⏩ Cut through the noise and find your most relevant recordings
If there's one skill that great product teams share, it's prioritization. The best product teams have a laser focus on what’s most important and they move quickly to action it. We want to help you prioritize more effectively and move faster, so we’ve made two big improvements to Hotjar Recordings.
1. Prioritize your recordings by relevance
Up to now, we’ve sorted your recordings list in Hotjar by most recent. However, most recent doesn’t always mean most relevant, and you’re never going to watch every single recording in chronological order - at least not without eating far too much popcorn! 🍿 That’s why we’ve introduced the ability to sort your recordings list by relevance.
Hotjar does the time-consuming work in the background to surface the recordings that are most likely to provide you with valuable insights based on the user’s actions during the session. Recordings are ranked from ‘Very High’ to ‘Very Low’ in terms of relevance. Simply sort your list to start with the ones that are most likely to yield actionable insights that inform your product decisions.
💡 Pro Tip: Once you’ve sorted your recordings list by relevance, try applying the ‘Not Watched’ and ‘New Users’ filters, too. That way, you’ll not only see your most relevant recordings but also recordings that you haven’t seen before of first-time visitors to your site.
2. Quickly get to the insightful part of each recording
Prioritizing the most relevant recordings sounds great, but this often means longer recordings that contain more user actions. If you’ve been using Hotjar for a while, you’ll know that these recordings can take longer to load and there can be a lag when you try to skip forward and backward to different points in the recording. With that in mind, we’ve been working to improve the performance of our recordings player to shorten the time it takes you to get from relevant recording to actionable insight.
We’ve reduced the average load time for recordings by 27% and the average time it takes to jump from one point in a recording to another by 78%. This might only mean a few seconds each time, but we all know that seconds can feel like hours when you’re waiting for a page to load, and the accumulation of all those seconds over time can really add up. Overall, it’s just a much smoother experience for you, our user, when you’re already working hard to create a better experience for your users.
We've put together a quick tour to show you how to get to your most relevant recordings in 3 simple steps:
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4 ways to get to insights quicker in Continuous Heatmaps
Figuring out what product improvements will have the biggest bang for your buck can be pretty labor-intensive. Digging into usage stats, bug reports, experiment results, and everything in between takes time, and time is money so you need to move fast 💵 💨. To move fast, insights need to be quickly accessible, and our latest improvements to Continuous Heatmaps make finding those nuggets of gold a whole lot easier.
Here are a few of the latest improvements, with lots more coming your way 👉👉
- Popular pages list
- Single page search
- URL suggestions as you type
- Appy custom date ranges
💡Continuous Heatmaps are available on Hotjar Plus, Business, and Scale.
Popular pages: your springboard into Continuous Heatmaps
With session data continuously flowing into your Heatmaps, you no longer need to set up snapshots and wait to capture data before getting any insights. So to make it easier for you to get started, we added a shortlist of the pages your users visited the most over the past 30 days. The popular pages list makes it much easier to find heatmaps dotted with valuable insights that help you to make your case for product improvements.
Surface more results with a "single page" search
When we first launched Continuous Heatmaps, searching for a specific heatmap wasn’t smooth sailing—so we dug into your feedback to find a solution that tackled the issues you reported. The new single page search broadens your heatmap search options by showing all activity on a particular page, ignoring URL variations like query strings and fragments.
For example with a single page search for acme.com/products, your results will include:
- ✅ http://www.acme.com/products?source=forest
- ✅ https://app.acme.com/products?source=desert&campaign=dynamite
If you want to analyze the behavior of users who visited a specific URL, you can select the "exact match" checkbox to narrow down the results.
Find the page you need in less time with URL suggestions
Finding the page you need in Continuous Heatmaps used to mean copying and pasting links— or good, old-fashioned guesswork. We know this wasn’t an efficient use of your time, so we introduced URL suggestions in Continuous Heatmaps to help you find the page you’re looking for in much less time.
Now, when you select the single page filter and type a keyword into the search bar, a dropdown with some suggested page matches will appear—so you can spend less time searching and more time understanding user behavior. It’s that easy, take a look:
Analyze and compare user behavior by date with custom date ranges
Now you can understand user behavior for a specific period of time by selecting a custom start and end date in Continuous Heatmaps. If you recently redesigned a page, you can quickly see how users are adapting to the changes by analyzing behavior from the exact date the changes went live. You can then compare user behavior both before and after the changes were made to measure the impact of your work over time.
Simply select the date picker in your heatmap, click on “custom date range” and choose the start and end date you’d like to zone in on. This allows you to get laser-focused on user behavior for a point in time that matters to you —helping you to pinpoint how users react to redesigns, new features, sales, and any updates to your product.
