Session capture needs to be enabled to capture Heatmaps
Continuous Heatmaps are based on sessions. In your Site settings, make sure that session capture is enabled and that you are tracking the pages you would like to see in Heatmaps.
Heatmaps are now based on continuous capture across all Business and Plus plans. This means Hotjar now captures data automatically and continuously across your site. With user session data constantly flowing into Heatmaps, you'll get access to insight with no setup, and no wait.
- How Continuous Heatmaps work
- How to view a Heatmap
- How to change your Heatmap Settings
- Troubleshooting FAQs
This feature is only available on Business and Plus plans
Continuous Heatmaps are currently only available to customers on our Business and Plus plans. Customers on a Hotjar Basic plan will collect Heatmaps in the form of snapshots.
How Continuous Heatmaps work
Heatmaps are available automatically and they start collecting data as soon as the Hotjar Tracking Code is installed. Minimal configuration is required; just ensure that session capture is enabled within your Site settings and Heatmap data will be collected alongside Recordings.
Heatmaps are generated from sessions instead of pageviews. Based on your plan, each Site on your Account has a daily session capture (Recording) rate. Below are the Daily Session Rates on Hotjar plans:
|
Plan Billed Monthly |
Pageview Collection Rate |
Daily Session Rate |
|
Basic |
2,000 pageviews/day |
|
|
Plus $/€39 |
10,000 pageviews/day |
100 sessions |
|
Business $/€99 |
20,000 pageviews/day |
500 sessions |
|
Business $/€189 |
50,000 pageviews/day |
1,500 sessions |
|
Business $/€289 |
120,000 pageviews/day |
2,500 sessions |
|
Business $/€389 |
200,000 pageviews/day |
4,000 sessions |
|
Business $/€589 |
400,000 pageviews/day |
8,000 sessions |
|
Business $/€989 |
800,000 pageviews/day |
15,000 sessions |
|
Need more? |
Remember, the collection of Heatmap data is based on your session capture. If you would like to learn more about sessions and sampling as it relates to Continuous Heatmaps, check out our article on What is a session?.
How to view a Continuous Heatmap
Verify session capture is enabled.
If you are on a Hotjar Business or Plus plan, continuous session capture is available for your site. You can verify this by visiting Heatmaps in your Hotjar Account and looking for a green icon next to “Capturing X sessions/day” in the top right corner.
If you hover over this box, you will see more information about your daily session capture settings, which will apply to both Recordings and Continuous Heatmaps.
If session capture is not enabled, you will see a green 'Enable Session Capture' button at the top of your Heatmap dashboard, which takes you to the session capture configuration page. To learn more, please see our article on How to Configure Site Settings.
If session capture settings are filtering out pages on your site that you wish to track, you can “Edit settings” to remove filters and see more results in both Recordings and Heatmaps.
Click on Heatmaps in the Hotjar dashboard.
Enter the URL of your Heatmap
You should see the search bar at the top of your Heatmap dashboard. You can view a heatmap for any page you've tracked by entering the URL here. You can also adjust your report targeting to suit your needs, including:
- URL is exactly
- URL contains
- URL starts with
- URL ends with
To learn more you can check out our article on Page Targeting for Continuous Heatmaps.
Why am I not seeing a Heatmap for the URL that I enter?
- If using 'URL is exactly', make sure you enter the URL exactly as it appears in the browser, which may include a trailing backslash, or protocol (https or http).
- If you’re not seeing any results on desktop, check the tablet and mobile tab.
- If no data is being returned for your Heatmap, check to see if you have any Recordings for the URL you want to view. If you have no Recordings, this means that there is no data for this URL.
Click 'Go'
The Heatmap should appear within 90 seconds.
There are some changes to how Heatmaps look
Continuous Heatmaps is an evolving feature so you may notice some changes. Some features in the previous version are not yet available. You’ll also now see a label indicating the timeframe for the data displayed and a message that tells you when the screenshot was taken. If you wish to see your manual Heatmaps, click “Switch to Manual Heatmaps” in the top right corner.
How to change your Heatmap settings
Session capture and targeting settings are now managed in the Site settings page accessible from your Site list or the “Capturing X sessions / day” widget in Heatmaps and Recordings.
Once session capture is enabled in your Site settings, then Heatmaps will automatically be collecting data based on those sessions and no configuration is required. Please note: Only Admin users have the option to modify session capture settings.
Click on Sites & Organizations in your Settings menu.
Select the cog icon of the Site whose settings you want to edit.
For more information on how you can configure Hotjar to capture user sessions, you can check out our documentation on How to Configure Site Settings.