How to Use Trends

Trends give you the power to create and compare custom metrics in Hotjar that you can visualize in charts, track over time, and add to your Dashboard. Metrics you've created can be used to spot trends and help you to stay on top of conversions and product usage.

In this article, we cover:

• What can I use Trends for?
• How can I create and compare metrics?
• How can I add a trend to my Dashboard?
• What are the available chart types?

---

What can I use Trends for?

With Trends, you can:

1. Create and compare custom metrics against each other and over time.
2. Clickthrough to related recordings and heatmaps to see the relevant collected data and context behind your chart. A clickthrough to heatmaps will only appear when one Path/URL filter has been applied.
3. Take a trend you've created and add it to your Dashboard.

Trends use case examples

The following are some example use cases for Trends:

• Alongside redesigns or product launches, create a custom metric and track performance over time.

  Use our Events API to send events to Hotjar based on specific user actions on your site. Filtering by this event and other relevant filters inside Trends, create a custom metric that you'd like to monitor based on the redesign or product launch taking place. Coinciding with the redesign or product launch, apply date filters and create a chart to see the evolution of this metric and track it over time.

• Track conversions and usage for an A/B test.

  Define an event for each variant that's triggered when the particular variant is shown to a user. Send the variant events to Hotjar using our Events API, and filter your data by those events to track and compare conversion and usage metrics.

• Build charts for conversions and KPIs.

  Create custom charts for a set of KPIs you're following using custom metrics you've created in Trends. With custom charts, you could monitor things like conversions and engagement behavior, then clickthrough to view the underlying recordings and heatmaps behind the trends you're seeing.

• Visualize usage between customer groups, with User Attributes and Events.

  Start sending User Attributes to Hotjar, enabling you to look at differing customer groups. For example, you could send Hotjar the average order value of customers  and whether they are part of a loyalty program as attributes. Applying the user attributes filter, you can then view customers that are part of a loyalty program and those that are not. Add a second user attributes filter to compare these two groups for their average order value amount and a session duration filter to create a metrics to be followed during a campaign.

Back to top

How can I create and compare metrics?

Using the Add filter dropdown menus, add your first set of filters.

Filter sets are applied to sessions using AND logic. For example, adding a filter for new users with another filter for rage click events will show sessions where both of these are true. See our article on How Do I Filter Session Data for more details on available filters.

Click Compare with to add a further filter set.

Apply a date filter on the chart to refine your trend analysis.

You can compare up to 5 filter sets at a time. You can rearrange the filters and change the colors on the graph by using drag-and-drop.

Back to top

How can I add a trend to my Dashboard?

Create a new trend by following the steps above.

Click on + Add to Dashboard.

Enter a name and description for your trend, then click Add to Dashboard.

A success message will appear confirming that your trend was added to your Dashboard.

Back to top

What are the available chart types?

There are three chart types available in Trends: line charts, pie charts, and bar charts.

Line charts

Useful for seeing the progression of your created metrics over time and how they're performing relative to other metrics.

Pie charts

Helpful in showing the share of each of your metrics relative to each other. When using the date filter, the proportion shown will be the total for each metric, calculated from the date period you've selected in the date filter.

Bar charts

Enables you to see a distribution of metric results and their total values, which can be helpful when comparing across several metrics at once. As with pie charts, the total value shown is calculated based on the date period selected using the date filter.

Back to top