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Content for UX, product, and digital empathy experts
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Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
Using heatmaps to improve your website’s UX: 5 ways to get started
From page design to site usability, there are plenty of factors that impact user experience. Pinpointing what leads to a bad experience can seem like a daunting task. With heatmaps (also known as “heat maps”), you can visualize key user interactions and gather meaningful insights with ease to ensure your site delivers an outstanding UX throughout the entire user journey.
Fio Dossetto
Filters
Search
Optimizing digital experiences
Ecommerce
Unlocking consumers’ industry-specific design expectations
Hotjar’s Coming in Hot Report revealed consumers have different needs, challenges, and expectations for website design based on a brand’s specific industry. Let’s dig into how their preferences vary between ecommerce, healthcare, and financial sites to reveal how these brands can improve their online presence.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
Customer behavior: how to create a cohesive omnichannel experience in the buying process
The term 'omnichannel' has long surpassed its initial buzzword status to become a cornerstone of modern retail strategy. The consumer landscape has changed dramatically, driven by technological advancements and evolving consumer preferences.
Today's consumers are channel-agnostic and incredibly discerning, often interacting with brands across multiple touchpoints before making a purchase.
Alex Selwitz
Ecommerce
SEO writing: how to create content for Google (and delight your users)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a popular inbound marketing strategy for good reason. Done well, it works wonders—magnetically drawing users from Google to your website.
But writing for SEO is challenging. Search engines use complex algorithms to sift through billions of pieces of content, selecting a treasured top ten for each query. You have to use a seemingly magic combination of ingredients on your web page for a chance at a high-ranking spot on the list.
Hotjar team
Marketing
6 traits of top marketing leaders (and how to cultivate them in yourself)
Stepping into a marketing leadership role can stir up a mix of emotions: excitement, optimism, and, often, a gnawing doubt. "Do I have the right skills to truly lead and inspire?" If you've ever wrestled with these uncertainties, you're not alone.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
7 steps to strategically prepare for a sales call
Whether you’re a seasoned sales representative or a marketing newcomer, each conversation with a potential customer is an opportunity to nurture a lasting relationship and drive business goals forward.
But without a clear strategy and solid call preparation, you may leave customers unengaged or unconvinced, leading to lost sales and revenue.
So how do you ensure you’re fully equipped to meet—and exceed—a prospect’s needs and expectations before you’re on the call?
Hotjar team
Marketing
The 7 best BI tools for marketers in 2024 (and how to use them)
Whether you're sifting through campaign attribution data or reviewing performance reports from different sources, extracting meaningful business insights from vast amounts of data is an often daunting—yet critical—task many marketers face. So how do you efficiently evaluate your results and communicate key learnings?
This is where business intelligence (BI) tools come in, transforming raw data into actionable insights that drive informed, customer-centric decisions.
Hotjar team
Marketing
6 marketing trends that will shape the future of ecommerce in 2023
Today, marketing trends evolve at the speed of technology. Ecommerce businesses that fail to update their marketing strategies to meet consumers where they are in 2023 will be left out of the conversations that drive brand success.
Geoff Whiting
Ecommerce
Shopify vs Squarespace: an in-depth comparison for 2023
If you’re just starting out on your ecommerce journey, you’ll have one critical question: which platform is the perfect fit for your business?
With so many options, from full-scale ecommerce solutions to website builders, it’s not easy knowing which one will set your online business up for success.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
Abandonment issues: why shopping carts get left behind (and what to do about it)
From hidden shipping costs to an overly complicated checkout process, there are many reasons online shoppers ditch their carts without completing a purchase.
While abandoned shopping carts are common for many ecommerce brands, they don't have to be. By understanding why people abandon their carts, you can address these common cart abandonment reasons in advance, enabling you to optimize your ecommerce site, win happy customers, and make more sales.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
Shopify vs BigCommerce: which ecommerce platform is right for you?
Choosing which ecommerce platform to launch your store on is no small decision. You’re picking the policies that’ll govern your business for its whole life, and a set of technical capabilities that’ll make or break the customer experience.
With more than 2 million daily users, Shopify is the Titan of ecommerce platforms. BigCommerce, with around 1 million users overall, is hot on its heels. Weighing up the merits of Shopify vs Bigcommerce is no mean feat, not least since they’re both great platforms that host thousands of successful ecommerce businesses.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
Shopify vs WooCommerce: a deep-dive guide to help you choose the right fit in 2024
As an ecommerce business owner (or a soon-to-be one), you have a long list of decisions to make.
Choosing a platform to host your store is a big one. Got Shopify and WooCommerce among your options and want a thorough comparison of the two? You’re in the right place.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
Shopify vs Wix: which is better to build your online store?
Choosing the right platform for your ecommerce store can be tricky. With slick marketing campaigns, long lists of features, and countless reviews to consider, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed before you even make your first sale.
That’s why we’ve done the hard work for you and compared two of the most popular ecommerce platforms. Who will come out on top in the battle between Shopify vs Wix?
Ecommerce
How to use a cart abandonment survey to bolster ecommerce conversions
It's no secret that bad or broken user experience (UX) drives up cart abandonment and, consequently, revenue loss. But cart abandonment reasons differ from brand to brand, site to site, and user to user.
Hear it straight from your customers when you create relevant surveys with the Hotjar Surveys tool. By including the voice of the customer (VoC) in your analysis, you’ll unlock insights that help fine-tune your UX and, ultimately, improve conversions and sales.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
8 simple steps to take your brick-and-mortar store online
Online shopping is the future—and the future is definitely here.
If you’re a brick-and-mortar retailer, it’s increasingly difficult to remain relevant without an online store. Customers expect the convenience and variety of online shopping, and meeting your customer’s expectations is essential to remain in business.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
23 cart abandonment stats you need to know to improve sales in 2024
Are you investing significant effort and budget into your SEO, ads, and overall marketing but seeing no increase in sales? If users fill their carts on your site only to abandon them, much of that investment goes to waste.
