How to use Hotjar to understand your visitors' behaviour

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar is an analytics tool that helps you understand how visitors behave on your website. Whereas Google Analytics gives you mainly numerical data on the number of visitors, the time they spend on your website and the pages they visit, Hotjar goes a step further. It visualises the user experience through heatmaps, screen recordings, and polls, allowing you to see exactly where visitors click, how far they scroll and where they drop out.

Let's take a look at how you can use Hotjar to gather valuable insights.

Step 1: installing Hotjar

Before you can gather insights, you need to install Hotjar on your website. This is simpler than it sounds.

• Create an account on Hotjar.com.
• After logging in, add your website to your dashboard.
• You will then get a tracking code that you need to place in the section of your website. Use a tag manager for this, or add it manually in your website's code.

Once you install the code, Hotjar will automatically start collecting data.

Step 2: Using heatmaps

One of Hotjar's most popular features is the heatmap. Heatmaps give you a visual representation of where visitors click, how far they scroll and where their mouse cursor is on the page.

• Click-heatmaps: These show where visitors click the most. For example, you can discover if visitors are clicking on elements that are not clickable, or missing important call-to-actions (CTAs).
• Scroll heatmaps: With scroll heatmaps, you can see how far visitors scroll down a page. This way, you can discover whether important content might be too far down and therefore not be seen.

A tip: Analyse heatmaps of your most important pages, such as your homepage and product pages. This will give you a good idea of what works and what doesn't.

Step 3: Viewing screen recordings

In addition to heatmaps, Hotjar also offers the ability to view screen recordings of user sessions. This allows you to literally look over the shoulder of your visitors as they navigate through your website.

This can provide hugely valuable insights:

• Identify bottlenecks: You see where visitors get stuck, for example if they keep clicking on something that doesn't work or if they have trouble finding certain content.
• Follow the user's path: By seeing how a visitor moves from one page to another, you can determine whether your navigation structure is intuitive enough.

Note: Screen recordings can be time-consuming to go through. A good strategy is to filter recordings based on session duration or number of pages visited, so that you look at the most relevant sessions.

Step 4: Deploy feedback polls

Besides observing visitor behaviour, it is also valuable to solicit feedback directly from your visitors. With Hotjar, you can deploy polls on specific pages to ask, for example, why they leave the page without taking action.

Some examples of questions you can ask:

• "What keeps you from making a purchase?"
• "Did you find what you were looking for on this page?"
• "How can we improve your experience?"

Polls are an effective way to collect both qualitative and quantitative feedback. By analysing the responses, you get a better understanding of your target audience's needs and can make targeted improvements.

Step 5: Taking action based on data

Gathering insights is step one, but the real value of Hotjar only emerges when you take action based on the data. Here are some tips:

• Optimise your call-to-actions: If the heatmap shows that visitors barely click on your CTAs, experiment with moving or adjusting these elements.
• Move important content up: Do you see in the scroll heatmap that visitors are not scrolling down far enough to see important information? Then consider moving this content higher on the page.
• Fix navigation problems: If screen recordings show that visitors struggle to find certain information, adjust your navigation or search functionality.

Conclusion: start using Hotjar today

With Hotjar, you not only gain insight into what your visitors do, but also why they do it. By using heatmaps, screen recordings and polls, you can improve your website and provide an optimal user experience. This ultimately leads to higher conversions and better customer satisfaction.

Would you like to know how to use Hotjar effectively for your website? Or do you need help optimising your site? If so, please feel free to contact us. Our team of experts will be happy to help you get the most out of your website!