It has been some time I was in search of an analytics tool that could help me dig into 'who' visits my website and 'what' exactly they do. If you are a business owner or a blogger, I'm sure you have the same thoughts too. The very first tool I used for this purpose was Hotjar, and followed by this tool used some of the Hotjar alternatives.
Hotjar is not a replacement to Google Analytics. Rather, I would say Hotjar will supplement you with all those metrics that you cannot get in the free Google Analytics account. You can hear David Darmanin, founder of Hotjar, speak on how Hotjar can fuel conversion.
Google Analytics has been of great help, but it is always better to have more insights into data. In this article, I will walk you through the features and other details of Hotjar. Also, I will tell you about some of the Hotjar alternatives that I have found. So, let's start with Hotjar.
Hotjar
Hotjar is an All-in-one Analysis and Feedback tool. It provides you with a bigger picture on how to improve your website's performance and user experience (conversion rates). Hotjar lets you see how your users are using your site.
One thing that I loved about Hotjar is the page for their Founding Members. It lists down all the beta testers who used Hotjar first, gave feedback and has helped in making Hotjar what it is today. The important aspect is, the company took the effort to mention all of them. This is like a brownie point! 🙂
Hotjar combines:- Analytics tools: Allows you to observe and measure the behaviour of users while they visit your site.
- Feedback tools: Allows you to hear your users opinion about your product (voice of customer/ users).
All the impressive features of Hotjar gets a lot more elevated when you see the pricing of this tool Undoubtedly, this tool beats all others in the market with its affordability. Let's be honest here. However, good a product is, if it's too pricey we kind of cringe away! So, here's a win-win situation for Hotjar- excellent features+pocket-friendly price.
I saw it on Product Hunt. I was using Crazy Egg and Optimizely, but when I started using Hotjar as a BETA tester, I was blown away. The price point was and still is unbeatable, and it's just straight up a better product all the way around. It was a no-brainer. I was hooked immediately. ~ Garrett Mehrguth, CEO of Directive Consulting on How Hotjar helped him.
Let's move on with how Hotjar can help you have more engagements and conversions, before we discuss the pricing plans.
Analysing the Website with Hotjar
Hotjar's Heatmaps is the most sought after tool. The heatmaps are fabulous. They will give you a detailed insight on the areas where you visitors are spending the maximum time. If this wasn't cool enough, Hotjar's heatmaps will also show you heatmaps by device: Desktops, Mobiles and tablets.
Heatmaps from Hotjar covers all the requisite functionalities- from Clicks, taps to Scrolling. You can easily create a heatmap for any given page.
While using Hotjar, more than the heatmaps, the Recordings became my favourite part. You can get real-time insight as you see how your visitors are moving and navigating around your website. It is simply a delight.
With the Recording feature, you can capture every visitor's sessions the moment they hit the website. While you find it creepy that someone can watch you over as you navigate through their site, you can do the same!
Starting with the clicks to scrolls and movement of each visitor- you can track it all. And not just track, Hotjar also allows you to record and tag it. The tagging feature is new on Hotjar and is amazing.
This is how tagging works: For instance, you have an eCommerce website. You see a large chunk of the audience making mobile accessories' purchase. You can tag them as "Electronic accessories". Many visitors come via your blog, whom you can tag as "Blogs", and so on. I think this is a great feature. It gives me details that matter the most. Here's what exactly you can do:
- Replay the sessions of real site visitors
- Tag Recordings
- View the actions of your users and take note for reference
- Share recordings with anyone
- Filter recordings according to your needs.
Hotjar's Funnels feature did attract me. Although I'd still turn to Clickfunnels, I went ahead and tried Hotjar's funnel feature too. You can easily create a simple funnel for your website with unlimited steps. It is a powerful feature. You can improve your website on specific spots, especially where you find your users leaving your website.
Next feature in the queue is the Forms Feature. Without any second thoughts, Forms feature is the best from Hotjar. Suppose you need a contact form or a membership signup form, the Hotjar Forms will come handy. However, this isn't the best part. Every other form builder does that!
Forms on Hotjar show you how far your visitors have filled in and exactly where or when are they dropping off. This means you have the option to test different forms and decide on the one that your visitors will not ditch half-way. Let me give you an example.