But you already know this—that’s why you’re looking for cart abandonment statistics: to benchmark your online store against and determine what you really need to change in your ecommerce buying experience.
Hotjar team
Ecommerce
5 ways to recession-proof your business in 2024
It’s hard to avoid all the water cooler talk about a looming recession.
If you spend any time on social media—today’s virtual water cooler—a quick scroll through your feed will have you anxiously gripping your computer mouse and googling ways to recession-proof your business.
Hotjar team
Marketing
How Hotjar uses Hotjar: 9 powerful use cases
Hotjar’s heatmaps and recordings provide context to real data. Here’s how the Hotjar team uses their tools to improve site performance and marketing efforts.
Sharon Biggar
Marketing
How to show customers the same love they show you
Brands worry about how to treat customers. The answer is to show them love by listening and creating flawless experiences that aren’t frustrating. Here’s how.
Sharon Biggar
Marketing
Hotjar’s guide to product-led marketing in 4 easy steps
The customer is at the center of all marketing activities in product-led marketing, ultimately driving their success. Here’s how we use product-led marketing at Hotjar.
Sharon Biggar
Marketing
How marketing squads are making Hotjar more customer-centric
There’s no perfect organization structure, but implementing marketing squads at Hotjar has increased happiness and efficiency—here’s how we made it work.
Sharon Biggar
Marketing
How data-driven marketing leads to customer-centric experiences
It’s easy to guess what our customers want. But assuming we know them better than they know themselves can lead to failed campaigns, miscommunication, and churn.
Sharon Biggar
Ecommerce
5 ways to gain happier customers and why ecommerce search can be of big help
Happy customers spend more and shop with you for longer, and a positive experience is often valued more than price as a core brand differentiator.
The trick for online shops is how to build that happiness—and there’s a good chance it starts with ecommerce search.
Jake Rheude
Marketing
How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research
From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.
Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples.
Louis Grenier
Marketing
Official Hotjar Plugin for WordPress
You can now install the Hotjar tracking code on your WordPress website from the newly released, official Hotjar plugin for WordPress. Watch the 1-min video below to learn how.
Luke Vella
Marketing
6 steps to creating testimonials that drive sales (and don't suck)
When you get on a website and read a wall of customer testimonials that gush with nothing but praise, it’s not surprising if your first reactions are skepticism or suspicion.
Hotjar team
Marketing
How to discover what your users want to read (so you can write it for them)
At Hotjar, we use Hotjar in everything we do.
Whether it’s building, writing, scaling, designing, or hiring - Hotjar helps us make Hotjar better. We’re firm believers of practicing what we preach (and we 100% believe in our product) so using Hotjar to grow Hotjar is a must for our team.
Hotjar team
Marketing
The Humans Strike Back: why it’s time to put people first - in tech, in marketing, in everything
I was hired by Hotjar last year to lead content, which I thought meant the blog, but it didn’t. Our CEO, David Darmanin, had a much wider scope in mind. It just took me a while to figure that out.
Once I did, the idea to launch a podcast began to evolve (the evolution of which we’ll cover in our next post, because it’s an interesting story of trial, error, and a picture of a light-saber wielding Rand Fishkin).
And now, we are launching 'The Humans Strike Back' as a podcast, and a website, and a community about helping each other succeed as individuals, as employees, and as business owners by putting people first.
Louis Grenier
Marketing
4 lessons Rand Fishkin learned from building a $45M software company
Rand Fishkin found success by transforming his mother’s small business marketing firm into a $45M+ marketing software company. Over the course of 11 years, he helped to design and launch a multitude of software products and made his fair share of mistakes.
Lucky for you, Rand is an open book.
Here are four lessons he learned building a $45M software company, based on a conversation we had with Rand Fishkin on Hotjar’s podcast 'The Humans Strike Back'.
Louis Grenier
Marketing
How to optimize your marketing funnel for the customer journey
Ask 10 marketers about marketing funnels and you’ll probably get 10 different answers. Why is that? A marketing funnel isn't a one-size-fits-all strategy; your marketing funnel is uniquely tailored to how your buyer buys.
Hotjar team
Marketing
The exact customer-driven methodology Drift used to grow from 0 to 70k customers in 4 years
Most startup founders dream of creating a single successful company.
David Cancel has done it 5 times.
His latest company, Drift, has already raised $107 million in funding and acquired over 70,000 active users in just 4 years.
So how did he do it?
The key has been a customer-driven methodology that David stumbled upon almost by accident at one of his previous companies.
Hotjar team
Marketing
How we're using non-gated content for trust and growth at Hotjar
Sticking an opt-in gate in front of your content and counting how many people go through it has become the go-to solution to measure lead generation and marketing success. But is inundating people with pop-ups that promise mind-blowing content in exchange for their email address really the best way to go about building your brand/business?
Hotjar team
Marketing
Death by 'best practices': why they can kill your business
It was my first job in digital marketing and I wanted to make an impression as quickly as possible.
I was working for a SaaS company in Dublin and one of my objectives was to increase the conversion rate from visitors to paid customers.
I really had no clue where to start.
I remember looking at the websites of major SaaS companies to get some ideas: Mailchimp, SalesForce, Zendesk...
Zendesk's registration form caught my eye. They only had two fields: "First Name" and "Email".
We had eight.
I remember searching for articles mentioning best practices on how to increase form conversions and found plenty. The vast majority had “Reduce the number of fields” as the first item in their list.
Louis Grenier
Marketing
An expert's advice on successful customer-centric marketing
In the world of marketing, there is no shortage of approaches and strategies.
One such method is called customer-centric marketing. We were fortunate enough to interview Bill Macaitis, a marketing leader who served Salesforce, Zendesk, and Slack, about this approach, and learn exactly how customer-centric marketing has helped him—and can help you—grow these companies.
Louis Grenier
Marketing
5 strategies for reducing ecommerce bounce rate
Let’s face it: something is probably off if potential customers leave your ecommerce site before they make it past the first page they land on. Whether they can’t find what they’re looking for or just don’t like what they see, it’s essential for any ecommerce business to be aware of what pages visitors ‘bounce’ from in high numbers—and why.
