How Hotjar Service Helps Increase Conversion (Service Overview and 3 Cases)
- Tutorial
Hotjar is a service for advanced internet marketers who analyze user behavior, conduct surveys, build funnels, and the like. The main goal of the service is to help you increase the conversion on the site. And he copes with it perfectly. The number of customers is growing by leaps and bounds.
I myself have been using this service for a long time and I think that it is the best among analogues. The only thing he loses to some Yandex.Metrica features is the price. You have to pay for it if you do not want to have restrictions. As my experience suggests, this stops many Internet marketers in Runet. But then everyone will decide for himself whether he needs it or not.
Yandex.Metrica also has this function.
Heat maps are divided into 3 types:
What heatmaps give:
You will find out which elements of the page users click on, which links they most often click on and how deeply they scroll through the page (a case describing this function in the second part of the article). Based on this, you will understand how website visitors interact with the interface.
Examples of use:
You analyze the click map on the site and see that a large proportion of clicks falls on a certain element. In this case, the element is non-clickable. But, since visitors constantly click on it, it means that when you click it will go to a specific page.
Based on this data, you will know exactly which elements need to be clickable.
So you will understand where visitors most often click. Perhaps these will be buttons that take visitors away from the buying process. This means that either these buttons must be removed from the interface altogether, or made so that the visitor does not leave the "path" to purchase.
If we consider a scrolling map, then it is very useful for long landing pages, long pages, as well as content marketers. A scrolling map in 3 seconds will show if potential customers are flipping through your landing page, whether they are reading your long articles at all.
I advise you to read - How to find an idea for an A / B test: heatmaps and polls
Yandex.Metrica also has this function.
What session records give:
You can see how each visitor interacts with the interface of your site. You will see all the clicks, cursor movements, how much time a person spends in each part of the page, what problems arise in certain browsers or devices.
Moreover, you have the opportunity to filter the records, put tags on them and add to your favorites to make the analysis more convenient.
Usage example:
After viewing the sessions, you noticed that visitors coming through Internet Explorer do not see a button for placing an order at all. Accordingly, they, in principle, cannot convert into customers, even if they really want to.
Based on this information, you quickly send the task to the developers, they correct the layout, and all visitors to the site with an Internet explorer make purchases without problems. Everyone is happy. Business uphill!
By the way, you can find such jambs not only through viewing records. Google Analytics has very cool reports that help you find all the "killers" of the conversion. We devoted an entire article to them , which gained more than 40,000+ views on several sites.
The function for viewing sessions is also in Yandex.Metrica and it is called Webvisor. If you do not want to spend money on Hotjar, then you can use it without any problems. By the way, when using a web browser, I highly recommend using segmentation so as not to analyze everyone in a row.
I advise you to read - 10 successful A / B testing cases
Yandex.Metrica also has this function.
What gives a sales funnel:
If you draw up a sequence of actions that lead to an ultimate goal (for example, a purchase), you will see at what stages you have the biggest problems.
Accordingly, where the most users fall off, there you need to invest all efforts to increase conversion.
In my opinion, the only minus of the sales funnel in Hotjar is that it is built not on events (events), but on transitions to pages. Although the same situation is with Google Analytics, and with Yandex.Metrica. But in the last two, we still have the opportunity to make a funnel of events, although it will not be easy for beginners to solve this problem.
Alternatively, you can use Mixpanel. In this service, in general, all analytics is built on the basis of events and properties that are assigned to users. Here it is incredibly convenient and simple to build sales funnels.
In general, if your business does not yet have a funnel, on the basis of which you measure the client’s path from the first contact to the purchase, then this is a huge omission. I advise you right now to drive on this issue.
I advise you to read - They will help you find all the "killers" of the conversion - 10 reports in Google Analytics
Yandex.Metrica also has this function.
What forms analytics gives:
Each site has a form. It is impossible to do without them. And it’s good if there is only one field in your form. But in most forms there are many more. So analytics of forms allows you to understand how people fill each individual field.
Firstly, you will learn how much time visitors spend on average filling each field. Secondly, you will see in which fields the largest number of people fall off.
