User Attribute targeting is only available to Business plan customers.
User Attributes are available on Hotjar Business Plans. If you're interested in enabling User Attributes, Read more about upgrading your Hotjar Plan.
Before going through the steps below, be sure to check out What are User Attributes? for more information and some examples of how it can be used!
Setting up User Attributes is a 4-Step Process:
- Decide on the User Attributes most relevant to your business
- Review your privacy considerations
- Enable User Attributes and implement the code using Hotjar's Identify API
- Start using User Attributes in Hotjar!
Decide on the User Attributes most relevant to your business.
You should start by assessing what data from your own site's database you want to send to Hotjar as User Attributes.
Here are some common uses for User Attributes to get you started thinking about what is relevant to you:
- Filtering Recordings by paying customers.
- Display a Survey to users who signed up in the past 30 days.
- Asking for Incoming Feedback to all users who purchased a total of $500 worth of product from your site.
- Asking signed-in users to fill out a Survey.
A list of the data you'd like to send (users you'd like to target) should be given to your web developer to see if the values are available from your site.
Review your privacy requirements.
Hotjar is designed to help you anonymize data as much as possible by default, making it easy to conform with privacy legislation such as the GDPR without having to undergo too much extra work.
User Attributes are slightly different since they can include Personally-Identifying Information (PII). With User Attributes, we want to empower your ability to manage personal information sent to Hotjar while complying with privacy legislation.
You can read more about Hotjar's stance on privacy on our privacy page. We recommend reviewing your data privacy requirements before implementing User Attributes.
Since PII must be deleted if a user requests, you are required to send a User ID as part of your User Attribute if you wish to send any PII to Hotjar. More information about deleting PII based on user requests can be found in What are Hotjar's User Lookup features?
Enable User Attributes and implement the code using Hotjar's Identify API.
User Attributes must be installed/enabled with the help of your developer
The ability to send User Attributes to Hotjar will be disabled until you have enabled them in your User Attributes page and successfully added/written the User Attribute code.
On your User Attributes page, find the Site you want to add User Attributes to using the selection drop-down. Click Enable User Attributes.
This snippet is an example of the kind of code you might need to have on your page. Your web developer will need to write additional code to send user attributes to Hotjar. Detailed coverage of the Identify API is available in the Identify API Reference Guide.
Once your developer pastes the snippet and adds the additional coding, you will be presented with a dialogue box. The pop-up confirms you have reviewed privacy considerations before enabling User Attributes, including agreeing to have signed a Data Processing Agreement with us.
Once enabled, calls to the Identify API will pass User Attribute data to Hotjar for this Site.
It is possible to disable User Attributes on this page as well. Check out How to disable User Attributes for a step by step guide.
Start using User Attributes in Hotjar!
Once you have enabled User Attributes, and your developer has implemented the code necessary to send data to Hotjar, you will start seeing them appear in the User Attributes management page.
From here, you can currently do the following with User Attributes:
- Filter Recordings by User Attributes.
- Target feedback widgets by User Attributes.
- Lookup and delete user data by user ID.
- When you export Survey data as CSVs/XLSX files, User Attributes will appear in the data.
When testing Survey exports, user attributes may not be added immediately
The user attributes service is separate to the Survey feature. When you're testing your user attributes have been correctly added to Survey results, you may want to wait up to 30 minutes for attributes to be associated with the Survey results.