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Combining funnels with recordings, heatmaps, and surveys for more insights (and conversions)

Funnels show you exactly where you’re losing conversions—and while you might have some hunches or opinions about why that happens, the only way to know for sure is to collect and combine insights from different sources.

Last updated

7 Jul 2023

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4 min

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This guide shows you how to combine Hotjar Funnels with our Recordings, Heatmaps, and Survey tools so you can visualize, monitor, and optimize your funnels with complementary data—all from a single platform.

Increase funnel conversions by combining data

Combine Hotjar Funnels with Recordings, Heatmaps, and Surveys to learn where and why users drop off, so you can optimize with confidence.

Funnels + Recordings

Funnels reveal where users drop off, but session recordings help determine why by showing how real people navigate your website—including what they do just before they convert or bounce.

#A session recording captured with Hotjar Recordings on our homepage
A session recording captured with Hotjar Recordings on our homepage

Combine Hotjar Recordings with Funnels to:

  • Find bugs and design issues that cause visitors to bounce without converting, including broken links, confusing navigation, or unclear instructions

  • Identify rage clicks that highlight areas of frustration, like slow-loading elements or non-responsive buttons

  • Spot browsing patterns that reveal where users spend the most time and what they scroll past or ignore

How to combine Funnels and Recordings

  • Create a funnel in Hotjar, mapping out the user journey you want to analyze

  • Identify the funnel step where users drop off

  • Click the play icon to jump straight to a playlist of user recordings associated with that step

#Click the play icon to jump straight to relevant session recordings directly from Hotjar Funnels
Click the play icon to jump straight to relevant session recordings directly from Hotjar Funnels

Watch recordings from both cohorts—drop-offs and successful conversions—to understand what to remove (e.g. broken links, confusing elements, or bugs) and improve (e.g. better CTA placement, more delivery information, or social proof).

#A session recording playlist of funnel drop-offs in Hotjar Recordings
A session recording playlist of funnel drop-offs in Hotjar Recordings

🎬 See it in action: Gogoprint, an online printing company, combined Hotjar Funnels with Recordings to identify where users dropped off and understand why they bounced.

A Hotjar Recording snapshot that helped the Gogoprint team improve conversions on their website

Session recordings revealed a design issue in the pricing table, causing visitors to leave. The team tested a new hover element that taught visitors how to proceed, and funnel drop-offs immediately decreased by 7%.

Funnels + Heatmaps

Heatmaps show you where visitors click (with or without rage!), scroll, engage, and move their cursors on any page. 

Combine Hotjar Heatmaps with Funnels to:

  • Identify if users rage click on non-clickable elements

  • See if visitors scroll far enough to see your CTAs on different devices

  • Optimize content placement near areas of high engagement

How to combine Funnels and Heatmaps

  1. Set up a funnel in Hotjar and find the page with the highest drop-off percentage

  2. Go to Heatmaps > + New Heatmap and add the drop-off page URL

  3. Filter your heatmap by ‘Clicked element’ and ‘did not occur’ to view heatmaps of visitors who didn’t click your CTA

#Filtering by clicked element to view a heatmap of all visitors who did not convert in Hotjar Heatmaps
Filtering by clicked element to view a heatmap of all visitors who did not convert in Hotjar Heatmaps

Use different heatmap types to identify areas for improvement and optimize your funnel to maximize clicks to the next step.

#Click to switch between heatmap types and view different behavior visualizations
Click to switch between heatmap types and view different behavior visualizations

Look at:

  • Click maps to identify the CTAs that work best and find elements that might have distracted non-converting users

  • Scroll maps to see if visitors miss CTAs on different devices

  • Move maps to see the areas attracting the most (and least) attention

  • Rage click maps to pinpoint where users get frustrated

  • Engagement Zone maps to view all mouse activity in a single heatmap

🔥 See it in action 

Vimcar, a fleet management tool, used Hotjar Heatmaps to optimize their three-page demo sign-up funnel.

Vimcar’s three-page demo sign-up funnel

Click maps revealed that customers clicked on unlinked images instead of text, while scroll maps showed that 75% of users on mobile never saw the main CTA. The team fixed these issues by making images clickable and moving the mobile CTA above the average fold—two relatively small changes that contributed to a 24% increase in demo sign-ups.

Funnels + Surveys

While Recordings and Heatmaps let you observe the usability issues holding visitors back from converting, they won’t reveal what's still missing from the page—like information about shipping times, product performance, or relevant use cases. 

Instead of trying to guess what people might want or need before converting, run surveys to find out the unaddressed concerns or objections that cause visitors to drop off your funnel. 

Website survey questions from a cart abandonment survey—use it to find out why people aren’t checking out

Use Hotjar Surveys to:

  • Run an exit-intent or cart abandonment survey to find out why people leave your funnel without converting

  • Ask follow-up questions on post-purchase surveys like Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) to learn what almost stopped people from converting

How to combine Funnels and Surveys

  1. Use Hotjar Funnels to identify where users drop off

  2. Go to Surveys > New Survey to set up an exit survey. Use the exit intent survey template or the AI creation feature to generate a set of relevant questions.

  3. Target the survey to your drop-off page and set it to display when a user is about to leave

  4. When you’ve collected at least 30 responses, click the ‘AI Report’ button to generate a report with key findings, quotes, and recommended next steps

#Creating an exit survey in Hotjar Surveys to troubleshoot funnel drop-offs
Creating an exit survey in Hotjar Surveys to troubleshoot funnel drop-offs

Exit surveys will reveal some of the reasons why people leave your website without converting, but don’t stop there. Ask, “What nearly stopped you from completing your purchase?” in a post-purchase survey while the experience is still fresh in your customers’ minds. Their ‘almost-deal-breakers’ will help you optimize your ecommerce funnel for less-determined browsers who might need a little more convincing.

💡 Pro tip: surveys aren’t the only way to collect qualitative feedback on your website.

  • Use Hotjar Feedback to add a feedback button or widget to pages with a high funnel drop-off rate. This gives all visitors an easy way to report website bugs and issues without having to contact support.

  • Run remote user interviews to hear people narrate their experience across your funnel in real time. You’ll be able to ask follow-up questions and uncover deeper insights into their behavior, expectations, and frustrations.

Diagnose your funnel drop-offs with real user data

Using Hotjar Funnels on its own will help you monitor and share what’s happening across your funnels so you can celebrate your conversion wins and pinpoint the pages that need conversion rate optimization the most. 

But your funnels won’t optimize themselves: level up by combining Funnels with Heatmaps, Recordings, and Surveys to generate a complete picture of user behavior and sentiment all in one place. Once you see where your visitors get stuck and hear what they really need, you’ll have the right data to fix your funnel leaks and drive growth where you want it. 

Increase funnel conversions by combining data

Combine Hotjar Funnels with Recordings, Heatmaps, and Surveys to learn where and why users drop off, so you can optimize with confidence.

FAQs about combining Funnels with other tools