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Press play for an audio version of this guide. Click here to open up your Survey dashboard to follow along as you set up your Survey.
To create your first Survey click on NEW SURVEY from the Survey page.
Give your Survey a Name.
Giving your Survey a descriptive name will help you to be able to identify it easily. This name is not seen by your users.
Choose a Location.
Surveys can be displayed in the following ways:
- Popover - Appears as a small widget on your own webpage. User can still interact with other content on the same page.
- Full screen - Appears as a larger overlay that appears in the middle of the page the user is visiting. The background content is greyed out, so that the survey is the main focus.
- External Link - Appears as a stand-alone page that has its own designated web address (URL).
Add your Questions.
This step allows you to set up the questions you want to ask your users. Your new Survey has two questions by default.
Pin the last answer to the bottom of a randomized answer list!
When using Checkboxes or Radio button questions, you can randomize the possible answers a user can choose from. When using the randomize feature you can also pin the last answer to the bottom of the list. This feature is recommended when you want to include "Other" in your answer list.
Hotjar Surveys support the following question types:
- Long text answers - Displays a multi-line text box for the user to type in.
- Short text answers - Displays a single-line text field for the user to type in.
- Email (with validation) - Only accepts __@__.__ format. The validation checks the email address format but doesn't check to determine if the email address given is connected to an active inbox.
- Yes/No - 'Yes' and 'No' appear as radio buttons for the user to choose from.
- Radio buttons - allows free-form comments and randomization of answers options.
- Checkboxes - allows free-form comments and randomization of answers options.
- 1-5 and/or 1-7 Rating Scale - A custom question appears over a rating scale, allowing users to select a number 1-5 or 1-7.
- Net Promoter Score®
- Statement - Displays custom text without providing a response field. Statements contain a title field and an optional description field.
You can also:
- Easily add, delete, modify, and re-order questions as needed.
- See a preview of how your Survey will show and work – you can use it to test out the experience before you activate the Survey.
- Drag and drop questions from the Question Bank to help you get started. These pre-defined questions are an easy way to get quickly set up.
- Toggle whether or not questions are required. (Optional questions will display a Skip button)
- Include URLs in any question type to send your user to a page for reference.
- Add a Thank You message, to display to users when they complete the Survey.
Survey responses may be submitted with some questions left unanswered
It's possible to receive a Survey response with some of the questions showing blank space instead of an answer. This can happen when a user skips a non-required question, or if the user answers one or more questions within a Popover or Full screen Survey, then abandons the page without answering the remaining questions.
Hotjar will send the collected question responses to your dashboard and the questions that were not answered will show up with blank responses.
Modify Survey Appearance.
In this section, you will be able to modify your Survey's language, background and font color, its position on your page (Popover surveys only), as well as hide the Hotjar branding and customize the button color (available on Business plans only).
Additionally, External Link Surveys include the option to upload your own brand logo to the survey page.
Example of an External Link Survey
Select Page Targeting for Popover and Full screen Surveys.
In this section you will be able to:
- Select the device types that you'd like the Survey to appear on.
- Choose which pages the Survey should appear on. For more information, read our Page Targeting for Feedback Tools article and guide on how to Exclude Pages from being targeted.
- Set how many users should see this Survey as a percentage of your total users (Plus and Business plan feature).
Determine Behavior for Popover and Full screen Surveys.
From this section you will be able to:
- Set when the Popover or Full screen Survey should launch on the page
- Set how persistent the Popover or Full screen Survey should be
For more information on this section, read our Survey Behaviors Explained article.
Enable the Forward Response option.
All Survey responses can be forwarded to email inboxes so that you or your team members are notified when a user responds to a Survey. This allows you to know when responses are being received in real-time. You can add multiple email addresses in this field, separated by commas.
Your Survey is limited to 24 email notifications per day.
Hotjar will send an email notification for the first 24 responses received in any one day for each Survey. This is done to prevent your email from being overwhelmed if a Survey generates a high volume of responses.
Set the Survey status to Active and save your Survey by clicking Create Survey.
Once you save your Survey, it will appear in your Surveys list page. From here, you can set a Survey to Active or Inactive, view responses, edit your Survey, create a copy of it, delete it, or export your responses.
Having Issues?
Check out our Troubleshooting Widgets article if you encounter any issues.
Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.