This article covers several customer-centric tools for understanding and reducing ecommerce bounce rate.
Fio Dossetto
Marketing
How to grow & improve your WordPress site with Hotjar
WordPress powers over 33% of the web, making it the world’s most popular content management system (CMS). With that number of websites comes a huge amount of owners, marketers, product managers, and UX professionals who can benefit from learning more about the behavior and needs of people who visit their sites.
In this quick article, we show you how to use Hotjar’s official WordPress plugin, which makes it easier for any WordPress user to install Hotjar and start collecting useful behavior and feedback insights. We also share five ways to use Hotjar heatmaps, surveys, and session recordings to spot bugs, increase conversions, and improve user experience on your WordPress site.
Zoe Sachs
UX and web design
User research
5 tips to recruit user research participants that represent the real world
Whether you’re running focus groups for your pricing strategy or conducting usability testing for a new product, user interviews are one of the most effective research methods to get the needle-moving insights you need. But to discover meaningful data that helps you reach your goals, you need to connect with high-quality participants. This article shares five tips to help you optimize your recruiting efforts and find the right people for any type of research study.
Hotjar team
User research
How to instantly transcribe user interviews—and swiftly unlock actionable insights
After the thrill of a successful user interview, the chore of transcribing dialogue can feel like the ultimate anticlimax. Putting spoken words in writing takes several precious hours—time better invested in sharing your findings with your team or boss.
But the fact remains: you need a clear and accurate user interview transcript to analyze and report data effectively. Enter automatic transcription. This process instantly transcribes recorded dialogue in real time without human help. It ensures data integrity (and preserves your sanity), enabling you to unlock valuable insights in your research.
Shadz Loresco
User research
An 8-step guide to conducting empathetic (and insightful) customer interviews in mid-market companies
Customer interviews uncover your ideal users’ challenges and needs in their own words, providing in-depth customer experience insights that inform product development, new features, and decision-making. But to get the most out of your interviews, you need to approach them with empathy. This article explains how to conduct accessible, inclusive, and—above all—insightful interviews to create a smooth (and enjoyable!) process for you and your participants.
Hotjar team
User research
An 8-step guide to conducting empathetic (and insightful) customer interviews
Customer interviews uncover your ideal users’ challenges and needs in their own words, providing in-depth customer experience insights that inform product development, new features, and decision-making. But to get the most out of your interviews, you need to approach them with empathy. This article explains how to conduct accessible, inclusive, and—above all—insightful interviews to create a smooth (and enjoyable!) process for you and your participants.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
Design a homepage that delights your users in 9 easy steps (with tips and examples)
While product, UX, and marketing teams help shape a website or app’s homepage, a more powerful group holds the reins: the users. Their needs and preferences are key deciding factors in locking in an effective homepage design.
Shadz Loresco
User research
Data-driven vs. data-informed decision-making: which should your product team use?
Data is a crucial part of building a product your customers love. But just how much should you rely on data, and how do you ensure it works in the best interests of your team—and end-users?
Hotjar team
Andrei Beno
UX design and analysis
The anatomy of a stellar website: the dos and don’ts of design
Over the past five years, buyers have largely shifted their shopping habits to be primarily online. For brands wishing to remain competitive in the digital marketplace, this means an accessible and attention-grabbing website has become more important than ever before.
Consumers agree: respondents to Hotjar’s Coming in Hot report told us that they have higher expectations for brands’ websites than they did five years ago.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
Coming in hot: the power of first impressions
Consumers have more than their fair share of vendors to choose from when shopping online. When attention is split between different brands and devices, ensuring your online presence stands out from the crowd hinges on first impressions.
But catering to the ever-changing habits and preferences of digital buyers is no small feat. That’s why Hotjar surveyed hundreds of US-based consumers—to reveal the insights you need to guarantee your website exceeds user expectations.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
How we use Hotjar for interaction design: 4 practical use cases
We don’t just design and build Hotjar—we’re users, too. Insights from Hotjar regularly drive our decisions, keeping customer-centricity top of mind.
This article unpacks how our product design team uses Hotjar for interaction design, a sub-discipline of user experience (UX) design.
Jon Evans
UX design and analysis
Driving empathy in design with user feedback
Here's a hard truth: some customers lose their initial excitement toward your company's products or services as time passes; others choose your competitors' offerings from the get-go. More often than not, this failure to resonate with target customers reveals an “It's not you, it's us” situation: it shows you've neglected to understand what users truly want and need.
You're here because you know better than to let this happen. As a designer, you want to polish your approach and pick up on the finer details of the user experience (UX). And if you’re hoping to win people’s business and loyalty, you're right to shift your focus to empathy-driven design.
Hotjar team
User research
5 steps to defining your company’s ideal customer profile
You can only choose a wonderful present if you really know the person you’re buying it for. By the same token, you can only create an outstanding product or service when you really know the person you’re building it for.
That’s the theory behind the ideal customer profile (ICP) framework.
Hotjar team
User research
7 reasons your website users are frustrated (and how to fix them)
You've painstakingly built a website to capture users' heads and hearts. But despite your effort, the site's bounce rates are high, conversions could be better, and users abandon their shopping carts faster than a kitten chasing a laser pointer.
This is the story of many website designers, UX designers, and online businesses—and these all-too-common issues are often symptoms of user frustration.
Ayush Sood
User research
10 best survey tools SMBs can use to capture valuable customer feedback
No business can please all prospects all the time (if you can, tell us your secrets!). But suppose a customer is unhappy with your brand, product, or service. Would you rather hear it from them directly, or find out by chance on social media or third-party review sites?
Capturing direct feedback from real users certainly sounds like the better option—and, luckily, it’s become much easier to do.
Nowadays, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with limited resources can conduct online surveys at any point of the buyer's journey—for free. With best-in-class survey tools, you can customize the survey flow and elements, deploy your questionnaire, and collect quality responses faster than ever.
