customize the color/style of Surveys or Feedback widgets?
Hotjar does not have the ability to customize the CSS of the Surveys or Feedback widgets. For Ask Business and Ask Scale plan customers, you're able to change the color within the Appearance step of your setup. Find more details on our pricing and plans on the Hotjar pricing page.
What if I have multiple Surveys or Feedback widgets set to target the same page?
Hotjar will not show all the widgets to a user when the page loads
It will show the most recent widget created instead. Any Feedback widgets will always be visible last.
You are able to set multiple feedback widgets to target a page, but Hotjar will only show one widget on a targeted page at a time, to avoid user frustration.
The Feedback tool is always given the lowest priority, while for Surveys, the most recent one that you created will have the highest priority.
Example
If you created the following items targeting the same page:
4 days ago: Survey 'A' targeting the homepage
3 days ago: Started a Feedback widget
Yesterday: Survey 'B' targeting the homepage
Each widget will show one at a time starting with Survey 'B' since it's most recently created. Survey 'A' will only show if the user answers Survey 'B' and visits the homepage again while browsing. Once both Surveys have been answered, the Feedback widget will show.
Can I customize the placement of the widget?
Custom placement of the widget other than what is in the drop-down menu is not available at this time. The full list of widget placement is listed in our Feedback tool set up guide.
How do I change the Privacy Policy URL for consent?
To change the URL for the Privacy policy page link, you will need to visit Sites & Organizations. Click on the gear icon to enter the Site editor where you can paste the new URL. Only a team member with Admin access or higher will be able to make these changes.
Why is my Survey or Feedback widget not translating the questions when I select another language?
The language selected within the widget set up only affects the text of the widget which is 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 in the next step.
It is not possible to create a single survey which dynamically adjusts its language.
Each Hotjar survey can only be configured to display in one language at a time and customizable text will not be translated automatically. User Attributes, available on Ask Business or Scale, and Events, available on Ask Plus, Business, or Scale can be used to target users with different surveys based on their preferred language.
Why am I getting Feedback responses with no message from the user, only an emoji?
When viewing a Feedback widget, your users will be prompted to click on an emoticon (Love, Hate, Neutral, etc.), and then asked to provide a message to explain their sentiment. In order to click the "Send" button, the user must enter text into this text field. However, some users will choose to abandon the widget or leave the page, after clicking on a sentiment without submitting a message.
When this happens, Hotjar will store the sentiment (emoticon) response, but the feedback message associated with their response will be blank. Currently, it's not possible to ignore feedback responses that do not include a message.
Can a Survey be answered more than once if the Survey type is changed?
It is possible for a survey to be answered more than once if the type is changed from Link to Popover or Full Screen, after the survey is created. This is because survey interactions that occur on an external page (using a Link Survey) are evaluated separately from surveys that appear on your website (Popover or Full Screen).
For example, if a user responds directly to a Link Survey and an invite is later added to the page, the user would be able to see and accept the invite that appears on your website, but they would not be able to answer the survey twice. Instead they would see a message thanking them for already submitting the survey.
Similarly, if a user declines an invite to a Link Survey and the survey type is later changed from Link to Popover or Full Screen, they would be able to see and respond to the popover or full screen survey. The reason is that Link Surveys use different cookies than the on-site surveys (Popover or Full Screen), to determine who has interacted with them in the past.