If you add session viewing to form analytics, then you can see how visitors fill in the fields. Perhaps they don’t understand something and introduce something completely different from what is needed. As a result, they get the error of filling out the form and go to the competitor.
Usage example:
Through the analytics of the form, you noticed that in the “Phone Number” field, most people fall off. There may be two reasons. First, they don’t want to leave a phone number. The second is the problem with the field itself.
Ok, look at the session notes. Perhaps the problem is that there is no phone number mask in the field, and a large proportion of visitors simply do not understand that it is necessary to enter the country / city code?
If this is the problem, then it is solved very simply. The task is set for the developer and makes normal, understandable for people fields.
I advise you to read - Startup Plotguru increased the conversion of the landing from 9% to 52%. Are you weak?
What the built-in polls give:
They help to understand the target audience. There is no better way to know the desires and needs of your target audience than to ask her. Surveys are one of the important tools of any advanced internet marketer. Hotjar’s
built-in polls can be targeted according to specific conditions. For example, they can only be displayed on a specific page, after 2 minutes of being on it.
Usage example:
On the product payment page, you know that the user needs an average of 2 minutes to go to the next stage. If he spends more on it, then you can show him a poll with a question about what prevents him from making a purchase. Thanks to this question, you can find out many reasons that prevent potential customers from earning you income.
It should be noted that these polls work both in the web version of sites and mobile. By the way, try to run the survey only on mobile users - find out from them whether it is convenient to use your site on a smartphone. This will be your first step in data driven marketing.
I advise you to read - How to increase conversion - 30 short tips for Internet marketers
A function similar to the previous one, but already more advanced
What polls give:
They are used for the same purpose as the previous function - to get as much information as possible from the mouth of the target audience.
But in this case, these polls can be used much more widely. For example, you can directly drop the link to the survey to the target audience. Or conduct a survey via e-mail newsletter. Or to interrogate only those who lead the cursor to the button to close the tab or browser.
In general, there are a lot of opportunities to activate polls. I personally used different options:
From experience, I can say that the first option may work too soon, since now people very often switch between tabs without the intention to close the site. So it either annoyed many, or just showed up at the moment when they had not done anything on the site.
But, in general, polls are an incredible useful and cool thing. At Boosta.ru I spend them one by one. Thus, I constantly collect feedback from the target audience and develop the site in accordance with their desires and needs.
Usage example: Now the trend is push notifications on sites. But until recently, people were very negative about them. To understand whether push notifications are needed on Boost, I launched a corresponding survey. Several days have already passed, but there are first results:
Here in such a convenient form the results are displayed. Just a week or two, and it will be possible to draw conclusions, and only after that decide whether to implement push notifications on Boost or not.
All according to the rules of Data Driven Marketing.
I have tried many survey services. And, in my opinion, this is the best, easiest and most convenient. The survey is created in 2 minutes, it is highly customizable for the site, it is easily targeted and launched in one click. Just perfect!
If you want to consider other options, then here is a very good selection of services for user polls .
What this function gives:
Right on the site you can display pop-ups (in the same form as built-in polls) and look through them for users who will test your site.
User testing is very popular right now. And abroad it costs a lot of money. We have such a service as Askusers.ru, which can be used for the same purposes.
In general, it is difficult for me to comment on the last function, since I have never used it. It’s even interesting how often Hotjar clients use it compared to the rest of the functionality.
That's all for the Hotjar service description . As promised, in the end, a good case for using the service to increase conversion on the site.
I advise you to read - 6 cases of increasing conversion from the company Fiverr
Foreword: Trampoline Plezier is an online store where you can buy baby trampolines (in the backyard of your home, for example, so that a child frolics).
The founder of the company Hans van Leersum, even at the very start, when researching the target audience, realized that customers really lack information on how and where to install a trampoline. They were also tormented by questions about how to “fit” the trampoline to the appearance of the territory, so that everything was beautiful, so to speak.
The logical conclusion is that one who can solve all these problems (to make the process of purchasing and installing the product as simple and convenient for the client as possible) will receive loyal customers.
Loyal customers for business are a simple paradise. They are more likely to return for a second purchase. When their friend / colleague asks where to buy such a trampoline, they will advise you first.
The value is obvious.
