Hotjar Review: The Next Generation Tracking Tool

Hotjar is the latest analytics tool that you can use to “See how visitors are really using your website, collect feedbacks and turn more visitors into your customers.” Now, if you are an online business owner or a professional blogger, most probably you are already aware of Google Analytics. And chances are that you are using it for understanding and mapping the behavior of your customers and readers for quite some time now. So, what’s new in Hotjar? This review is going to answer this question only.
As a blogger myself, I personally like to know this information about my visitors:

• What are the links that are attracting my visitors?
• How my visitors are behaving on my website?
• What exactly my visitors think about my website?
• What are the areas visitors are not paying attention to?

I think it goes the same for any other online business or blog. When I used the tool for the very first time I wanted the answers for these questions. And to my satisfaction Hotjar was able to answer these all.
Here are all the reasons for which I shall recommend Hotjar to you:

1. Insight on customer behaviour

Unlike any other tool, Hotjar provides customer behaviour map in minute details. The awesome Heatmap feature helps one know exactly what the visitor is viewing, how much time he is spending on which particular link, what are topic he is scrolling down, and even where he stopped scrolling down. It creates a heatmap for you (like the one below), so that you understand which are the areas in your page that is getting maximum attention from your visitors.

While the red marked area shows the maximum activity, the blue marked areas show minimum response.
Visitor Playback is another feature that proved to be very effective for tracking visitor’s behaviour on your blog. This feature actually records the visitor’s movement of the site and plays it back for you. See the below picture:

Here the red lines actually show the movement of a visitor’s mouse. This feature coupled with Heatmap provides hundred percent tracking of visitors’ behavior.

2. Consumer feedback

Now, this is something that impressed me a lot. In today’s web space engaging your visitor in any form can go a long way in creating a consumer connect. The Feedbak poll feature gives me that chance. It enables you to offer a feedback form (see the picture below) to your visitors with some simple questions by which you can understand what exactly your visitors like about your page and more importantly what they do not like.

While this feature is available in other analytics tools as well, the Survey Editor is a unique feature that no other tool will offer you. Through this feature, you can create a customize questioner for your customers to get a complete feedback from their end. Depending on this feedback, you can decide what more you can offer, what are the areas that require improvement and also how you can enhance customer satisfaction.

3. Consumer connect

This one is, according to me the best feature this tool has. Involving the consumers or visitors directly in the development of the website, this feature allows your visitors to engage as a live reviewer sharing their feedback and suggestions. Using this feature, the visitor can share his review with you through Skype’s screen sharing. This will take you a long way with your visitors, as they’ll have a sense of ownership for your website.

4. Hassle free installation process

The installation process is as smooth as a piece of cake. You can just go to their official website, enter the name and URL of your website or blog (as shown in the picture below).

Once you click on continue, it takes you to a registration page (see the picture below).

You simply need provide the required details and click on ‘create account’. Once the sign up is done Hotjar will provide you with a tracking code (see the picture below) which you need to insert in your website. This is the most crucial part, as without the insertion of the code, the Hotjar tools will not be able to track you visitors.

You can complete the entire process in just three simple steps.

Other good features

• Live chat with users
• Conversion Funnels
• Form Abandonment

What can be improved?

Hotjar is presently running a beta version, which is quite slow and prone to bugging uses. This can be improved to make the user interface smoother.

What you’ll be paying?

This beta version of Hotjar is available right now at the affordable price of $29/month.  Another interesting feature is, if you refer Hotjar to 5 of your friends you will receive 6 months free usages as a referral bonus.
To sum it up, Hotjar can be termed as the next generation consumer behaviour tracking device. While I found it pretty useful, do let me know your opinion on this.