How to View Your Survey Responses

Once you have received responses to your Survey, Hotjar provides multiple ways to view and filter the data you've collected. In this article, we'll cover your options in the following sections:

• Responses - Displays a list of individual answers that have been received with the associated metadata related to each response (such as Date, URL, Browser, OS, Device, etc.)
• Results - Displays a visual representation of all data collected for each question that was asked in the Survey.
• Performance - Displays the impressions, drop-off count, and abandonment percentage for each Survey question as well as an overview of your survey performance.
• Filters - This allows you to sort and view your survey data based on specific characteristics.

Responses

You'll see the Responses tab open first. This tab has all the responses listed in chronological order. By default, the drop-down menu will have All questions selected, showing you an overview of all the responses you've received. You can use this drop-down menu to view the answers to individual questions:

You'll also have the option to show/hide certain data columns, download them as an editable file, and forward responses to email or Slack:

The following columns can be shown or hidden in your Survey response view:

• Index number (#): Ascending numeric value assigned to each response that is received
• User: Hotjar User ID associated with the response
• Country: Country where the survey was submitted from
• Page: URL page where the survey was submitted
• Device: Type of device used to submit a survey (Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile) and window size of the browser
• Browser: Type of browser and version used to submit a survey (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, etc.)
• OS: Operating system and version used to submit a survey (Mac OS, Windows, Linux, etc)
• Date: Date that the survey was submitted (displayed in local timezone)
• Rate (thumbs up / down): This allows you to let Hotjar know if a response was useful or not. We're using this data to provide smarter analysis features in the future!

When hovering over a specific answer within any survey response, you will see the option to Add tags. Tags can be added or removed to individual answers, and are visible to everyone within your Hotjar Organization. You can then filter by specific tags to see the related answers in your Survey responses list.

Results

For a more graphic representation of your data, you can click on the Results tab and select the question you'd like to see the results for:

This will enable you to see all responses represented in either a word cloud or graph format. You may need to select the specific question you're interested in, to see the desired data.

Word cloud example

A word cloud is used to display results for open-ended questions, showing you the most frequently used words in replies. This is used for Short text answer and Long text answer question types.

 

Graph example

A graph will appear for other question types since those questions have pre-determined answers.

Performance

Select the Performance tab to get a better understanding of how many users are viewing and interacting with your survey questions. In this tab, you'll find an Overview and Breakdown of your survey data.

Overview

The Survey overview section is only available to Ask Business and Ask Scale customers. This chart provides an overview of your survey’s performance, based on the following metrics:

• Impressions - the total number of times this survey appeared to users.
• Starts - the number of users who interacted with the survey by answering at least one question, or by clicking the 'Skip' button if the first question was not required. 
• Completes - the number of users who reached the Thank You screen of the survey. Users who skip non-required questions, but finish the survey would be included here.
• Completion rate - the percentage of users who completed the survey compared to the number of users who started the survey.

Breakdown

The Survey breakdown table provides performance information from respondents who have answered at least one question. By design, Hotjar doesn't show data for the first question in the table. This is because that data would be skewed by all the users who did not interact with the survey at all, and we're more interested in those who started the survey but didn't complete it.

The Survey breakdown table includes the following columns:

• Type - refers to the question type as defined in your survey configurations. Example: Long text answer, Yes/No, Checkboxes, Rating scale, etc.
• Question - shows the text of the question itself.
• Impressions - the number of times the question was displayed to a user.
• Drop-offs - the number of times the question was not answered by a user who viewed it. If the question was not set to be required, a user can skip it, and that will not be counted as a drop-off. A drop-off occurs when the user left the page without reaching the "Thank You message" at the end of the survey.
• Drop-off Rate - the percentage of users who abandoned the survey after viewing the question, compared to the number of impressions. For example, if a specific survey question had 10 impressions and 2 drop-offs, then the Drop-off Rate would be 20%.
  

Filters

Surveys include the following filters for the Responses and Results sections:

Available on all plans:

• Date: View responses based on the date they were submitted. By default, this filter is set to the last 30 days.
• Page URL: View responses based on the page the user was on when the response was submitted. (Note: for Link Surveys, the Page URL will reflect the Hotjar Survey URL, not the page where the user was invited to take the Survey)
• Survey Completion: View only "Complete" or "Incomplete" responses. A "Complete response" means that the user reached the 'Thank You' page of the Survey, however, it's still possible that questions were left unanswered if they were optional and had a "skip" option.
• Recording: View responses from sessions that have been "captured" or "not captured" by Recordings. Ensure that your Survey responses are connected to Hotjar session data to use this filter.
• Keyword: View responses based on complete word or number values. It's important to remember that partial word searches will not return results.
• Rating: View responses that answered a Reaction Question based on the rating that was given.
• Tags: View responses that contains answers associated with one or more tags. To apply a tag to a response, hover over the response text and click the tag icon as shown in the screenshot below:
  
  

Available on Ask Plus, Ask Business, and Ask Scale plans

• Country: View responses based on the country associated with the respondent.
• Device: View responses based on the device used. (Ex: Desktop, Tablet, Phone)
• User Attributes: View responses based on the attributes associated with the respondent (if applicable).

Need some extra help? Check out our informative tutorial and our guide on using Survey Templates!