Based on this information, the founder of the online store created a blog (yes, content marketing is conquering the world). All blog content was aimed at dispelling all doubts, solving all the problems of potential and current customers.
In addition, in each blog article there were CTA buttons leading directly to the online store. This is how the lead generation process worked through content marketing.
But, not everything was done right. Namely, the CTA button leading to the online store was at the very bottom of the article.
Already guessed what the problem was?
Most people do not read the full article. On my site , an average of 23-25% of all visitors read articles to the very end.
What did this mean for Hans?
Only part of the blog visitors knew about the presence of a button to go to the online store. Thus, every day he lost potential customers.
Let's look at the Scroll Tracking map:
As seen in the image, only 46.2% of visitors saw the button. And this is a very good indicator. Not every blog has such a reading audience. Nevertheless, the business is not doing better. 54% of visitors still did not even see this button. To be precise, this is 13,000 visitors per month.
If we imagine that at least 1% of them were able to be converted into a buyer, then the figure is solid (taking into account the average check of trampolines). And, as can be seen below on the click map, visitors actively clicked on the button.
If more than half of the visitors do not reach the right place, then how to solve this problem?
Everything is obvious simple - duplicate the button at the beginning of the article. Let the one who grabs the first few paragraphs immediately goes and buys. And those who need more information to make a decision will do so at the very end.
Here's how the beginning of the article looked before adding an additional button:
After adding a button:
It is incredibly simple. Even with my zero HTML / CSS skills, I’ll snap such a button in 1 minute to the site. And the result turned out to be incredibly steep - button clicks increased from 21.8% to 33.02%. This is 50% more.
Accordingly, the potential revenue from content marketing due to the addition of a single button could immediately increase by 50%.
This is exactly the case when you do not need to come up with something complicated. The solution lay right on the surface, and you just had to analyze the map of scrolling and clicks.
Unbounce is the most popular landing page service. They are very actively promoting the topic of increasing conversion, A / B testing, UX / UI, since all this is important for their customers - creators of landing pages.
Accordingly, the entire team that works on the service is very driven by these issues. When Michael Agard (an expert on increasing conversion) joined them, he immediately set about improving the interface.
One of the important pages in the sales funnel is the input of payment data. Initially, billing information (country, city, address, ZIP code) had to be entered manually. Michael thought that some of the users were falling off here and suggested making a choice of address and automatic input (as was done on many large sites).
Unbounce developers quickly solved this problem and now each user could choose his own address, after which all fields were filled in automatically. The guys did some user tests, everyone liked the new feature, the time to fill out decreased. Everything is super at first glance.
When a new feature was posted for all users and started watching session recordings, it turned out that it was in this place that users were stuck. They did not need autocomplete. Many still copy-paste their address. Others generally manually entered each field, and automatic substitution only interfered (by myself I know that sometimes it substitutes old data and constantly have to change some fields. Personally, this does not bother me much, because in general the filling process is simplified, but judging by Unbounce experience - this has negative consequences).
This is an example of a situation where things that are logical for us are ineffective. In general, this is one of the biggest mistakes designers, Internet marketers make when they focus on their own taste, experience, and not on the target audience.
By the way, this is not the only case when Hotjar helped the guys from Unbounce to improve the service. Session records, as I said above when describing the service, very well help find the bugs that users encounter.
Unbounce has a very good example in this regard. Looking through the records, they noticed a user who wanted to pay a $ 2000 tariff, but simply could not do it because of one error.
After watching the record, firstly, the guys found out who exactly could not pay and contacted him personally. And, secondly, they realized what error might occur in the payment process, and where they could lose real customers before.
Just like that, Hotjar helps you solve problems with increasing conversions. By the way, as I wrote above, as an alternative to Hotjar, you can use the Yandex.Metrica functionality.
I hope the review of this service was useful to you. And, even if you do not plan to use Hotjar , most of the described functions are in other services (for example, Yandex.Metrica). So try using them to increase conversions on your site.
If you want your friends and colleagues to learn more about increasing conversions, share this article on social networks. They will be grateful for that. And I am even more so!
