The sharpest knives in the drawer: how we’re making Hotjar’s tools smarter and easier to use
If you’re serious about cooking, you don’t want a swiss army knife in your kitchen. You want a proper set of kitchen knives. The same principle applies to software tools, and how we’re thinking about building Hotjar.
In this update, we reflect on Hotjar’s past and look boldly ahead to its future: a sharper set of tools for understanding how users really experience your site and how to provide them with better experiences.
For all the nitty-gritty details, you can read more HERE.
Watch the video and continue reading below for the quick version of the update.
1. Hotjar’s way of chewing data is changing: pageviews will soon be gone, sessions will replace them, and this will make using Hotjar a lot simpler.
Hotjar capturing data based on pageviews has limited our product innovation. Pageviews are a static instance of a webpage loading: inherently inconsistent and unreflective of the dynamic experience on a website today. Hotjar’s way of working is evolving to capture user sessions: recording a user’s visit to your site (a session) and providing behavior analytics based on their whole visit. We will be updating our subscriptions to be based on how many user sessions you want to capture on your site per month.
2. No more ‘snapshots’ of data filling up inconsistently: Hotjar is heading to Continuous Capture
Manually starting and restarting a ‘snapshot’ of pageviews to analyze user behavior has been an unnatural step in our users’ workflow. There’s inherent gaps in this kind of data. With our new Continuous Capture mode of gathering insights, you just need to open Hotjar and all the sessions within your plan’s sample will be available to analyze. Less manual work, cleaner data, better Hotjar.
3. Hello Surveys 2.0, goodbye Forms and Funnels
We’re merging Polls and Surveys into one more powerful Surveys tool. Adding context to behavior analytics data through user feedback is key to improving site experience and increasing conversions. We’re doubling down on the analytical depth of Hotjar’s feedback tools.
We’re retiring Forms and Funnels. For us to focus on improving Hotjar’s flagship tools (Heatmaps, Recordings, our feedback tools) we have had to make difficult decisions and prioritize: Forms and Funnels are underused, and we’re open about them not being competitive tools in their space. They’re no longer going to be part of the Hotjar toolkit.
4. We’re changing the prices on Hotjar’s paid plans.
Hotjar’s basic plan is staying free forever. We’re increasing prices of our two most affordable plans - the Plus plan and the lowest tier within our Business plans - by 10 bucks per month. That’s it - nothing crazy or drastic. That’s already gone into effect for new customers. For existing customers: we’ll be in touch to give you plenty of heads-up of the date new pricing comes into effect.
Read on for the story of why and how we’re evolving Hotjar, and more cooking analogies than you can shake a pepper mill at.
Read MoreHotjar x Google Optimize: compare user behavior in your experiment variants 🔍
Want to see why your leading Optimize test variants are working better for your users?
Hotjar’s new integration with Google Optimize makes it easy to explore and compare differences in how your users experience your website test variants. The Hotjar x Optimize workflow is ideal for empathizing with how well users are able to complete their objectives and drawing better conclusions about your tests.
Here’s how it works:
- Hotjar will automatically detect the Optimize experiments on your site
- You can filter your Hotjar recordings by Optimize experiment ID and its variants
- Your recordings list will be curated to show you user sessions experiencing your test variants
Filter down Hotjar Recordings by your Google Optimize experiments to see recordings of user sessions in your test variants.
What’s Google Optimize?
Optimize is a testing and optimization tool that’s part of Google Marketing Platform. Optimize makes it easy to run A/B-, multivariate-, and redirect tests on your website content to see what works best for your visitors and drives your business goals.
What are Hotjar Recordings?
Hotjar’s Recordings tool shows renderings of real actions taken by visitors as they browse your site, capturing mouse movement, clicks, taps, and scrolls across multiple pages. Recordings help you identify issues and blockers your users face that can inform your decisions on how to enhance user experience (UX) and drive conversions.
