Quickstart Set Up Checklist – Hotjar Documentation

Follow along with our Getting Started checklists to start collecting data that will help you achieve your goals. This checklist goes over a basic set up of Hotjar, implementing tools that will give you actionable data.

Other checklists available based on your Hotjar goals are:

Quickstart set up

Estimated total time: 30 minutes

Install your Hotjar Tracking Code.

The Tracking Code can be installed manually by inserting it directly into your site's HTML <head> element, or by following along with one of our website platform guides.

References: How to Install your Hotjar Tracking Code

Create a Heatmap for your highest traffic and landing pages.

Heatmaps may be based on continuous capture

Heatmaps for Business and Plus plans are now based on continuous capture. To make sure that you are capturing Heatmap data, verify that session capture is enabled in your Site Settings.

A great way to start finding problem areas of your site is with your pages with the highest traffic or your main landing pages.

Once the data starts to collect, you can gain quick insights by exploring heat clusters, as well as your Scroll Heatmap to see how far users are going down your page. Check out How to Analyze a Heatmap for more tips.

References: How to Create your First Heatmap, How to Analyze a Heatmap

Start Recordings and create segments.

Users on Hotjar Business and Plus Plans capture Recordings continuously.

If you are on a Business or Plus plan, you can start/stop Recordings from your Site Settings. Users on Basic plans must create Snapshots.

Starting Recordings gives you immediate insight from the moment the first user comes to your site after installation.

Once you have more than your first few Recordings, use filters to pinpoint Recordings relevant to questions that are most important to you. For example, you could filter your Recording list by a specific UTM you are interested in with the Landing URL.

Often, you'll want to use the same filters over and over. You can quickly save filters as segments, allowing you to apply filters at the click of a button.

References: How to Start and Stop Recordings, What are Recording Filters?, What are Recording Segments?

Create an Incoming Feedback widget on pages you'd like more insight on.

Adding an Incoming Feedback widget lets the voice of your users be heard about your site. See what they like and dislike on each of your pages to quickly find bugs or improvements that can be made.

Hotjar IDs from Feedback responses can be linked up with Recordings to watch the session the user gave their response for more context.

References: How to Create your First Incoming Feedback Widget, How to Connect Feedback Responses with Recordings

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