Shadz Loresco
User research
How to collect high-quality customer feedback and turn it into actionable insights
Feedback is a powerful way to connect with your customers, get objective opinions, and make optimizations that have a real impact.
But proactively requesting user insights can be challenging, and responses are often vague or irrelevant. Navigating these pain points is crucial for making the most of your customers’ feedback.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
How to test your website prototype: steps, tips, and tools
Your team has been working hard on a brand-new website, and you’re ready to hit ‘publish’. Or, at least, you think you are. How can you be confident your site is up to scratch when nobody’s even seen it yet?
Creating a website prototype gives you an outside perspective from real people—and the opportunity to fix issues before you go live.
Jon Evans
UX design and analysis
On-page elements to optimize for better UX
In our digital age, creating a great-looking webpage is no longer enough to draw in customers. Your website needs to be trustworthy, user-friendly, and fast-loading to encourage customers to stay and purchase your product.
In short, your web page needs to offer a great user experience (UX).
But how do you create a great user experience? With constant updates to search engine algorithms, it can be tricky to know what to focus on to make a difference.
Medi Jones
User research
How to use mouse tracking move maps to improve UX and conversions
Tracking where users move and rest their mouse cursors helps you build an image of what attracts attention (or doesn’t) on any website page or product interface. At Hotjar, we call this visualization a move map.
Hotjar team
User research
How to use email surveys to create products users love (with examples and best practices)
Do you want to stop guessing and start creating products your customers will love and use repeatedly while referring others to your brand?
Email surveys are a convenient, cost-effective way to collect feedback and understand how your users feel about your website, product, or service, so you can identify what delights or frustrates them and improve their experience and your metrics.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
7 top UX analytics tools to enhance the user experience
Success in a crowded digital landscape lies in one key element: which companies provide the most outstanding user experience (UX)? As more businesses tap into user insights, those with an advanced UX analytics approach set themselves up to win. How do the best in the game do it? With the right tools for creating a website or product that truly resonates with users.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
The top 6 UX design books that every designer should read
Where do you start, and keep, learning about user experience design? UX Goodies creator Ioana Teleanu shares the six UX books at the top of her list. Research, feedback, communication, emotion—it’s all here.
Ioana Teleanu
UX design and analysis
How to get UX buy-in at your company (and why it’s so difficult)
UX research and design is the foundation for building great products that users love and return to. But getting buy-in for UX can be a frustrating challenge. UX educator and mentor Ioana Teleanu shares her experience and tips for how to get buy-in for your UX projects.
Ioana Teleanu
UX design and analysis
The 3 biggest challenges that UX designers face (and how to overcome them)
There’s never been a more exciting time to be a UX designer. But that doesn't mean it’s easy. Here, UX educator and mentor Ioana Teleanu shares her take on the most important UX design challenges, and how to deal with them.
Ioana Teleanu
UX design and analysis
Why design-driven companies will outperform the rest in 2024
Design driven companies are on the rise and user feedback becomes the bedrock of business. Here’s what it means to be design-driven and why it’s important.
Marco D'Emilia
User research
How to conduct a survey to improve your brand identity
Guest author Matt Diggity shows how you can improve your brand identity by conducting more surveys with your customers.
UX design and analysis
4 steps to being less wrong in UX Design, from Leandro Lima at Google
One of our values is that we challenge ourselves to grow. By hosting external speakers and sharing their ideas, we’re hoping to inspire you, our Hotjar community, to grow too.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
How negative feedback leads to better UX
Before a brand or business launches a new product or idea, it undergoes a long process to get approved. There's always room for negotiation, but you have to get feedback and be open to altering plans accordingly with your team.
Saskia Ketz
UX design and analysis
How to use product feedback to solve business-critical issues
Product feedback is one of a product management team’s most effective tools, but only when that feedback comes with the proper context.
Hotjar team
User research
How tracking user behavior on your website can improve customer experience
Imagine you’re running a brick-and-mortar store. From your perch at the counter, you can see and fix any issues the customers have as they move around the shop: if they have trouble navigating the aisles, you can make adjustments and help out; when they come up to the counter, you can strike up a conversation and learn who they are and what they’re looking for.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
How to spot and analyze rage clicks to understand customer behavior and improve UX
If you’ve ever been frustrated by an element on a website that doesn’t respond to your clicks (no matter how many times you try), you’re probably already familiar with the concept of rage-clicking—which is a good thing! Understanding your website visitors’ frustration means you can empathize with them.
Alex Jost
User research
The customer feedback guide: analyzing and collecting customer feedback (and using it to grow)
At Hotjar, customer feedback is at the core of what we do. We want all of our team members to obsess over the wants, needs, and opinions of our users and customers, and in turn, we encourage our users and customers to obsess over their users and customers. It’s a virtuous cycle where everybody can have the best experience possible.
There are no quick hacks or fancy solutions here: the most direct way to find out what’s working (or not) for customers is by simply asking them. In this article, we show you why you should collect feedback from customers, how to do it, and how to use that information to make positive changes.
Diana de Jesus
User research
Understanding and measuring your Customer Effort Score (CES)
There’s a reason why moving junk food to a hard-to-reach shelf might help us eat less of it: the location is impractical, it’s going to take effort to reach it, and—unless the motivation is really strong—most of the time we end up not actually bothering.
Sometimes, online businesses are exactly like that hard-to-reach shelf: something impractical that requires extra effort and make people lose motivation and leave.
The good news is that there is a simple way to find out if that’s the case with your business: all you have to do is ask your visitors and customers how much effort they have to put into doing business with you. This is the Customer Effort Score (CES), and measuring it can help you make accurate predictions of future business success or failure.
Fio Dossetto
UX design and analysis
Website funnel analysis: using funnel analytics to increase conversions on your website
Visitors flow through your website every day, but somehow all of that traffic funnels down to just a trickle of conversions, sales, and signups. Funnel analysis can help you spot where users are leaving your website, so you can optimize it and increase conversions.
In this post, we’ll explain how you can analyze funnels to identify key traffic sources and spot high-exit pages. You’ll also learn how to combine funnel reports with more analytics insight, so you can send more traffic down the marketing funnel to the pages that matter.
