Hotjar: behaviour analysis and user feedback
Hotjar is a tool for heatmaps, session recordings, on-site surveys and user interviews. It answers the "why" behind the numbers: what users do and what they think about it.
- Made by
- Hotjar (Contentsquare)
- Price
- Free plan, paid plans
- Modules
- Observe, Ask, Engage
- Strength
- Surveys and feedback
What is Hotjar?
Hotjar's Observe module gives heatmaps and recordings; the Ask module gives on-page surveys and a feedback widget. For example, you can ask someone leaving the payment page "What stopped you?".
For CRO hypotheses this combination is very valuable: behaviour shows the problem and the survey gives the reason in the user's own words. The hypotheses that go to testing are stronger.
What Hotjar makes possible
Heatmaps
Click, move and scroll maps.
Session recordings
Recordings by funnel step.
On-site surveys
A short question at the right moment.
Feedback widget
What users think about a page.
Funnels and trends
Drop-off by step.
User interviews
Moderated interviews with Engage.
What Hotjar works with
- Open the guide
Google Analytics 4
Event-based web and app analytics. Funnels, conversions and audiences.
- Open the guide
Google Tag Manager
Managing tracking tags and the dataLayer without code.
- Open the guide
Microsoft Clarity
Free heatmaps, session recordings and user behaviour analysis.
- Open the guide
GrowthBook
An open-source feature flag and A/B testing platform.
My experience
Projects where I used Hotjar:
- [Project: brand, what I built, result %]
- [Project: brand, what I built, result %]
Hotjar resources
Questions about Hotjar
Hotjar or Clarity?
If you only need heatmaps and recordings, Clarity is free and enough. If you need surveys and feedback, Hotjar is stronger.
Is the free plan enough?
For a small site to start, yes. The daily session limit fills up quickly on large sites.
Do surveys annoy users?
Not with one question, the right moment and a frequency cap. Surveys shown on exit intent are the most useful.