Suppose you have a question like "Where did you find ABC (your website name)?", And you see a continuous drop-off to this question. Thus, the next move will be to remove this question. You can either test your form without this question or replace it with another question.
- Time your visitors require to fill out each field
- Conversion rate of the form
- Total number of form sessions
- Graphic representation of the drop-offs
- Total number of failed and successful submissions of the form
Without user feedback, it is nearly impossible to improve your website. Hotjar's Poll feature is downright simple. The interface is smooth, and all it takes is just 30 seconds to create a poll. Although I was never keen on running polls on my website, Hotjar's Polling feature is a convincing one. You can garner some really helpful data and feedback through the Hotjar Polls.
The results are easily understandable. You can choose to get the result in replies or result format. Along with the data and feedback, you also get details like screen size (device from which the poll was taken by the user), country, date, page, etc. The most striking part of the result is the desktop vs. mobile part! You can easily customise your Poll to get the desired results.
Another feature that I wasn't aware of is Hotjar's WordCloud. Hotjar basically takes into account all the frequently used words in polls from your users and creates a word cloud out of them.
Similar to Polls feature, Hotjar provides yet another feature to know your users better. The Survey feature allows you to get constructive feedback from your users. You can select the kind of questions that you need to be answered. Hotjar lets build a survey for various kinds of answers, like:
- Short and/or long answers
- Radio buttons
- Checkboxes
- Net promoter score
The interface is immaculate that is sure to click with your users. The Survey forms from Hotjar picks up the look and feel of your site, blending it nicely with the user experience you want your visitors to get on your website.
Lastly, we have the Recruiter feature. Now this is not about recruiting talents for your company! Jokes apart, the Recruiter feature lets you connect with the best testers for user research and testing right from your site. You collect profile information and in exchange for their contribution give them gifts.
I'd like to call it an advanced version of Polls. If you are a software company or engaged in making a web plugin, this feature will come handy. The widget is customizable to suit your needs.
Hotjar Pricing Plans
The two things that caught my eyes are:
- 15-Day Free Trial on all the plans
- 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
Yep! That's right. The free trial and the money back guarantee options lured me to a great extent. Hotjar has three pricing plans- Basic, Plus, and Business. If you are looking for a pricing plan to suit an enterprise, Hotjar has that covered too.
Basic Plan includes up to three months data storage, 2,000 page views per day. Manage up to 3 Heatmaps, polls, funnels, surveys, and forms: 300 recordings.
PLUS comes at just $29 per month. You can manage an unlimited number of items, recordings, and snapshots, and improved data storage for up to 6 months.
BUSINESS is for enterprise and SMBs and starts from $89 per month. You can secure your data storage for one year; manage an unlimited number of items, recording, and snapshots. You can expect improved pageviews from 20,000 to 200,000 page views per day.
This brings us to the conclusion of Hotjar Review. Hotjar is constantly updating the tool to make it better. Some time back Hotjar touched a milestone of 60,000+ users, including clients like Hubspot, Booking.com, Pingdom, and many more.
Hotjar Integration
Hotjar integrates with two tools mainly:
Currently, the documentation on Integration with Optimizely is being penned. So, I guess we'll need to wait for it.
However, Hotjar integration with Hubspot is possible and is pretty easy too. To get things rolling, two major requirements are:
For further steps and details, check the guide here.
Hotjar Support
Hotjar does a lot to provide support to all its users. Here's what you get:
Documentation
Hotjar has laid down step by step guide on all the features - how to use and what to do. Whether you are stuck with the installation, or wondering how to use one of the feature- Hotjar has it all covered. Along with that, there are links to FAQs that you can refer. The most important document is on "How Hotjar is differentr from Google Analytics".
Data Security
Hotjar knows how sensitive data can be, and does everything to keep your and your website's data safe and secured. Even the visitor's privacy is kept in mind. To know more details on how data is stored and secured, check out the Data Security Page.
Site Performance
Often it happens that a new tool brings down your website's performance. This is a persistent question, and Hotjar has it answered. It goes on to explain the impact Hotjar will have on your site performace. So, before you start using, you can very well be aware of what you are geting into. I'd say, you MUST read the information given on Site Performance before proceeding.