Fio Dossetto
User research
How to write customer satisfaction survey questions to master your market [with examples]
Happy, successful customers are the heart and soul of any business. They’re what transform your growth from a funnel into a flywheel.
You can create happy customers, but to do that you have to truly understand them and what they think about your business.
So how do you know what they’re thinking? You have to ask!
Michael Redbord
User research
Psychographics and personas: how to get to the truth about why people buy
What do you know about your customers? Do you know what actually makes them buy or why they choose you?
Conventional wisdom says you can perform audience segmentation by studying demographics such as age, ethnicity, and education of your target audience.
Some marketers go beyond demographics by taking psychographic data into consideration, such as attitudes, values, and desires.
But if you want to create marketing campaigns that truly engage your target audience, you need to understand a third type of data: buyer behavior psychographics.
Adele Revella
User research
How to create a user persona in 3 steps (with a free template)
Even though they’re buying or using the same product, your users and customers have different needs and are drawn to different things. That’s where user personas come in—to help you make sense of what people are expecting to get out of your business and learn how you can deliver that to them.
Louis Grenier
User research
Survey questions 101: 70+ survey question examples, types of surveys, and FAQs
How well do you understand your prospects and customers—who they are, what keeps them awake at night, and what brought them to your business in search of a solution? Asking the right survey questions at the right point in their customer journey is the most effective way to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
Hotjar team
User research
Open-ended questions vs. close-ended questions: examples and how to survey users
Unless you’re a mind reader, the only way to find out what your users are thinking is to ask them. That's what surveys are for.
But the way you ask a question often determines the kind of answer you get—and one of the first decisions you have to make is: are you going to ask an open-ended or a closed-ended question?
Fio Dossetto
User research
The 15 best website survey questions to ask users
Nobody knows more about what your users want than the users themselves. So why not ask them?
Regardless of what type of website you’re working on, surveying users on the page will give you the feedback you need to improve the user experience for your audience and increase conversions for your business.
In this guide, you’ll learn which survey questions to ask, our favorite survey question examples, where to ask questions on your site, and how to get started using an online survey tool like Hotjar.
Fio Dossetto
UX design and analysis
Using heatmaps to improve your website’s UX: 5 ways to get started
From page design to site usability, there are plenty of factors that impact user experience. Pinpointing what leads to a bad experience can seem like a daunting task. With heatmaps (also known as “heat maps”), you can visualize key user interactions and gather meaningful insights with ease to ensure your site delivers an outstanding UX throughout the entire user journey.
Fio Dossetto
User research
How to use website feedback tools for improved UX, conversions, and business growth
If you really want to get inside your website visitors’ heads—to know what they actually think about your site, and how they think it could be better—you’re in the right place.
Tawni Sattler
UX design and analysis
Lean UX: definition, process, and a detailed case study
Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, has spent the past 30 years making fun of inefficiency in business—including our efforts to reduce inefficiency.
Louis Grenier
User research
28 of our favorite customer feedback questions
Here at Hotjar, we strongly believe that what’s best for your users and customers is best for your business. But how do you know what’s best for your users?
You have to ask them.
Fio Dossetto
UX design and analysis
How to measure and improve customer retention using qualitative data
Traditional metrics like customer retention rate (CRR) and customer lifetime value (CLTV) are good to know, but they don't tell you the whole story of customer churn. To really make a difference in your retention rate, you need to know why customers stop using your product—and how you can get them to stick with it.
Hotjar team
User research
How to nudge for good (and not evil)
Have you ever wondered what your users think of your website? Sure you have. But have you let your users inform (even dictate) your design process? If you're like a lot of website owners in the world, your answer might be: maybe.
Hotjar team
User research
How to analyze open-ended questions in 5 steps [template included]
Open-ended questions are great for getting authentic feedback because they give people a chance to describe what they’re experiencing in their own voice.
Louis Grenier
User research
How to analyze survey data and get to know your customers (without any headaches)
If you don’t understand your customers, it’s almost impossible to improve your product or service for them.
Online surveys make it easy to get to know your users, but even a short, simple survey can leave you with a headache-inducing amount of user data to sort through.
So how do you make sense of it all? Read on to know how to conduct effective survey data analysis.
Jon Evans
User research
1 year into NPS: the good, the bad, the ugly of getting our users’ feedback
What changes can we make that will have the most positive impact on our users and customers? Why are some of them leaving and never coming back?
These are two very important questions Hotjar needs to answer to continue to grow, and in order to answer them, we need user feedback.
One way to collect it is to ask the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) question:
“How likely are you to recommend Hotjar to a friend or colleague?” on a scale of zero to 10 (with 10 being extremely likely).
Louis Grenier
User research
User feedback: how to collect and measure it year-round + user feedback tools and examples
When we first launched Hotjar, success was anything but guaranteed. We were completely unknown, didn’t have a cent of outside funding, and were facing some well-known competitors.
Five years later, we’ve gone from €0 to €17 million in Annual Recurring Revenue and Hotjar has been installed on over 670,000 sites. And a huge factor in reaching this level of growth has been our commitment to staying close to our customers.
In this article, we share the exact methods we use to stay in touch with our customers year-round, and how we collect and measure user feedback to constantly improve our website and product experience.
✏️ Note: we are a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company, but the techniques we cover in this post are highly applicable to your e-commerce and/or lead generation business.
Fio Dossetto
User research
5 things that may ruin your customer satisfaction surveys
Whatever business you're in, it's crucial to keep your finger on the collective pulse of your customers. Are they growing more or less happy with you?
Pascal van Opzeeland
User research
How product teams can conduct online surveys to get actionable insights
Developing a product without user feedback is like having a relationship without conversation. (Not great.)
And while there are plenty of ways to learn about your users—like watching session recordings, A/B testing, and even scouring forums where they spend their time—online surveys are one of the best ways to get direct user feedback.