I myself have been using this service for a long time and I think that it is the best among analogues. The only thing he loses to some Yandex.Metrica features is the price. You have to pay for it if you do not want to have restrictions. As my experience suggests, this stops many Internet marketers in Runet. But then everyone will decide for himself whether he needs it or not.
Hotjar: service functionality
1. Heatmaps
Yandex.Metrica also has this function.
Heat maps are divided into 3 types:
- Click map
- Scrolling map
- Link Map
What heatmaps give:
You will find out which elements of the page users click on, which links they most often click on and how deeply they scroll through the page (a case describing this function in the second part of the article). Based on this, you will understand how website visitors interact with the interface.
Examples of use:
You analyze the click map on the site and see that a large proportion of clicks falls on a certain element. In this case, the element is non-clickable. But, since visitors constantly click on it, it means that when you click it will go to a specific page.
Based on this data, you will know exactly which elements need to be clickable.
So you will understand where visitors most often click. Perhaps these will be buttons that take visitors away from the buying process. This means that either these buttons must be removed from the interface altogether, or made so that the visitor does not leave the "path" to purchase.
If we consider a scrolling map, then it is very useful for long landing pages, long pages, as well as content marketers. A scrolling map in 3 seconds will show if potential customers are flipping through your landing page, whether they are reading your long articles at all.
I advise you to read - How to find an idea for an A / B test: heatmaps and polls
2. Session Records (Visitor Recordings)
Yandex.Metrica also has this function.
What session records give:
You can see how each visitor interacts with the interface of your site. You will see all the clicks, cursor movements, how much time a person spends in each part of the page, what problems arise in certain browsers or devices.
Moreover, you have the opportunity to filter the records, put tags on them and add to your favorites to make the analysis more convenient.
Usage example:
After viewing the sessions, you noticed that visitors coming through Internet Explorer do not see a button for placing an order at all. Accordingly, they, in principle, cannot convert into customers, even if they really want to.
Based on this information, you quickly send the task to the developers, they correct the layout, and all visitors to the site with an Internet explorer make purchases without problems. Everyone is happy. Business uphill!
By the way, you can find such jambs not only through viewing records. Google Analytics has very cool reports that help you find all the "killers" of the conversion. We devoted an entire article to them , which gained more than 40,000+ views on several sites.
The function for viewing sessions is also in Yandex.Metrica and it is called Webvisor. If you do not want to spend money on Hotjar, then you can use it without any problems. By the way, when using a web browser, I highly recommend using segmentation so as not to analyze everyone in a row.
I advise you to read - 10 successful A / B testing cases
3. Sales funnels
Yandex.Metrica also has this function.
What gives a sales funnel:
If you draw up a sequence of actions that lead to an ultimate goal (for example, a purchase), you will see at what stages you have the biggest problems.
Accordingly, where the most users fall off, there you need to invest all efforts to increase conversion.
In my opinion, the only minus of the sales funnel in Hotjar is that it is built not on events (events), but on transitions to pages. Although the same situation is with Google Analytics, and with Yandex.Metrica. But in the last two, we still have the opportunity to make a funnel of events, although it will not be easy for beginners to solve this problem.
Alternatively, you can use Mixpanel. In this service, in general, all analytics is built on the basis of events and properties that are assigned to users. Here it is incredibly convenient and simple to build sales funnels.
In general, if your business does not yet have a funnel, on the basis of which you measure the client’s path from the first contact to the purchase, then this is a huge omission. I advise you right now to drive on this issue.
I advise you to read - They will help you find all the "killers" of the conversion - 10 reports in Google Analytics
4. Form analytics
Yandex.Metrica also has this function.
What forms analytics gives:
Each site has a form. It is impossible to do without them. And it’s good if there is only one field in your form. But in most forms there are many more. So analytics of forms allows you to understand how people fill each individual field.
Firstly, you will learn how much time visitors spend on average filling each field. Secondly, you will see in which fields the largest number of people fall off.
If you add session viewing to form analytics, then you can see how visitors fill in the fields. Perhaps they don’t understand something and introduce something completely different from what is needed. As a result, they get the error of filling out the form and go to the competitor.
Usage example:
Through the analytics of the form, you noticed that in the “Phone Number” field, most people fall off. There may be two reasons. First, they don’t want to leave a phone number. The second is the problem with the field itself.
