From Friday July 1, 2022 we're moving accounts that were created before April 20, 2022 to our updated pricing model.
Under the updated pricing model, we've grouped Surveys and Feedback into a separate product called Ask that’s priced based on the number of responses you want to collect across Surveys and Feedback. Heatmaps and Recordings will be grouped into a separate product called Observe and will still be priced based on the number of daily sessions.
Both products, Observe and Ask, will have the Basic (free), Plus, Business, and Scale plans available, and the selected plan can be different for each product.
See the Updating our pricing model blog post for all the details on this update.
From May 2, 2022 Hotjar will no longer capture pages that are served to end users over HTTP instead of using HTTPS.
From May 2, 2022 we will no longer capture pages that are served using the HTTP protocol. This is to provide a more secure experience in Hotjar. We will only capture those pages being sent over HTTPS. In addition to Heatmaps and Recordings, this affects Feedback widgets and Surveys which won't display on pages using HTTP. For help on moving your site to HTTPS see this guide from Google on the steps you can take.
Heatmaps start collecting data as soon as the Hotjar Tracking Code is installed and session capture is enabled. Data is collected across all pages on your site that have the Tracking Code installed and there's no need to manually set up individual Heatmaps for each URL. In this article, we'll step through how to set up and view Heatmaps.
If you're getting started, you can run through the set up in the order presented, starting at Step 1 below. Otherwise, you can use the links below to skip to a particular step.
- Step 2 - Aggregating your heatmap data from a group of matching URLs
- Step 3 - Viewing your heatmap
- Step 4 - Applying filters to your heatmap data
Already set up your heatmap and looking for filtering or troubleshooting help?
For guidance on filtering Heatmaps, see our article on What are Continuous Heatmap filters? If you're looking for Heatmap troubleshooting help, visit our Continuous Heatmap FAQs article.
Watch an overview of Continuous Heatmaps
Further resources for topics mentioned in this video:
- Filtering heat data
- Updating or retaking a Heatmap screenshot
- Exporting a Heatmap image
- Creating a Heatmap Highlight
Verify that session capture is enabled by clicking on the traffic coverage widget in the top-right corner of the page.
The traffic coverage widget shows you information about your daily session capture settings, which apply to both Recordings and Heatmaps. If session capture is not enabled, you'll see a yellow Session capture is currently disabled message at the top of the page. Clicking on the link inside that message to Enable session capture in Site Settings takes you to the session capture configuration page.
Only team members with Admin permission levels can edit your session capture settings. To learn more, see our article on Configuring Site Settings and our article on What is a session? to understand how sessions and traffic coverage work.
You can trigger session capture to start for Heatmaps and Recordings based on the URL visited.
In the session targeting settings of your site, you can choose to start capturing sessions based on the URL that is visited. This feature is only available on paid Observe plans and for more details on setting this up, see our How to trigger Recordings and Heatmaps based on URLs article.
From your Heatmaps page, select the data grouping setting to be used for generating the Heatmap.
Heatmaps can show data from a single, specific URL or from a group of URLs that match your targeting criteria. When showing data from a group of URLs, you’ll only see one screenshot for your heatmap, but the data that appears over the screenshot will be aggregated from all the URLs matching your targeting criteria.
See our dedicated article on how to show Heatmap data from a group of URLs for more details
See our article on Aggregating Heatmap Data From a Group of Matching URLs for more details and examples of when URLs are correctly matching with each of the match type options.
Listed below are the five options that you can choose from.
-
Single page
This is the default match type and is used to target a specific page on your site, ignoring any query strings and fragments that might get added, as well as ignoring the protocol, HTTP vs HTTPS, and the presence or not of 'www'. -
Exact match
Displays data from users who visited a specific URL, including the protocol and any query strings and fragments. -
All pages containing
Displays data for all URLs which contain the entered text. This rule is case sensitive. -
All pages starting with
Displays “Exact match” results for all URLs that begin with the entered text, including the protocol. -
All pages ending with
Displays “Exact match” results for all URLs that end with the entered text, including strings and fragments.
Enter a URL from your site and click View heatmap.
If you've never viewed a Heatmap before, you may need to click on a Find heatmaps button before you can enter a URL.
After entering a URL and clicking View heatmap, the Heatmap should appear in less than 90 seconds.
Why am I not seeing a heatmap for the URL that I enter?
- 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.
- If using Single page with Exact match for the data grouping setting (described in Step 2 above) make sure you enter the URL exactly as it appears in the browser, which may include a trailing backslash, or protocol (HTTP or HTTPS).
- If the page you're trying to view a heatmap for has dynamic or slow-loading content, our screenshot tool may have issues showing a complete screenshot. This is a current limitation with Heatmaps that our team is working to address.
If the screenshot for your heatmap isn't showing as expected, try refreshing or taking a new screenshot.
Screenshots are taken from the last Recording found in the date range you've selected. You can refresh this screenshot or find the screenshot you want from the recording used to generate the original screenshot. For help with this, see our How to Update a Heatmap Screenshot article.
Use the pin page feature to quickly view this URL again in the future.
To quickly view this page URL again, use the pin page feature by clicking on the small pin icon to the right of the URL. This feature requires Write-level permissions, to learn more about access levels visit our Team Member Permissions article.
Note: The Pin page feature will allow you to jump to the same page URL in Continuous Heatmaps, using the Pinned pages section shown above, but it won't save any added filters on the existing Continuous Heatmaps.
Update the date range filter and add any Heatmap filters to display only those sessions that match your filtering criteria.
For more detail on all the available Heatmap filters and example use cases, see our article on What are Continuous Heatmap filters?
Having any trouble?
Check out our Continuous Heatmap FAQs article if you encounter any issues.