With Continuous Heatmaps still in Beta, we’re eagerly listening to your feedback so we can iterate on solutions that help you understand how your users behave. Remember, when a feature is in Beta it’s the perfect opportunity for your feedback to be heard and shape the evolution of Continuous Heatmaps 🤝.
Continuous Heatmaps are available on Hotjar Plus, Business, and Scale.
We've put together a quick tour to show you how to get to the latest improvements in Continuous Heatmaps.
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Get buy-in and drive results with Hotjar + Zapier ⚡
Organizing and actioning user insights can be challenging, but connecting the tools you use to optimize user experience makes it much easier. With user insights seamlessly connected to the tools you already use to analyze, prioritize, and collaborate on product decisions, getting buy-in and driving results becomes a breeze.
And that’s exactly why we’re excited to introduce the new Hotjar and Zapier integration 🥳
What is Zapier? (Skip ahead if you’re already a Zapier pro!)
Zapier connects Hotjar to the apps you already use like Google Sheets, Google Analytics, Miro, Trello, and thousands more so you can automate workflows and eliminate daily tasks that chew up your time. It’s simple to use, and you don’t need to write a single line of code to integrate with the tools you use every day.
It works by combining triggers like “New Recording” with actions like “Create new Row in Google Sheet” to complete an action in one app when a trigger occurs in another. Combinations of triggers and actions are called ⚡Zaps⚡ and these are what automate processes and cut out manual, time-consuming tasks.
The Hotjar and Zapier integration allows you to automatically send new Recordings, Survey Responses, and Incoming Feedback into over 3000 apps.
Let’s take a look at some of the workflows we’ve automated here at Hotjar. Remember, these are just a taster, you can connect Hotjar with any other app that has a Zapier integration. Here's how!
1. Hotjar ➡️ Zapier ➡️ Google Sheets
Spot trends and uncover new opportunities to improve user experience
Quickly spot patterns or discover new opportunities by connecting data found in Hotjar to tools like Google Sheets, Airtable, or Excel. Use the data to create eye-catching and easy-to-understand visuals like charts, graphs, and maps that impress your most critical stakeholders.
Using simple automation, you can automatically populate a Google Sheet with all recordings that contain rage clicks. As rage click recordings roll in, your Google Sheet will automatically update in real-time so you always have the latest data at your fingertips. Use this information to plot a line graph so you can monitor rage clicks over time, making it easier to spot trends and take action when you see a clear spike in behavior. Learn how to set up this zap.
2. Hotjar ➡️ Zapier ➡️ Miro
Put user feedback at the center of product decisions
The user’s voice should be at the core of product decision-making, but sorting and acting on their feedback can be tricky. Building a seamlessly connected workflow gives you the tools you need to easily collaborate on feedback and use the user’s voice to build solutions that delight.
Using Zapier, you can automatically forward negative Incoming Feedback from Hotjar into a Miro board, and collaboratively map and prioritize user feedback. As feedback is pushed from Hotjar to Miro, new cards will populate on your board in real-time. Set aside an hour each week with your team to keep a pulse on user feedback and sort issues into different product areas. As a team, you can put the user at the center of your decisions when deciding what needs urgent attention, and what can be added to the backlog. Learn how to set up this zap.
3. Hotjar ➡️ Zapier ➡️ Trello
Lighten the load by simplifying user interview recruitment
Recruiting participants for user interviews can be a pretty painstaking task, but it’s certainly worth it. Effort vs. Impact, 🤷 right? By automating part of the recruitment drive, you can win back precious time and focus on what matters the most — learning from your users.
If a user indicates in a Hotjar survey that they're willing to chat, automatically forward their contact information to one central Trello board. As users leave their emails and comments through Incoming Feedback and Surveys, a new card will populate in a column on your "User Interview" board, so you can quickly sort candidates. Drive interviews forward in an organized way by moving candidates along your board and tracking them right the way through to sending their Thank You gift. Learn how to set up this zap.
Get started with our pre-built zaps
If you’d be willing to share your zaps and workflows, and be in with a chance of featuring in our Hotjar + Zapier customer success series, please let us know here! And if you make the cut, some Hotjar swag will be sent your way. Head on over to our Zapier directory page to start building your own zaps!
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📱Increase your response rate with mobile-optimized Full-screen Surveys
We’ve added a brand new way to capture visitor feedback throughout the user journey with the newly launched Full-screen Surveys. Now you can roll out the red carpet for your users and give them a seamless, on-brand experience when gathering their feedback.