Ok, look at the session notes. Perhaps the problem is that there is no phone number mask in the field, and a large proportion of visitors simply do not understand that it is necessary to enter the country / city code?
If this is the problem, then it is solved very simply. The task is set for the developer and makes normal, understandable for people fields.
I advise you to read - Startup Plotguru increased the conversion of the landing from 9% to 52%. Are you weak?
5. Built-in polls
What the built-in polls give:
They help to understand the target audience. There is no better way to know the desires and needs of your target audience than to ask her. Surveys are one of the important tools of any advanced internet marketer. Hotjar’s
built-in polls can be targeted according to specific conditions. For example, they can only be displayed on a specific page, after 2 minutes of being on it.
Usage example:
On the product payment page, you know that the user needs an average of 2 minutes to go to the next stage. If he spends more on it, then you can show him a poll with a question about what prevents him from making a purchase. Thanks to this question, you can find out many reasons that prevent potential customers from earning you income.
It should be noted that these polls work both in the web version of sites and mobile. By the way, try to run the survey only on mobile users - find out from them whether it is convenient to use your site on a smartphone. This will be your first step in data driven marketing.
I advise you to read - How to increase conversion - 30 short tips for Internet marketers
6. Surveys
A function similar to the previous one, but already more advanced
What polls give:
They are used for the same purpose as the previous function - to get as much information as possible from the mouth of the target audience.
But in this case, these polls can be used much more widely. For example, you can directly drop the link to the survey to the target audience. Or conduct a survey via e-mail newsletter. Or to interrogate only those who lead the cursor to the button to close the tab or browser.
In general, there are a lot of opportunities to activate polls. I personally used different options:
- Exint-intent polls
- Polls that take off 20-30 seconds after entering the site
- Polls that appear after 50% scrolling on the page
From experience, I can say that the first option may work too soon, since now people very often switch between tabs without the intention to close the site. So it either annoyed many, or just showed up at the moment when they had not done anything on the site.
But, in general, polls are an incredible useful and cool thing. At Boosta.ru I spend them one by one. Thus, I constantly collect feedback from the target audience and develop the site in accordance with their desires and needs.
Usage example: Now the trend is push notifications on sites. But until recently, people were very negative about them. To understand whether push notifications are needed on Boost, I launched a corresponding survey. Several days have already passed, but there are first results:
Here in such a convenient form the results are displayed. Just a week or two, and it will be possible to draw conclusions, and only after that decide whether to implement push notifications on Boost or not.
All according to the rules of Data Driven Marketing.
I have tried many survey services. And, in my opinion, this is the best, easiest and most convenient. The survey is created in 2 minutes, it is highly customizable for the site, it is easily targeted and launched in one click. Just perfect!
If you want to consider other options, then here is a very good selection of services for user polls .
7. Search for testers
What this function gives:
Right on the site you can display pop-ups (in the same form as built-in polls) and look through them for users who will test your site.
User testing is very popular right now. And abroad it costs a lot of money. We have such a service as Askusers.ru, which can be used for the same purposes.
In general, it is difficult for me to comment on the last function, since I have never used it. It’s even interesting how often Hotjar clients use it compared to the rest of the functionality.
That's all for the Hotjar service description . As promised, in the end, a good case for using the service to increase conversion on the site.
I advise you to read - 6 cases of increasing conversion from the company Fiverr
How to increase conversion from 22 to 33% in the online store of children's trampolines using scroll tracking
Foreword: Trampoline Plezier is an online store where you can buy baby trampolines (in the backyard of your home, for example, so that a child frolics).
The founder of the company Hans van Leersum, even at the very start, when researching the target audience, realized that customers really lack information on how and where to install a trampoline. They were also tormented by questions about how to “fit” the trampoline to the appearance of the territory, so that everything was beautiful, so to speak.
The logical conclusion is that one who can solve all these problems (to make the process of purchasing and installing the product as simple and convenient for the client as possible) will receive loyal customers.
Loyal customers for business are a simple paradise. They are more likely to return for a second purchase. When their friend / colleague asks where to buy such a trampoline, they will advise you first.
