Watch, Learn and Improve With Hotjar

Test and learn is a crucial phrase in anything digital and e-commerce – very solemnly, is it beneficial to take a gung ho approach and make many wholesale changes at once.

Instead, a hypothesis, careful deliberation and split testing is the best way to deliver measured incrementality to your store. 

​​Split testing (also called A/B testing or multivariate testing) is a method of conducting controlled, randomised experiments to improve a website metric, such as clicks, form completions, or purchases. Incoming traffic to the website is distributed between the original (control) and the different variations without visitors knowing that they are part of an experiment. 

The tester waits for a statistically significant difference in behaviour to emerge. The results from each variation are compared to determine which version showed the most significant improvement.

This is where Hotjar comes in.

What is Hotjar

Hotjar provides Product Experience Insights that show how users behave and what they feel strongly about, so product teams can deliver real value to them.

Simply put, every time a user visits your website, Hotjar makes a recording of their session. Whilst doing this, it tracks cursor movements and clicks. This means that after a data collection period, you can see maps of how users interacted with your site. 

Hotjar can split user journeys by various device types, meaning you can see how people behave differently (and how your site renders!) depending on how they access it.

Furthermore, Hotjar has an inbuilt survey tool, which allows you to collect qualitative and quantitative feedback from your users.

Hotjar Features

This UI optimisation app is loaded with features. 

Here are the major features of Hotjar:

Easy to Set-Up

The app is easy to set up. All you need to do is select it from the Shopify app marketplace, and then install it. Once done, it should be ready for your use.

Feedback Polls

Improving the performance and experience of your website starts with understanding what your visitors want and what’s preventing them from achieving it. Target questions to specific visitors anywhere on your web and mobile site.

Visitor Recordings

See what your users see – Eliminate guesswork with Recordings of actual visitor behaviour on your site. By seeing your visitor’s clicks, taps and mouse movements, you can identify usability issues on the fly and problems they encounter.

Heatmaps

Visualise behaviour – Understand what users want, care about and do on your site by visually representing their clicks, taps and scrolling behaviour – which are the most vital indicators of visitor motivation and desire.

Conversion Funnels

Where are your visitors dropping off? – Find the most significant opportunities for improvement and testing by identifying which page and at which step most visitors are leaving your site.

Form Analysis

How are your forms used? – Improve online form completion rates by discovering which fields take too long to fill, which are left blank, and why your visitors abandon your form and page.

Incoming Feedback

Instant visual feedback – Give your visitors an easy way to leave instant visual feedback on your website or app. See what people love and hate, identify issues, and find growth opportunities.

Surverys

Get to know your audience better – Build your own responsive surveys using a straightforward editor. Collect responses in real-time from any device. Distribute your surveys using web links, emails or invite your visitors just before they abandon your site to uncover their objections or concerns.

Hotjar Pricing

How much you pay for Hotjar depends on two factors. How many features do you want to use, and how many sessions or data points do you want to track.

The basic plan is, as it suggests, basic. Whilst it’s free, the main thing to consider is that you only catch pageviews. This means you can also see a user on one page and not track how they interact across your whole site. 

In the upper tiers, this switches to sessions, which is definitely more helpful if you are an e-commerce store. Beyond this, the most basic paid plan also includes unlimited heatmaps and surveys. If you are a small store, this is an excellent option to get some feedback.

Hotjar Benefits

Why do you need an app like this?

Here are the benefits that you can get from your subscription:

• Improve Your Conversion Rates – find out where users are getting stuck and implement changes to help progress them through your checkout process.
• Fix Bugs – See site loads etc on devices that you haven’t tested with yet, allowing you to make sure everyone has a great experience
• Get Feedback – Do users want a voucher code, or wanted to know what size the model in the picture was wearing? You can now find out
• Sell More – Just finding out more about the above three points will permanently raise your bottom line

Hotjar: Is It Worth It?

Absolutely. There is no better tool out there for allowing you to find issues that you didn’t even know existed. 

There is a range of different HotJar products available that will suit all your needs. 

Whether you are in maintenance mode or overhaul mode, how big your store is will likely define which subscription you need. Of course, the free trial is always available to get a bit of a flavour before you have to pay.

In terms of a secret tip, be patient when you install Hotjar and give it a few weeks before you start making changes. You want to collect at least 300 sessions to have statistically significant findings, which you can then turn into revenue greatness.

Make changes too early, and you may end up ostracising many people just because of the journey or feedback of one. 

On the theme of customer retention, check out of guide on how to make sure that customers are more sticky.