Action-Plan
Optimize your website the 'Hotjar Way' to tap on the hottest opportunities for growth. You will get a full-on detail on how to use Hotjar and get the best out of this tool. The 9-step guide is comprehensive and crucial as well.
Hotjar Alternatives
It is foolish to draw conclusions without comparison. Even Hotjar urges its users to make a price comparison before buying. It makes sense- only when you compare two things, you get a better understanding of which one you need. So, in this article now I will compare Hotjar with three more other tools: Mouseflow, Luckyorange, and InspectLet.
Hotjar alternative - Mouseflow
Mouseflow opens with the main objective of using the tool-
Stop guessing why your visitors leave your site
The features of Hotjar and Mouseflow are very similar: Heatmaps, forms, funnels and session replay. You can integrate Mouseflow with platforms like Joomla, Shopify, WordPress, Google Analytics, Hubspot, and many more. The powerful RESTful API gives you full control over your data. Let's quickly go over the feature of Mouseflow-
Screen Replay
Mouseflow's tracking system will remind you of a CCTV footage! Starting with clicks, mouse movements, scrolls, to filling out forms- Mouseflow tracks every single move of your visitor.
Filters and Segments
Pinpoint a session easily within seconds. Sorting and filtering get a tad more seamless- segment your audience by location, OS, platform, traffic source, etc. The best part: You can save each filter to use later or quick analysis.
Compatibility
Mouseflow works efficiently on all the devices with a modern browser- desktops, tablets, and phones. You get complete support for checkout, dynamic content, or member-only pages. Also, all these doesn't slow down your site.
Heatmaps
Ah! The reason we are here! Mouseflow has click/touch and movement heatmaps. It grabs your attention to the elements that attract your visitors most. You can track their navigation and keep working on improving your site tractions.
The other feature inclusive is the scroll and attention heatmap. This lets you know which part of your site exactly manages to retain, attract, and engage your visitors most.
If you are looking for information like which part of the world is viewing your site more, the Geo Heatmaps from Mouseflow can come handy. You can discover the geological patterns and target visitors based on such real-time data.
Funnels
You can get an overview of your visitor's journey- from start to end. Mouseflow gives you a page-to-page overview through which you can analyze your visitor's journey. You can know where your visitors are dropping off, and fix that. The entire navigation process is right in front of you!
Form Analytics
The way every visitor interacts or engages in your forms is an important metric. And Mouseflow gives you that. You can measure where they dropped off, which question triggered a negative response, errors, blank submissions, and much more. With details like these, you can work to increase conversions.
Affiliates
Mouseflow claims to rely on word-of-mouth for their growth. Thus, they provide a recurring commission to all those who contribute to their growth! The benefits are somewhat like this:
- 10% on All Referral Plans {The payment happens on a monthly basis till the time you have a paid account and is an active user}
- 6-Day Tracking Cookie.
The Branding Guide is available for further reference.
Hotjar vs. MouseflowIf it's about users' trust and confidentiality, then Hotjar takes the winner's cup! Hotjar offers an open standard for users to develop confidence with them with their transparency. The likelihood of users' recommendation to Hotjar over mouse flow is a lot higher. Points of differences:
- No polling or survey feature in Mouseflow
- No free trial like Hotjar
- As per customer reviews, Hotjar is a better option in terms of:
- Value for money
- Ease of use
- Customer support
- Affiliate Program in Hotjar is absent
Hotjar Alternative - Luckyorange
The bright orange colour on the homepage is attractive enough to keep you scrolling for few seconds. Luckyorange introduces the platform as "The Original All-in-One Optimization Suite" and starts at just $10/month. Now that is cheaper than Hotjar. Let's find out if it surpasses Hotjar with its features as well.
A quick look at the features:Dashboard
The tagline that Luckyorange uses is cheesy! You cannot help but keep repeating it. The Dashboard is the one-stop for all the details you need- at a glance. You can see how many people are there on your site, and also how they found you. You get to compare all these information with historical statistics and analyze what is driving traffic to your site.
