You understand the basics of using Hotjar and regularly check key heatmap pages, filter session data, or use surveys or feedback for real-time user responses. How do you take your Hotjar skills to the next level?
In this guide, we'll show you some intermediate-level tips to get even more insights from Hotjar.
- Filter your recordings by what users clicked on
- Create Recording Segments and track UTMs with Heatmaps
- Highlight important findings and share them with your team
- Trigger surveys or feedback on specific URLs and watch recordings connected to responses
Learn how other organizations use Hotjar to understand their users and make UX improvements
Visit our case studies to see how other organizations are using Hotjar.
Filter your recordings by what users clicked on
Add a clicked element filter to refine session data based on what your users clicked on. This can include buttons or links and using this filter doesn't require any additional code on your site. For example, apply a clicked element filter to view sessions from users who clicked on a CTA you're interested in monitoring.
The clicked element filter is available on Observe Business and Observe Scale plans.
Create Recording Segments and track UTMs with Heatmaps
Recording Segments are made up of a group of applied session filters that you've saved for reuse. This lets you quickly and repeatedly access your most relevant sets of filters when viewing recordings. If you have a few campaigns running, set up a recording segment and a saved heatmap for each campaign.
To create the recording segment, visit your Recordings list page, then click Add filter and select the Landing page path filter. Then enter the UTM you'd like to track and click Apply. Add any further filters relevant to your goals, then click Save segment and give your Segment the name of the campaign. You'll find your saved segments next to the tools sidebar when viewing the Recordings list page.
Segments are currently only available with the Recordings tool. However, you can apply the same filter set mentioned before to a heatmap, and then click Save to create a heatmap that is saved with your selected filter set for repeated viewing. You'll find these saved heatmaps also next to the tools sidebar when viewing your Heatmaps page.
Another use for Segments is finding where site visitors are dropping off in a conversion funnel so you can follow their journey and address any bugs or UI problems or pinpoint how specific groups of users are interacting with your site.
Highlight important findings and share them with your team
Use our Highlights tool to organize all the insights you're finding so they're ready to share with your team. Highlights lets you capture snippets from your recordings and heatmaps and group them into collections to analyze the results together with your team. Grouping these insights together in one place helps your team identify patterns, validate assumptions, and make decisions.
Trigger surveys or feedback on specific URLs and watch the recordings that relate to these responses
Set up a survey or feedback widget to appear on your key pages by using URL targeting. For example, you could add a survey or feedback widget to your thank you or order confirmation page. This page provides an opportunitiy to gather feedback on you users' experience with your order process.
Make sure to connect responses to the Recordings tool for your survey or feedback widget. This allows you to view the session recording that featured a response, giving you more context to the response provided.
While you're at it, consider creating an abandonment survey to trigger when the user leaves your site. You can target the survey on pages you've identified as having the highest exit rate.
