Being a designer is tough: you can spend months crafting the perfect experience, ensuring your usability is inclusive, writing careful copy, testing on every browser known to man—even the copy of IE on that old laptop that props open the studio door; then you check your analytics and discover that your labor has resulted in not a single $ worth of improvement. But what if you could leave the personas, and the research, and the design patterns behind, and just look at what real users want from your site? What if you had a way of not just reviewing statistics, but understanding how the customers behind those numbers really feel? Understanding your audience is 95% of the design process, if you nailed that, the rest would be easy…right? Well, that’s where Hotjar comes in. Hotjar is a revolutionary approach to really understanding your users because it combines both analytics, and feedback tools. By combining both approaches—both observing how users behave, and listening to what users have to say—the powerful all-in-one approach helps you understand why your design performs as it does. Where many competing products offer one or two features, Hotjar combines numerous tools into a designer-friendly package:

Heatmaps

The most visually arresting feature, and the one that gives Hotjar its name, is Heatmaps. Heatmaps show you where users are clicking, tapping, scrolling, and interacting. The more users that interact with a particular area of the screen, the “hotter” the area. This is your strongest indicator of what users find most appealing about your site. Use Heatmaps to quickly identify the UX issues that are costing you money.

Recordings

Recordings are a great way to understand an individual users behavior. Let’s say you see someone abandon a cart, can you be sure they did so thanks to the checkout design? Recordings allow you to rewind that user’s journey and uncover the source of their discontent. You can even compare different user journeys from before and after your tweaks.

Polls and Surveys

Improving the performance of your site starts with understanding what your users want. What better way to do that, than to ask them. Hotjar’s Polls and Surveys allow you to pose questions to users anywhere on your site. You can target specific questions on desktop or mobile. You can even poll for feedback once a goal has been reached, giving you the most complete understanding of users’ views possible.

Conversion Funnels

No site ever achieves 100% conversions, but that shouldn’t stop you trying. Hotjar’s Conversion Funnel analysis helps you understand where you’re losing users, and perhaps more importantly, why you’re losing users. Analyse the type of content that works best, from text to images. Find out which forms are too long. Which buttons are too small. Which text is too verbose. Streamline your content by revising poorly performing content and you’ll take a step closer to that magic 100%.

Incoming Feedback

Currently still in beta, Hotjar’s latest feature gives users the ability to reach out and talk to you at anytime. If they’re experiencing problems with checkout, struggling with a form, or just can’t find the information they need, Incoming Feedback empowers your users to help you understand them.

Try Hotjar for free

Hotjar is an easy way to truly understand your users. Use tools like Heatmaps, Conversion Funnels, and Surveys to get inside your users’ heads. Follow their journeys and rewind to identify problem areas. Even boost the conversion rate of forms—by far the toughest UX to get right. You can try Hotjar now, for free. Start building an understanding of your customers today, and ensure that tomorrow’s redesign is the right approach for your site. [-- This is a sponsored post on behalf of Hotjar --]