The value is obvious.
Based on this information, the founder of the online store created a blog (yes, content marketing is conquering the world). All blog content was aimed at dispelling all doubts, solving all the problems of potential and current customers.
In addition, in each blog article there were CTA buttons leading directly to the online store. This is how the lead generation process worked through content marketing.
But, not everything was done right. Namely, the CTA button leading to the online store was at the very bottom of the article.
Already guessed what the problem was?
Most people do not read the full article. On my site , an average of 23-25% of all visitors read articles to the very end.
What did this mean for Hans?
Only part of the blog visitors knew about the presence of a button to go to the online store. Thus, every day he lost potential customers.
Let's look at the Scroll Tracking map:
As seen in the image, only 46.2% of visitors saw the button. And this is a very good indicator. Not every blog has such a reading audience. Nevertheless, the business is not doing better. 54% of visitors still did not even see this button. To be precise, this is 13,000 visitors per month.
If we imagine that at least 1% of them were able to be converted into a buyer, then the figure is solid (taking into account the average check of trampolines). And, as can be seen below on the click map, visitors actively clicked on the button.
If more than half of the visitors do not reach the right place, then how to solve this problem?
Everything is obvious simple - duplicate the button at the beginning of the article. Let the one who grabs the first few paragraphs immediately goes and buys. And those who need more information to make a decision will do so at the very end.
Here's how the beginning of the article looked before adding an additional button:
After adding a button:
It is incredibly simple. Even with my zero HTML / CSS skills, I’ll snap such a button in 1 minute to the site. And the result turned out to be incredibly steep - button clicks increased from 21.8% to 33.02%. This is 50% more.
Accordingly, the potential revenue from content marketing due to the addition of a single button could immediately increase by 50%.
This is exactly the case when you do not need to come up with something complicated. The solution lay right on the surface, and you just had to analyze the map of scrolling and clicks.
Unbounce case: Not all logical things should increase conversion
Unbounce is the most popular landing page service. They are very actively promoting the topic of increasing conversion, A / B testing, UX / UI, since all this is important for their customers - creators of landing pages.
Accordingly, the entire team that works on the service is very driven by these issues. When Michael Agard (an expert on increasing conversion) joined them, he immediately set about improving the interface.
One of the important pages in the sales funnel is the input of payment data. Initially, billing information (country, city, address, ZIP code) had to be entered manually. Michael thought that some of the users were falling off here and suggested making a choice of address and automatic input (as was done on many large sites).
Unbounce developers quickly solved this problem and now each user could choose his own address, after which all fields were filled in automatically. The guys did some user tests, everyone liked the new feature, the time to fill out decreased. Everything is super at first glance.
When a new feature was posted for all users and started watching session recordings, it turned out that it was in this place that users were stuck. They did not need autocomplete. Many still copy-paste their address. Others generally manually entered each field, and automatic substitution only interfered (by myself I know that sometimes it substitutes old data and constantly have to change some fields. Personally, this does not bother me much, because in general the filling process is simplified, but judging by Unbounce experience - this has negative consequences).
This is an example of a situation where things that are logical for us are ineffective. In general, this is one of the biggest mistakes designers, Internet marketers make when they focus on their own taste, experience, and not on the target audience.
By the way, this is not the only case when Hotjar helped the guys from Unbounce to improve the service. Session records, as I said above when describing the service, very well help find the bugs that users encounter.
Unbounce has a very good example in this regard. Looking through the records, they noticed a user who wanted to pay a $ 2000 tariff, but simply could not do it because of one error.
After watching the record, firstly, the guys found out who exactly could not pay and contacted him personally. And, secondly, they realized what error might occur in the payment process, and where they could lose real customers before.
Just like that, Hotjar helps you solve problems with increasing conversions. By the way, as I wrote above, as an alternative to Hotjar, you can use the Yandex.Metrica functionality.
I hope the review of this service was useful to you. And, even if you do not plan to use Hotjar , most of the described functions are in other services (for example, Yandex.Metrica). So try using them to increase conversions on your site.
If you want your friends and colleagues to learn more about increasing conversions, share this article on social networks. They will be grateful for that. And I am even more so!