Are you looking for the ideal user experience software to use for your business? If so, you’ve likely come across two of the most popular options: FullStory and Hotjar. Both are great solutions, but how do you know which one is right for you?
In this blog post, we’ll provide a comprehensive comparison of both Fullstory and Hotjar so that you can make an informed decision about which one is best for your business.
The Need For a Web Analytics Software
Having comprehensive web analytics software is essential for any business looking to provide an ideal user experience on its website or applications. By understanding customer behavior and analyzing trends through data collected from web analytics tools, businesses can pinpoint areas of improvement and make informed decisions based on reliable insights into customer preferences and behaviors. In turn, with the right data and insights, businesses can achieve better customer retention and higher conversions.
Hotjar and FullStory are two such comprehensive software that helps you gain a better perspective of your website’s user behavior via additional analytics tools. Both offer a range of features that can help you get a better handle on how users interact with your website, but they have distinct differences and similarities that make each one unique in their user experience.
At Growth Hackers, we’ve seen times and times again how data-driven teams leverage tools like Hotjar and FullStory to uncover user behavior insights that directly improve conversion rates and customer retention. So, which one should you choose? Besides considering your website requirements and available resources, let’s take a closer look at both services to find out.
What is Hotjar?
Hotjar is an all-in-one platform for collecting data from multiple sources, including heatmaps, visitor recordings, surveys, polls, and funnel analysis. Quite often, Google Analytics and HotJar are compared for their similar analytical capabilities. We see Hotjar like a “session replay camera” for your website: at Growth Hackers, we help businesses move beyond numbers and actually see how users interact with each element.
Where Google Analytics gives you specific data on a particular element like the bounce rate, Hotjar gives you a deeper insight into the functioning of that element. With Hotjar, you can view how visitors interact with your site in real time and also track how long they stay on each page.
The platform provides detailed reports that can be used to gain insights into user behavior and optimize your website accordingly. Additionally, Hotjar offers powerful automation tools such as funnel analysis and segmentation that allow you to easily target specific groups of users or certain pages on your site.
What Are Hotjar’s 4 Primary Features?
1. Heatmaps
The best way for a business to get an understanding of how users interact with their website is to invest in heatmaps. HotJjar makes heatmap creation easy with its intuitive heatmap editor that allows users to customize their maps and capture data from multiple devices.
With this feature, businesses can track mouse movements, clicks, taps, and scroll depth on their pages. This helps them identify areas of engagement or confusion so they can determine what needs improvement. Before using heatmaps, one of our B2B SaaS clients relied on assumptions about user behavior; after working with Growth Hackers for just over 6 months, they gained clear visual insights that led to smarter design and optimization decisions.
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2. Session Recordings
Session recordings allow businesses to observe how customers navigate through their websites in real-time. This can be helpful in identifying any potential issues that might be preventing customers from completing desired actions on the site such as adding items to the cart or signing up for a newsletter.
With session recordings, businesses can also detect if there are any broken links that need attention and make sure all elements of the page are functioning correctly.
3. Feedback Polls
Feedback polls are useful for getting quick insights into customer feedback and opinions without having to ask one-on-one questions or conduct long surveys. With feedback polls, businesses can ask customers direct questions about their experience with the website or product/service, which will allow them to gauge customer satisfaction levels quickly and easily.
4. Surveys
Hotjar also offers surveys as part of its suite of features, allowing businesses to collect user feedback directly from customers in order to understand exactly what they want and need out of a product or service.
Surveys allow businesses to ask questions directly related to customer experience so they can make necessary changes quickly and efficiently in order to ensure customer satisfaction. Surveys also allow customer feedback that might not necessarily be included in other forms of data collection such as heatmaps, polls, or recordings.
What is FullStory?
FullStory is a cloud-based user experience web analytics tool designed to help businesses understand their customers and improve their online presence. It enables businesses to capture user sessions across multiple devices and platforms so they can analyze user behavior in real time.
The platform also offers session replay functionality so businesses can see exactly what their customers are doing as they use their websites or apps. This allows them to quickly identify areas where users may be experiencing difficulty or getting lost in navigation so they can optimize their websites accordingly.
Additionally, Fullstory provides powerful analytics tools such as heatmaps and reports that provide detailed insights into user behavior patterns across different parts of the website or app.
What Are FullStory’s 7 Primary Features?
1. Session Replay
Fullstory’s session replay feature allows you to watch recordings of individual customer sessions (no matter how long or short they are) and see exactly what each user did while on your site or app. One of our Fintech clients at Growth Hackers used FullStory’s session replay feature to uncover a hidden navigation issue that was frustrating users, and after fixing it, they saw a noticeable increase in user retention and engagement.
This gives businesses an immense amount of data to work with when they want to identify pain points in their product or service. It also offers powerful insights into customer behavior that can be used to inform decisions about design changes and product updates.
2. Heatmaps
FullStory’s heat-mapping feature gives businesses an even deeper understanding of user interaction with their website or app. Heatmaps let you visualize where website visitors click and scroll on your page, as well as how far down they scroll before leaving the page entirely.
This makes it easy to identify potential problem areas on your website where users may be having difficulty finding what they need — which means fewer frustrated customers and better overall engagement with your content.
3. Dashboards
Whether it’s understanding your conversion rate or identifying errors, Fullstory’s powerful dashboards make it easier than ever to get the insights you need. With features like Rage Clicks, you’ll be able to see what pages of your website frustrate your readers and gain insights on how to improve their experience.
