What's new in Hotjar

Today, about 90% of product teams choose Continuous Heatmaps over Manual. So, the time has come to move towards a more modern way of working in Heatmaps. Beginning April 25 2022, we'll start phasing out Manual Heatmaps. By May 2 2022, Manual Heatmaps will be fully replaced by Continuous Heatmaps.

💡 You’ll be able to use Manual Heatmaps until April 25 2022. Continuous Heatmaps will then fully replace Manual Heatmaps and we’ll start referring to them as just “Heatmaps”. So you don’t lose any data you may need in the future, we recommend exporting your historical data before April 25 2022. Here’s how.

Continuous Heatmaps give you instant access to heat data automatically gathered over time, so you can find more relevant insights, quicker. You don’t need to plan what pages to track or manually set up a heatmap. Simply search the page URL and Hotjar will generate a heatmap that’s ready for you to analyze by specific user groups, over specific periods of time 👌.

We understand that this will be a change for those of you who still use Manual Heatmaps. We're eager to help you take full advantage of Continuous Heatmaps, so we’ve put together some resources to answer the most commonly asked questions and help you get started.

Focusing on Continuous Heatmaps

Before making the move to Continuous Heatmaps, we plan to complete work on generating more accurate heatmap screenshots, fixing broken screenshots, plus viewing and exporting element click data. Your feedback has been essential in bringing us to this point and shaping the solutions we deliver. We’re so grateful to have a community of users who share their time, workflows, and feedback with us. Thank you 🙏.

With one version of Heatmaps, we can narrow our focus on building an experience that brings you more relevant and higher-quality insights. Here’s a refresher on some of the new functionality that was shipped, as well as what you can look forward to next in Continuous Heatmaps:

What's been shipped

1. Instant heatmaps: Hotjar has a store of data ready for you to analyze. Simply search for the page you want to view a heatmap for and filter by the criteria that’s relevant to what you’re trying to achieve.
2. Filter data by date: Compare heatmap data for different periods of time – perfect for comparing user behavior before and after a product update.
3. Filtering for specific user groups: Continuous Heatmaps are no longer an aggregate view of user behavior! You can slice and dice the data to learn more about the audiences that are most important to you.
4. Filter by unique User Attributes: Analyze behavior based on your company’s unique user attributes – like what plan a user subscribed to or their industry – to uncover insights that are relevant to your goals.
5. Highlights: Save an area of the heatmap for later by creating a highlight. Categorize highlights by adding labels, or add comments and @mention your team to start a discussion on the behavior you’re seeing.
6. Collections: Group related insights together into a collection so you can start building a picture of the type of user behavior that interests you.
7. Pin your most important pages: Get quick access to the heatmaps your team visits the most by pinning a page and accessing it directly from the Heatmaps home view.

What we're working on

1. [Before retirement] More accurate heatmap screenshots: Page fidelity has been an ongoing issue for some users, and we’re working towards new solutions to give you a more accurate image of your site.
2. [Before retirement] A way to retake broken screenshots: If the screenshot in your heatmap isn’t the one you want to analyze, you’ll have the option to refresh or choose a new screenshot from the associated recording yourself!
3. [Before retirement] Download interaction data: You'll be able to export raw heatmap data as a CSV file for further analysis.
4. Improved loading time: We're improving performance, so you spend less time waiting and more time analyzing results.
5. Support for dynamic content: We’re working on support for dynamic content like drop-downs and pop-ups to give you a new layer of insight into user behavior.
6. Saved segments in Heatmaps: In the future you’ll be able to save filter views as segments in Heatmaps so you can quickly analyze important user groups.
7. Organizing your Hotjar account: We’re working on a solution that will allow you to organize Hotjar in a way that fits your team or project needs – so you can quickly find what’s relevant to you.

Check out the tutorial video below to learn how to get the most out of Continuous Heatmaps →