The Google Optimize integration is available on Hotjar Business.
Take your multivariate testing to the next level: understand how users are really experiencing your tests.
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Keep recording without creating snapshots
We’re making a major improvement to the way Hotjar captures data and taking the manual work out of understanding what users are really doing on your site.
What you need to know:
- We are beginning the rollout of continuous capture, which will replace the current snapshots method of capturing data about user behavior in Hotjar.
- When fully rolled out, you will no longer need to manually create and restart snapshots in Hotjar Recordings and Heatmaps.
- This will mean no more manual restarting of recordings and no more gaps in your data between snapshots. The result? A clearer picture of how your user behavior varies over time, and less of your time spent on manual work.
- This will be a phased release so, depending on your plan and the tools you use in Hotjar, you might not see any changes straight away.
- The first phase is a limited release of continuous capture in Recordings to sites on Business plans with an allowance of 50,000 pageviews/day or higher.
We’re making Hotjar better, based on your feedback
We get a lot of suggestions from you, our customers, on ways Hotjar can make your lives easier and give you a better understanding of your users’ behavior. By far, the most common frustration is the need to create ‘snapshots’ in our Heatmaps and Recordings tools.
Let's face it, starting and stopping snapshots in order to generate recordings and heatmaps is not a natural part of your workflow. This can be confusing: you stop seeing new recordings, you get frustrated when you realize you need to manually restart a recording snapshot to avoid gaps in your data.
The new way of capturing data
We’ve taken this feedback on board and built a new way of capturing the data used to generate heatmaps and recordings in Hotjar, automatically and continuously.
This will mean no more logging in to manually restart your snapshots and no more gaps in your data between one snapshot ending and another starting. Continuously capturing data will give you a truer picture of user behavior on your site, allow you to identify trends in behavior over time, and ultimately enable you to make the right changes to your user experience.
What our BETA users have to say
MaxiAxi is a leading online retailer of light and sound equipment. As participants in the BETA phase of continuous capture in Recordings, the MaxiAxi team has been experiencing this new way of generating recordings and have seen huge benefits.
Sven van Laar, Ecommerce Manager at MaxiAxi, is a regular user of Hotjar and sets aside a few hours every Friday to watch recordings of MaxiAxi users navigating the company's ecommerce site. This helps him to identify opportunities to improve the user experience.
"We've been able to fix a lot of issues with the checkout, things customers didn't get, things that didn't work, or problems that we didn't see but customers did. When you had to keep restarting snapshots, you risked missing a problem that came up in the store at a time when recordings weren't being generated. Now, with continuous capture in Recordings, you don't have the fear of missing out. You can always see the actual data, it's there waiting for you. You can trust that Hotjar will be ready for you, and you know the recordings are there."
A phased rollout across Hotjar’s tools and price plans
Hotjar’s evolution from snapshots to continuous capture will be completed in phases and will be limited to certain tools within Hotjar and specific price plans at first. As we get feedback from initial customers and fine-tune the new experience, we will eventually make this the standard for all of our customers and across all tools in Hotjar.
The first step was taken last week when sites on our Business plans with an allowance of 50,000 pageviews/day or higher (price plans from $/€189 and up) got access to continuous capture in Recordings. If your site is on a plan that already has access, you can read more here about how continuous capture works in Recordings, what has happened to your existing snapshots, and the daily recordings allowances for your plan.
When will continuous capture be available in more tools and plans?
Continuous capture in Heatmaps will follow in the third quarter of 2020. The full rollout across all tools and to sites on all Business plans will also be completed in the third quarter of 2020.
If your site is on our Basic or Plus plans, you will need to wait a while longer to get the benefits of continuous capture, but it will eventually become the standard in all Hotjar plans. If you want to remove the manual work of starting and stopping snapshots as soon as possible, you can always upgrade your site to one of our Business plans (even if only temporarily) to get earlier access to continuous capture and lots of other advanced features.