Hotjar team
User research
20+ post-event survey questions to ask after an online event
You spent months planning your online event, and now that it’s over, it’s time to sit back and relax, right? Not so fast! After hosting an event, there’s one more thing you absolutely must do: send post-event surveys to your attendees.
Hotjar team
User research
The one resolution you need in 2019 (that most people ignore)
When I started my career in sales, I found myself surrounded by people who were always obsessed with something: competitors, market trends, industry best practices. Some would keep constant track of who else was selling what, and how much of it; others would go to great lengths to steal clients from the competition.
We’d have weekly meetings where I would report on sales, and every single time we’d just look at these numbers going up and down on a spreadsheet. At one point, the marketing goal for the entire year was to get more fans on Facebook than one of our direct competitors.
Louis Grenier
UX design and analysis
What kind of product creator are you: facilitator, peddler, entertainer, or dealer?
Building a SaaS product, app, or site?
If you’re a Product Creator in any capacity, the way you build your product will dictate the level of success you'll achieve. Like me, you’ve seen products and apps come and go. Some disappear as quickly as they arrive, and some (like Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, et al) have achieved incredible success.
But, why is it that people get hooked on some products while others don't even make a ripple in the pond?
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
8 skills you need to become a UX design rockstar
If you are expecting this to be a list of UX tools, devices or platforms then be prepared to be disappointed!
Being a rockstar at UX design means that you can deliver bankable and measurable results with your work... not eye-candy that impresses your friends and colleagues. So understandably, I chose to base this list on what I have learnt from seeing UX specialists at work on hundreds of projects, split tests and experiments.
Mastering these 8 skills might not be a simple feat - but the returns of achieving this will be worth the while. Every competitive organisation will pay handsomely for a UX rockstar!
Note: These observations are based on my work with several organisations that generated yearly revenue between 8 million to 250 million dollars and teams that varied between 3 to a dozen members.
David Darmanin
UX design and analysis
16 UX and optimization must-reads
We know what it’s like to have pressing questions about a website—Who is really visiting it? What are these people looking for? Why are they not converting? What can we do to improve their experience?—and not having a clear sense of how to go about finding the answers.
Fio Dossetto
UX design and analysis
3 reasons why customers leave Hotjar (and how we found out)
On average, for every 100$ of Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) being newly generated on a given day, $32 is lost one year after (which means we’re left with $68 of MRR).
Our revenue churn is therefore 32% - almost a third of our revenue - after one year, which means that our revenue retention is 68%.
Thankfully, we cover our churn losses by generating new revenue from new Hotjar customers.
But revenue churn is a parasite slowly eating us from the inside. We need to kill it now before it grows too big.
Louis Grenier
UX design and analysis
5 UX mistakes that will make your visitors click the 'back' button
The very basis of UX Design is effective qualitative user research which is for the most part not achieved by reading - it's achieved by asking the right questions. When it comes to UX mistakes, more often than not it's the habits and processes we ourselves dictate that lead to a bad user experience. Let's explore some of the mistakes which might be easy to overlook but can have big negative consequences for your website.
Jonathan Vella
UX design and analysis
Form design: 10 tips on how to design a form that brings in conversions
Web forms have become an integral part of most websites and the internet in general. Their primary purpose is to help both users and businesses achieve their separate goals by establishing a relationship or initiating a conversation between the two.
- Registration forms are what allows people to become members of online communities or services. Think of Facebook - their 1 billion+ users all joined through a registration form;
- Checkout forms allow transactions to happen through the web. Subscribing to a paid service and people purchasing products are a couple of examples which happen through a checkout form;
- Data submission forms are how people share knowledge, post information and communicate online. Forums, blogs, and social communities all rely on users posting these forms for their websites to grow.
Even with their extensive importance online, it is surprisingly common to come across very poorly made forms - which is a shame. Here are some simple guidelines which are a good foundation for most types of forms.
First off, let’s explore what elements a form is made up of and some best practices.
Jonathan Vella
UX design and analysis
Learn from real users: get started with website usability testing today
Website usability is at the heart of customer-centricity. If you give your potential customers a difficult, complex, or broken experience, it’s unlikely they’ll stick with you for long.
Tawni Sattler
User research
How to learn who your (new) customers are: a coffee break with Moonpig.com [🎥]
When the market changes—like it's changing right now—and you suddenly get different online customers than the ones you are used to, how do you make sure your website works for all of them:
Fio Dossetto
User research
How customer insights saved CXL Institute from near-disaster
How can a company that specializes in conversion fail a launch so badly they almost have to let an entire team go?
More importantly, how did this company, ConversionXL, turn the six-month-long failure of their CXL Institute into a massive success using customer insights?
Peep Laja, the founder of CXL, sat down to walk us through the answers to these questions.
This is a case study about what to do when your big plans fall through, when your launch fails, when you feel out of step with what your customers actually need, and how to use customer insights to put you back on the right track.
Louis Grenier
User research
How our team uses ongoing feedback to design and build a customer-centric product
See the ‘copy to clipboard’ button below? It helps thousands of new users a month copy the Hotjar code snippet and get started with our product.
Fio Dossetto
User research
5 tips for mastering interviews: the Hotjar Product team weighs in
Ah, the user interview. Without a doubt one of the most valuable exercises you can run for understanding users better. But how can you, the interviewer, make sure you get the insights you need (and end up with a happy interviewee)? The first stage is understanding what this is—and what it isn’t.
Hotjar team
UX design and analysis
How to create landing page tests that increase conversions
If you’re running an online marketing campaign, you probably want the same thing everybody else does: better performance.
In my experience as Director of Content at Klientboost, I’ve found that one of the most useful tools in the campaign-performance-improvement toolbox is landing page split-tests, where you design two different versions of the same page and test them against one another to see which one performs best.
The KB team has created and tested over 1000 pages at a rate of 250-300 tests/quarter—in this article, I will share a few ideas about how you and your team can also identify new ideas to test on your landing pages.
In this article, I’ll cover what tests have worked for our clients and how we sourced the ideas to test on their landing pages. After all, knowing how to run a good split test doesn’t do you any good if you have no idea what you’re testing—and why.
