You already have a good understanding of all Hotjar tools, and you'd like to use Hotjar for a more customized session analysis. Let's explore some features that can be useful for advanced Hotjar users!
In this guide, we'll show you how to:
- Use Hotjar APIs to set up User Attributes and Events
- Use User Attributes with Recordings
- Track A/B Test Results with Heatmaps
- Create Funnels to analyze the user journey
Use Hotjar APIs to set up User Attributes and Events
To find even more insights with Hotjar, you can use our APIs to pass additional parameters about your users and their activity on your website to Hotjar. You'll then get access to the Events and User Attributes options while filtering your recordings and heatmaps or setting up surveys.
Setting up Events
Events API allows you to send Events to Hotjar using JavaScript when specific actions take place on your site, saving them inside Hotjar as Events.
When you set up Events, you can identify specific user behavior, such as automatically detecting when a user adds or removes products from their basket. You will then be able to filter by these Events to view any recordings that show this action. Other Events that might be helpful can be triggered when someone signs up for your monthly newsletter or clicks a CTA element that you'd like to keep track of.
The basic format for a call to the Events API is:
hj('event', 'action_name');
Follow the steps described in How to Set up Events to start using this advanced feature.
Setting up User Attributes
Identify API allows you to pass data about your users to Hotjar using Javascript, saving them as User Attributes. For example, when you set up User Attributes, you'll be able to see when a user created an account, what plan they're on, or their total amount of purchases.
You can use User Attributes for filtering recordings and targeting surveys, as well as performing user lookup and deletion requests by User ID.
Before you make calls to the Identify API, make sure that User Attributes are enabled in your Settings. Then, you can copy the sample code snippet and adjust it to your own website setup.
To get more detailed instructions about setting up User Attributes, follow the steps in How to Set Up User Attributes.
Use User Attributes with Recordings
Once you set up User Attributes, you can use them to filter Recording data to focus on sessions from the users you care about the most.
When you navigate to the Recordings dashboard, you'll see User attributes as an available option in your session filters:
After clicking on the User attributes filter, you'll have several options on how to filter your recordings:
Once you've selected which User attribute you'd like to view, or not view sessions for, click Apply to filter your recordings results. Additionally, you can save any filters applied as a Segment to help find your preferred sessions quicker.
Track A/B Test Results with Heatmaps
First, you'll need to use either Hotjar Events or an integration (Omniconvert, or Optimizely) to implement your A/B test.
After setting up the A/B test and data has been gathered, you can then search for the URL in your Heatmap dashboard. Based on your set up, you can use either the Event or Experiment session filters to select the control version of your page.
From here you can save the heatmap for easy access later by clicking on the blue Save button in the top right corner.
Next, to compare this side by side with a variant, you can open your Heatmap dashboard in a second browser tab, as you did with the control page, but this time apply a session filter for the variant.
Selecting the Engagement zones map, which combines click, move, and scroll interaction data into one view can help you spot patterns and understand what content your users find most valuable between test variations.
Engagement is shown for the last 3 months from the selected date range and in three levels that are relative to the page:
- Moderate (pink): Some engagement among available interaction data.
- High (light red): Lots of engagement among available interaction data.
- Very high (red): The most engagement among available interaction data.
The higher the engagement is in an area, the more likely a user has either moved or clicked on elements on that part of the page.
This is helpful in understanding if users are interacting with elements on the variant page as you'd expect, as well as discovering areas on your page that you may want to move higher up or bring more attention to.
For even more in-depth tips to analyze your A/B test with heatmaps, check out our How to Find Patterns in Heatmaps course.
Create Funnels to analyze the user journey
A more advanced way to analyze your users' sessions is to build a funnel. This feature helps you visualize conversion steps and drop-offs on your site and make comparisons across segments. You can also watch specific recordings connected to a funnel to understand the reasons behind drop-offs and conversions better.
To build a funnel, go to Funnels and add up to 10 steps to visualize your users' journey. Then, add relevant filters to compare different segments of users interacting with this specific flow.
You can also click through to recordings and watch sessions connected to each step. In the Recordings Player, you'll see your Funnel steps corresponding to each page in the recording.
