Improving User Experience 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 set up of Hotjar focused on improving your user's experience throughout your sites, showing you what tools to implement to give you actionable data.

Other checklists available based on your Hotjar goals are:

Improving user experience set up

Estimated total time: 40 minutes

Install your Hotjar Tracking Code.

The Tracking Code can be installed manually or by following along with one of our website platform guides. You will need edit access to your sites <head> section within the code for most installation methods.

References: How to Install your Hotjar Tracking Code

Start Recordings and set up tags.

Starting Recordings gives you immediate insight from the moment the first user comes to your site after installation. Set up automatic tags when a user interacts with a CTA element you are interested in. You will then be able to filter by this tag to view any Recordings that have this action.

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.

User adding a filter to remove a segment from the captured Recording list

Other tags that might be helpful are triggered when someone signs up for your monthly newsletter, clicks a video, interacts with a photo gallery, or any key interaction for your site.

Automatic tagging is a feature on our Plus and Business plans

If you'd like to add tags automatically based on user interaction, you can upgrade to one of our paid plans. Read more about what other additional features are available on a paid Hotjar plan.

References: How to Start and Stop Recordings, How to Tag your Hotjar Recordings

Set up Heatmaps to track your A/B tests.

Create a Heatmap for each of your testing variants to see how each is performing in real-time. As the data starts collecting, watch for hot spots on areas of your page or view the Scroll Heatmap to see which version of your layout is getting users to interact with the section of the page you want them to see.

Heatmaps may be based on continuous capture

Heatmaps for Business and Plus plans are now based on continuous capture. To start collecting Heatmap data, enable session capture from your site settings.

References: How to Create your First Heatmap, How to Monitor A/B Testing with Heatmaps

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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