Sean Martin
User research
The easiest way to find out what people need, right on your website
Why are visitors abandoning your website? Who are they? What do they think about your product? You can speculate endlessly about these answers—or you can get them by asking the actual people who visit your website every day.
Fio Dossetto
User research
How to set up an e-commerce post-purchase survey in 7 steps
Implementing an on-site survey right after your customers make a purchase is an easy, non-intrusive way to learn what you need to improve the buying experience and overcome potential objections.
Capturing this kind of website feedback is so valuable and simple that we recommend all our e-commerce customers do it—and we put together this quick guide to help you create a simple, post-purchase survey in just a few minutes. We’ll go over exactly what questions you should ask as well as where, when, and how to set it up.
Fio Dossetto
User research
20 Hotjar survey examples from real websites
At the time of writing, there are over 230,000 enabled surveys built with Hotjar in the world, which have gathered a total of 138,091,181 responses. That’s an average of 17 responses per every single person on the planet!
Fio Dossetto
Bee Baker
User research
5 questions to ask customers about the products you're selling
Whether you’ve just launched a new product that isn’t selling as much as expected or you’re wanting to sell even more of one that’s already doing great, here’s one thing you should try: survey your customers to get some insight about what’s working and what needs improving.
I don’t mean ‘spend thousands of dollars on customer panels’ or ‘research an industry-defining report on customer expectations’: I mean take 30 literal minutes out of your day to get on a call with an existing customer, or create a quick survey and email it to people who have already bought one (or more) of your products.
In this piece, we take you through 5 of the best questions to ask your customers about the products and services you’re selling. To pick them, I spoke to two business leaders, Brian Dean (founder of Backlinko) and Sarah Doody (author of UX Notebook), who experienced a few snafus in their business and bounced back by reaching out to the only people who could help them figure out what to do: their existing customers.
Louis Grenier
User research
The beginner’s guide to website feedback with 10 practical use cases
What do you do when your website is not converting, your product is not working, and people are leaving you? How do you find out what’s wrong—so you can fix it?
Louis Grenier
User research
Understand your customers with user behavior data and customer insights
To understand your customers, it's not enough to look at metrics like pageviews, bounce rates, and conversion rates alone—standard metrics are out of context and leave you guessing and making assumptions about what your customers need.
Tawni Sattler
Paul Cooper
Hotjar products and behind the scenes
Hotjar product updates
🔥 Read it while it’s hot: February 2024 updates in the Hotjar world
February’s update is all about frustration 😤
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
The ultimate HOTSAUCE roundup
Leading minds in product, marketing, ecommerce, and UX came together over two days to shape the future of digital experiences at HOTSAUCE—Hotjar's inaugural in-person conference. Couldn’t make or want to relive the magic one more time? Take a trip through the event from the lens of the people there—Hotjar’s core planning team, speakers, and attendees—and read about their favorite moments, top learnings, and what they’re looking forward to at HOTSAUCE 2024.
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
Say goodbye to the Hotjar Dashboard. Long live Dashboards.
Hotjar Dashboard is now Hotjar Dashboards—with an ‘s’. 🤯
Look, we get it. Every product and their dog has a dashboard. They’re not new.
But bear with us—this is way more exciting than it sounds. It’s one small ‘s’ for Dashboards, and one big win for your team.
Richard Roberts
Hotjar product updates
A year in review: how Hotjar revolutionized its suite for users in 2023
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
🔥 Read it while it’s hot: November 2023 updates in the Hotjar world
It's November, and we've got exciting updates to share, from what happened last month to what’s coming soon. Sentiment analysis, improved research hub, popover surveys 2.0, and enhanced team collaboration... Take a look. 👇
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
🔥 Read it while it’s hot: October 2023 updates in the Hotjar world
It's October and we've got exciting updates to share, from what happened last month to what’s coming soon. New ways to surface insights, improved collaboration, and an event not to be missed. Take a look. 👇
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
🔥 Read it while it’s hot: August 2023 updates in the Hotjar world
It's August and we've got heaps of spicy updates to share, from what happened last month to what’s coming soon.
A flaming hot conference, a platform now available in (even) more languages, sizzling Surveys updates, and more!
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
Introducing new features and UX improvements to Hotjar Funnels
We launched it, you tried it, and we’ve been improving it based on your feedback.
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
How to use Engagement Zones to improve your website and boost conversions with confidence
Multiple types of heatmaps—like click, move, and scroll heatmaps—have proven vital in visualizing complex interaction data. But when you’ve spent several minutes, even hours, toggling between them to glean on-page engagement insights, haven’t you wished to the analytics gods that there was a more efficient way to do your job?
We’re no deities, but we heard you. Hotjar’s alternative to this imperfect science isn’t a magic button, but another type of heatmap. Everybody, say hi to Engagement Zones. 👋
Shadz Loresco
Behind the scenes
Celebrating Pride Month in 2023: the Hotjar Pride Panel
Here at Hotjar, we stand for an inclusive culture where our team members experience the psychological safety necessary to express themselves fully at work.
Guided by this principle, we have a long-standing tradition of celebrating Pride Month with initiatives proposed and curated by our internal LGBTQIA+ group.
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
Introducing Hotjar AI
The AI-powered research assistant that helps you find the insights you need.
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
User interviews come to Hotjar
We’ve acquired PingPong—a user testing and interviews platform—and we’re integrating it right into Hotjar.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
How to create a customer success program from scratch
Building a customer success program for the first time? Learn from Hotjar’s experiences to make your customer success program a winner.
Coleen Bachi
Behind the scenes
10 ways companies can do more to fight climate change
Private sector companies of all sizes have a crucial role to play in fighting climate change. Here are 10 ways companies can do more to fight climate change now.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
Emotional intelligence: your quick-reference pocket guide
Emotional intelligence is a skill. Several skills, actually. Learn the five components of EQ, and take note of your strengths, and what you may need to work on.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
Break into UX design with these 7 critical skills
From the behavioral study of animals (gorillas to be precise) to UX Design, Irene No shares her career path along with the 7 skills you need to start your career in UX Design.
