When new features get released from programs that you use on a daily basis, the reaction tends to be mixed. Sometimes, these features take one step forward but two steps back. It’s rare that a release brings something SO valuable, we not only get excited but take to our blog immediately to write about it.
Well, that’s what happened last month when Hotjar, one of our favorite Conversion Optimization tools, released a wonderfully delicious update. This heat mapping and session recording tool has been our go-to for quite some time for visual analysis.
One thing that was always limited in Hotjar is that heat maps could not be filtered by user attributes.
Session recordings could be grouped, filtered, and segmented by different types of users, which proved useful in understanding funnel friction, drop off, and user activity. However, you still needed to watch individual sessions to gather your data. Talk about time consuming!
I’ve always craved the ability to quickly and painlessly see a snapshot of a page activity by the same user groups, filtered by device, type of user, or A/B test.
That’s exactly what Hotjar just rolled out. They now provide the ability to group users together and view their page activity visually through a custom heatmap. This provides endless possibilities in how we look at page activity.
A very simple example of this is assigning a user attribute to all of your internal traffic and then excluding all internal traffic from the heatmap. Or another one would be assigning a “returning buyer” to your user through a cookie and using that cookie via Google Tag Manager to send into Hotjar and group all returning buyers together and see their page activity. The possibilities are endless! (Did I mention endless possibilities?)
An example of the filters are in this picture below, but we can additionally add custom user attributes so don’t get too hung up on the out of the box ones. (Though, there are some goodies like Google Optimize ID and Rage Clicks).
If you haven’t implemented HotJar on your website, you are definitely missing out on valuable user insights. This tool can help you clearly define your user journey and understand what portions of your site could be improved. You can try HotJar business free for one month when you sign up using our partnership link.
Looking to take your business to the next level? Reach out to us to discuss how we can help maximize your HotJar heatmaps and optimize your site’s visual data.