Recording
We have gone over the details of this feature in all the above-mentioned tool. If there is anything new to add to this functionality, it is this:
Luckyorange records dynamic and member's only pages, including even the most advanced sites and... Click To Tweet
This is new!
Heatmaps
Luckyorange pretty much does all that Hotjar, and Mouseflow does. Starting with the segmenting map by location, browser dates, devices, etc to understanding what people are doing and how!
Chat
This is one feature I like about Luckyorange. It integrates with your existing website and is compatible with all devices. With a host of powerful features like multiple operations, canned responses, and auto invites- The Chat feature is like the icing on the cake!
Conversion Funnels
Again the functionality remains the same. You get to create funnels based on your users' activities- where they dropped off, who created an account, etc.
The point of difference is, clicking on a funnel step immediately filters the recordings to those visitors who have dropped off at any of the particular steps.
Form Analytics
Luckyorange gives you five distinct and highly valuable reports. You get detailed insights on the problem areas on your website's forms.
Polls
Instant customer feedback is the way to go! And what better option that polls? Polls on Luckyorange are fully customized, can have multiple questions, can be redirected to URLs, and also triggered at the right moment.
Luckyorange nicely demonstrates its point of difference like this:
The first highlight is, Luckyorange lets you compare historical statistics and takes into consideration keywords, locations, referrers, tweets, languages, etc that are driving traffic to your site. And all of these are just on your Dashboard. Features include:
Out of all the features, the Chat feature of Luckyorange is highly distinguishable. The ability to predict what your users need and answer them with tailored replies is a great feature. After all, it's always great to have the ability to give personalized attention to your users. Honestly, I think Hotjar's proactive chat is not yet upto this level.
However, I'd still say, Hotjar's Survey feature alone makes this tool a winner. The option to get feedback and work upon them is crucial for any business or blogger or website owner.
Hotjar Alternative - Inspectlet
Inspectlet opens with a tagline good enough to grab your eyeballs-
Google Analytics tell you what, Inspectlet tells you why
This statement is bang on! You immediately take a liking towards this tool. Let's quickly go over the features now.
Like I said, these tools are pretty much similar except few subtle differences.
- You can record the videos of your site visitors. Starting with every mouse movement to clicks, scrolls, and keypress on your site- you have it all.
- Inspectlet has a mature filtering capabilities. You can point out the potential visitors that you need to follow up with. The funnel analysis lets you know who were about to make a purchase and who didn't come anywhere close to the buying decision.
- Tagging is another feature that lets you identify individual users and capture interesting events. The javascript tagging API of Inspectlet lets you send in any metadata you want to associate with an user or a session for future filtration.
- AJAX, HTTPS, authentication, single-page apps. Even if your site is a single page app (Angular JS, Ember, Backbone) or you use AJAX, HTML5, cookies, Login/authentication, HTTPS/SSL. dynamic javascript, etc.- Inspectlet has it all covered up.
Unlike the other tools mentioned in this article, Inspectlet has a full-on free membership plan included in it's pricing page. This means no limited time span for free association. Ah! this goes down so well with me all the time!
Free plan includes:
- 1 website
- 1 month storage
- 1000 approximate pageviews/month
- 100 recorded sessions/month
- Heatmap suites
- Playback session recordings
- Compatibility with other dynamic sites
- Mobile device support
- Seamless AJAX/HTTPS support
- Email support
Good enough!
Inspectlet has heatmaps, conversion funnel, In-depth form analysis, recording, and support, similar to Hotjar. Now, let's look at the points of difference.
The pricing plans of Inspectlet is broadly different from that of Hotjar. The plans are categorised as follows:
- Free
- Micro at $39/month
- Startup at $79/month
- Growth at $149/month
- Accelerate at $299/month
- Enterprise Plan
Other points of difference:
- Hotjar offers A/B testing which is absent in Inspectlet.
- Seamless AJAX and Single Page App Support in Inspectlet is absent in Hotjar.
Hotjar is the undisputed tool in anaytics, having the largest market share in comparison to the tools we discussed above. Apart from these three, there are some other alternatives that you can try, like Crazy Egg, and Clicktale.
If you have found a tool better than Hotjar, then tell me in comments exactly why you think so. Else, if you also agree that Hotjar is by-far the best tool in analytics, give me a buzz.