Irene No
Behind the scenes
7 ways to build your empathy muscle for better workplace communication
Empathy is like any other skill that can be improved with practice. Here are seven ways to build empathy and improve your workplace communication.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
Zero-waste culture: 10 ways to generate less waste in your personal life
While businesses have a larger role—and responsibility—in fighting climate change, the individual impact shouldn't be overlooked. After all, our personal choices do escalate to bigger results. What steps could you take now to generate less waste?
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
We pay for that, too: providing perks people actually want
We don’t confuse perks with gimmicks. We prioritize home-office space, human connection, mental health, and personal time and growth. And we’ve got the budgets to prove it.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
Defensiveness: one of the greatest inhibitors to true collaboration
Behavioral change specialist Kevin Groen shares actionable steps for dealing with defensiveness in the workplace (and in personal life).
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
Life in color: fun with flags and LGBTQIA+ basic expressions
It’s important for everyone in society to know about LGBTQIA+ flags and basic expressions.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
The Why Gap: how to see beyond your product analytics
Between product activity and your proposed solution is a gap. Do you fill it with assumptions, opinions, and guesses? Here’s a better way to do it.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
Why there are few women in leadership roles (and how to change it)
There are only 44 women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. Here's why this is and how you can help get more women in leadership.
Coleen Bachi
Behind the scenes
How to increase your emotional intelligence for better feedback
Learn more about why so many people fear giving and receiving feedback and how you can improve your own emotional intelligence for better workplace feedback.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
We just raised $600 million. Here’s what’s next.
We’re delighted to announce today that Contentsquare, Hotjar’s parent company, has raised $600 million in a Series F investment round.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
5 ways recruiters and job seekers can have a better hiring experience
We interviewed our People leaders, Sara Bent, Angela Buccitti, and Carol Veiga for a behind-the-scenes look at what makes our hiring experience unique for both recruiters and candidates.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
Why your company should practice radical transparency (and how to do it)
Many businesses shy away from being open—to their detriment. Hotjar’s CEO, Mo, shares how and why the company maintains radical transparency as a core value.
Mohannad Ali
Behind the scenes
Why is accessibility still an afterthought in tech (and what we’re doing about it)
Achieving accessibility in tech is tough for many reasons. Learn how Hotjar is rising to the challenge to build a more inclusive product and business.
Imran Omari
Behind the scenes
Pride Panel 2022: how far we still have to go
Hotjar’s 2022 Pride Panel highlighted the immense diversity within the LGBTQIA+ community, shining a spotlight on asexuality and personal stories from around the globe.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
4 ways to build a people-first company
'People first' is a new buzz phrase that’s catching on for many companies, but what does it mean? Hotjar’s CEO explains how to build a people-first company.
Mohannad Ali
Behind the scenes
Challenging the status quo of exploitation in business
Profitable businesses don’t have to be exploitative. Here’s how Hotjar is working to prevent employee and consumer exploitation.
Mohannad Ali
Behind the scenes
Conscious capitalism: how your business can do more with the profit it generates
Business is about more than just profit. Here’s why conscious capitalism matters to us at Hotjar.
Ken Weary
Behind the scenes
Zero-waste culture: what does it mean in a company context?
We can achieve the same or better results by doing less. This is probably surprising to most people, but that’s exactly what a zero-waste culture accomplishes. You’ve probably heard the term in relation to products and packaging. What does it mean in a company-wide context?
Mohannad Ali
Behind the scenes
The fall before the catch: this is where you nurture psychological safety
Do you feel safe speaking up in front of your team? You don’t build trust through team-building exercises and stated values. Here are 11 ways to build trust in teams.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
10 ways to build a productive and happy remote team
“You’re on mute." Three familiar words that rang throughout households across the globe, starting in March 2020. Three words acting as a metaphor for all the small, yet meaningful ways we’d have to adapt as we scrambled to function in our new remote world.
Sharon Biggar
Behind the scenes
How to make the planet a stakeholder in your business
Businesses aren’t exempt from doing what’s best for the planet—and that includes tech businesses that don’t have any physical products.
Mohannad Ali
Behind the scenes
5 ways to build trust with your remote team
Do you or some of your team members turn their cameras off most of the time or stay quiet about new ideas? If your remote team has been struggling with collaboration, miscommunication, and decreased productivity, lack of trust could be a contributing factor.
Sharon Biggar
Behind the scenes
How to talk about burnout with your teams
Why don’t employees open up about burnout before it happens? Learn how to create a culture where it’s safe to talk about it.
Sara Bent
Behind the scenes
Forget perfection: how to unmask your inner imposter
Ever felt like you weren’t good enough, like you were an imposter in your own job? Us, too. So let’s talk about it—along with ways to overcome those fraudulent feelings.
Hotjar team
Behind the scenes
How to use OKRs to put your values into action
Do you know your company’s OKRs (objectives and key results) off the top of your head?
If you don’t know them, then your team likely doesn’t either. So it’s crucial that you do know what they are because OKRs are key to keeping teams aligned.
Mohannad Ali
Behind the scenes
How to master the 4 elements of employee retention
What makes people invested in a company anymore? Is it all about a higher salary? Remote work options?
Sharon Biggar
Behind the scenes
How values guide everything we do at Hotjar (yes, really)
What’s your first thought when you hear 'company values'?
Many of us are immediately skeptical. For the cynics, values = platitudes, corporate lip service, and that meaningless sign you point new joiners to, never to think about again.
Hotjar team
Hotjar product updates
Hotjar’s pricing model
We’re updating our pricing model to better align our pricing with the value that Hotjar provides. We don’t take changes like this lightly and transparency is one of our core values, so we’d like to share our thinking behind the update, and outline exactly what’s changing.
Behind the scenes
Why 1:1 feedback is so hard (+ how to fix it on a cultural level)
Does giving one-on-one feedback to your team members feel natural and comfortable? Or is it something you avoid or cringe about doing?
Mohannad Ali