The transition from snapshots to continuous capture will change how Hotjar fits into your workflow, and we’re confident that it will make it far easier for you to get the insights you need to create experiences that your users love.
💡 Starting Continuous Capture in Recordings.
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Hotjar's Slack integration has landed 🛬
Hotjar insights. Delivered to your teams in Slack.
Hotjar’s brand new Slack integration pushes Hotjar data into your Slack workspace, making it easier than ever to share user behavior insights with your team. We’re getting this rolling with Incoming Feedback which can now be sent into your Slack channels. You'll soon be able to forward more Hotjar insights into Slack - it's in the works. 🔨
Hotjar insights in Slack?
- Forward Incoming Feedback responses to your Slack channels.
- Bring your discussions on Hotjar insights straight to your teams.
- Respond to critical issues and bugs that users alert you to via Incoming Feedback in real-time.
Instant. Visual. Feedback. 📣 Coming to a Slack workspace near you.
Incoming Feedback widgets give your users an easy way to leave instant visual feedback on your website. Their responses will help you understand what your users love, what they hate, and what usability issues you might have on your site. Get these responses rolling into Slack and you've got yourself and your team a real-time direct line to what your customers feel about your site experience, as they're experiencing it. 🔥
How to forward Incoming Feedback to your Slack workspace
To set up the Slack integration on a new Incoming Feedback widget:
- Head over to Incoming Feedback on your Hotjar dashboard.
- Hit ‘New Feedback Widget’ to set up your widget (first time? here’s the guide).
- When you get to step 5: ‘Forward feedback’ - toggle on ‘Receive feedback responses via Slack’.
Forward Incoming Feedback responses for your existing widgets:
Already got Incoming Feedback widgets running on your site? Go to your Incoming Feedback list, pick a widget, and then hit the 'forward' button on the top right of the responses page (see the image below 👇 ).
💡 Need help getting this integration running? We’ve got you covered in our Slack integration docs.
Get started with the Slack integration
The Hotjar<>Slack integration is available on Hotjar Business --- which you can trial for free for 15 days, to try out this integration and tons of other advanced features like User Attributes for deeper Recordings insights.
When you’re ready to get to it, head over to Incoming Feedback and enable ‘forward responses to Slack’. ✅
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How to reach us with your product suggestions 💡
Got a suggestion or request? Here's how to let us know.
2 ways you can make suggestions and requests
We've made a couple of changes to how you as a Hotjar user can make suggestions or feature requests. Read on to find out how best to reach us.
1. Send us your requests and suggestions via Incoming Feedback
You can tell us about your requests and suggestions in Hotjar using our own Incoming Feedback widget. With this method, it’s super easy to point at something in Hotjar and share your thoughts with us. Wherever you’re working in Hotjar, you’ll see the little red widget labeled ‘Feedback’ on the right of your screen.
2. Reach out to Hotjar support with your requests and suggestions
Another way to reach us is by submitting a request. This way you can easily choose a topic to tie your request to.
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PS. Keep an eye on our Product Roadmap for info on what we're working on. 🔨
Read More6 ways your remote teams can use Hotjar to understand your users
Today we're highlighting a new Hotjar guide going in-depth on getting the most out of Hotjar in remote-first ways of working, which is something more and more of you are getting acquainted with in 2020.
What's in the guide?
We'll show you how your remote team can use Hotjar together to better understand your users and improve their user experience. We run through 3 ways to share Hotjar insights with your remote team [with 6 examples]:
- Research and analyze: use heatmaps to visualize customer behavior
- Save time: share recordings with your teams
- Keep learning: use on-site surveys to deepen customer understanding
👏 Delivered with actionable steps and resources from expert Hotjar users at Buffer, Tyk, Beamer, Rebrandly, and Conversion Rate Experts.
📣 Give us a shout in the comments if you've got your own remote Hotjaring tips to share. We'd love to hear them.
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