What is Hotjar used for?

Hotjar is a website behavior analytics and user feedback platform used to understand how visitors interact with a website. It helps businesses identify usability problems, friction points, and opportunities for conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Common uses include:

• Heatmaps: Show where visitors click, tap, scroll, or interact with a page.
• Session recordings: Allow teams to review anonymized user sessions to understand navigation and behavior.
• Surveys: Collect feedback about customer experiences, preferences, and problems.
• Feedback tools: Let visitors provide feedback about specific pages or experiences.
• Funnel analysis: Help identify stages where visitors leave a conversion journey.
• CRO research: Provide behavioral insights that can be used to develop and prioritize optimization ideas.

For example, a B2B eCommerce store might use Hotjar to discover that visitors frequently scroll past a “Request a Quote” button without interacting with it. The business could then investigate the page layout and test a more prominent placement.

Hotjar is mainly useful for understanding why users behave a certain way. It can complement quantitative analytics, which shows what happened, while user behavior and feedback can provide additional context about possible reasons. Privacy settings and applicable data-protection requirements should also be considered when collecting user behavior data.