Full-screen Surveys open up more opportunities for driving engagement and collecting responses, not only on desktop, but on mobile too. 📱 With a bigger pool of feedback, you can validate those niggling assumptions even quicker, and focus on creating a more engaging, goal-orientated user experience.
Let’s take a look!
1. A mobile-optimized Full-screen Survey experience
Mobile users are growing hungrier for a great small-screen experience, and Full-screen Surveys can help you achieve just that. By optimizing your surveys for mobile devices, you can collect even more user feedback to help you prioritize issues, or build a business case for your next initiative.
2. There’s room for two! Add both Surveys & chat widgets to your site
With Full-screen Surveys, now you can place both surveys and chat widgets on your site at once — so there’s no more flipping a coin to see which one makes the cut. Full-screen Surveys allow you to collect feedback at any part of the user experience, without preventing them from contacting your team.
3. Customize Full-screen Surveys so they become part of your brand
Full-screen Surveys are fully customizable so you can add your logo, style it to your brand, and pinpoint exactly where it should appear along the user journey — creating a more consistent on-site experience. Learn more about customizing your surveys.
Using Full-screen Surveys for continuous discovery
Developing solutions to the problems your customer hired your product to solve requires continuous discovery. Full-Screen Surveys can help you to collect the answers you need — so you can create value for your customers, and not just churn out features.
Enable Full-screen Surveys at a targeted point in the user journey for a defined set of users to continuously collect feedback on how easily they can achieve their goals. Gather feedback from your users or simply request an interview, so you can translate their comments into enhancements. Close the loop by running experiments on your latest updates that aim to improve user engagement, and delight your customers.
Discover, deliver, optimize, and repeat.
We're exploring lots of improvements to Surveys, and we'd love your input: what would you like to see us add to Surveys? Let us know in this quick survey. Here’s how you can create a Full-screen Survey.
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Focus your time in Recordings: 'Already Watched' & 'New User' filters
Cut through the noise in your recordings with these two new features:
1. Don’t waste time on recordings you’ve already watched
You know that feeling when you’re watching something on TV and you’re not quite sure if you’ve already seen it? Sometimes, when you’re on a roll watching multiple recordings in Hotjar, you’ll come across one that feels familiar.
Your recordings list used to be a mix of both recordings you’ve already watched and ones you haven’t. From now on, we’ll default to showing you recordings you haven’t watched so you can focus on uncovering brand new insights.
You can toggle this setting on or off at any time. So, if you’re struggling to find an interesting recording you watched recently (or you’re just in the mood for a re-run of the classics), you can focus your search on just the recordings you’ve previously seen.
2. Only see recordings of ‘new’ or ‘returning’ visitors
Segmenting by new or returning users is a classic and powerful way of segmenting users in analytics. You’ve now got a new/returning filter in your Recordings. 🎉
Here’s how the new/returning filter works, and a bit of inspiration for how it fits with your other Hotjar filters:
- New users: see how users who are unfamiliar with your site interact with it for the first time. Stack a 'Referrer URL' or 'Landing page' filter on top of ‘New users’ to focus on new visitors from a specific campaign.
- Returning users: see how your frequent visitors navigate your site after you’ve rolled out changes. You could use this filter to detect frustrated behaviors (like U-turns) in loyal segments of users.
New to Recordings filters? Have a read of our guide on how Hotjar Recordings filters work.
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We’re retiring Forms & Funnels on December 14
In a product update back in August, we gave some insight into the evolution of Hotjar and how we’re building a sharper set of tools to help you better understand your users. As part of that update, we shared an unprecedented look at our real business data with you: Hotjar Forms accounts for 2% of monthly activity, and Hotjar Funnels accounts for 6%. As a product-led company, we’re facing the music and confronting the fact that these tools don’t add significant value to you. So we announced that we would retire Hotjar’s Forms & Funnels in the spirit of doubling down on where we can add value through our flagship tools, and giving us long-needed space to build entirely new tools that better solve the problems you face today.
As of December 14, Forms & Funnels will be retired for all Hotjar users. For those who have been using these tools, this will mean that the tools and the data previously collected in them will no longer be accessible.
But we don’t want to leave you hanging, and we absolutely want you to be equipped to create experiences your users love, so we have curated a list of alternative ways to get the insights you might previously have gleaned from Forms & Funnels.
We are so excited about the opportunities that this renewed focus on both sharpening our core tools, and freeing us up to build new ones will bring. We can’t wait to bring you even more powerful insights in the future.
As always, you can check out what we’ve added recently and what we’re working on here in our public roadmap.
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