Create custom dashboards to track analytics related to the checkout flow or the number of subscribers in an easy-to-understand format.
4. User Segments
With just a few clicks, you can easily segment users based on criteria that are important to your business. Whether you’re targeting returning customers or want to launch campaigns targeted at certain customers who have visited specific pages on your website, User Segments makes it quick and simple.
You even have the ability to create custom segments to provide even more detailed insights. With FullStory’s User Segments feature, you can gain granular insight into who is engaging with your business, ultimately allowing you to deliver better customer experiences.
5. Conversion Funnels & Form Analytics
FullStory’s conversion funnels show how visitors move through important steps when using a website or product (such as registering for an account or making a purchase), allowing you to track progress towards completion in real-time. At Growth Hackers, we partnered with a product team struggling with low form completions, and once we used funnel and form analytics through FullStory they discovered specific fields causing friction and improved completion rates significantly.
In addition, Form Analytics provide valuable insights into what users do when completing forms within a website or product, so that you can get an understanding of how long it takes them to complete each field and whether there are any patterns for abandonment or drop-offs during the process.
6. Journey Mapping
Fullstory’s journey mapping feature is a powerful tool that gives you unprecedented insight into your customer’s experience. Using this data, you can create an intuitive view of the customer’s path and uncover hidden opportunities to increase satisfaction.
With journey mapping, you can easily identify areas where customers are struggling, recognize higher-value paths through product features, and make vital changes to optimize your customers’ experience. In addition, it allows you to monitor trends over time and measure company performance against goals.
For the B2C and B2B brands we work with at Growth Hackers, journey mapping acts like a GPS for customer experience, and once we visualized user paths clearly, conversion optimization improve dramatically.
7. Automatic Frustration Signal Alert
With Fullstory, you no longer have to worry about manually sifting through customer satisfaction data to detect patterns of frustration. Its automated alerting feature uses machine learning algorithms and a blend of quantitative and qualitative data to proactively track customer experience signals and alert you when it detects a problem with the user experience.
This way, you can be one step ahead of your customers and launch fixes before they even start voicing their frustrations. With FullStory’s automatic alerts for frustration signals, every customer can get the level of service they deserve.
Try FullStory or HotJar and revolutionize your user experience today!
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What Are the 3 Similarities Between FullStory vs. Hotjar?
At first glance, there are quite a few similarities between these two pieces of software. Both offer heatmaps that allow you to get a better understanding of where users click on your site. They also both provide session recordings so that you can watch exactly what users do on your site in real time. And both platforms have analytics dashboards that let you quickly see patterns in user behavior so that you can take action accordingly.
1. Heatmaps
With Hotjar, you can capture three types of heatmaps: Click, Tap, and Scroll maps. The analytics data from these sitemaps combined with user feedback remove any guesswork from the equation. Also available are 2 filter: Session filters and URL filters.
Fullstory offers two types of heatmaps: Click and Scroll maps. In addition to these 2 heatmaps, Fullstory has an ‘Inspect Mode’ that analyzes every data element in detail to give you deeper insights.
2. Dashboards
The Dashboard in Hotjar provides a holistic view of the key metrics that you wish to know between the chosen dates. Every element like bounce rates, click rates, top countries, U-turns, rage clicks, devices, and more, are presented in detail after thorough analytical research. The only limiting factor is that HotJar doesn’t have the option of customizing dashboards.
In Fullstory, data presentation is more visual through charts, graphs, and three card-like elements that give you an overview of JS errors, conversions, and rage clicks in the past 30 days. User interaction, checkout flow, rage clicks, feature adoption, seasonal user behavior, and more are also detailed in the dashboard. More importantly, FullStory allows you to customize your Dashboard to mix and match the different cards based on your UX goals.
3. Session Recordings
In Hotjar, the user session recordings begin the moment they enter your website and end when they switch to a different page or close the tab/window. In addition to a Playback List section, Referral URL, and Highlights, the dashboard includes List tools, various filters, a Traffic Coverage Widget, Segments, and more. The basic plan in Hotjar offers just the Date filter while further filters are available in the Paid plans.
In Fullstory, the session recording closes by default after 30 minutes of inactivity. Also, the range of filters offered here is well-thought out allowing data segmentation by website visitors, user activity, number of sessions, and more.
What Are the Differences Between HotJar vs. FullStory?
The most notable difference between Hotjar and Fullstory is that while HotJar focuses on providing data-driven solutions such as heatmaps and form analytics, FullStory provides qualitative insights such as searchable sessions and automatic insights into customer behavior.
In addition, while both platforms offer integration options with popular marketing tools, only FullStory offers integrations with over 300 third-party apps… giving customers even more access to their data.
1. Journey Mapping
FullStory provides a complete visualization of your customer’s journey from initial pixel interaction to getting notifications about any drop-off points along the way. With Journey Mapping, you’re able to aggregate touchpoints from different sources and layers into one unified story so you can get real insights into where they stand in their journey.
The feature also allows you to identify anomalous behavior within specific pathways, ensuring that no customer gets left behind in the race for better experience and conversion rates.
2. Feedback Tool
While most UX software operators understand the importance of customer feedback tools, many fail to implement them efficiently. The specialty of Hotjar is that it allows you to gather quick visual feedback from your users while they’re using your site/services. This feature gives you a clear insight into what keeps your users engaged and what may have turned them away from your page so you can make swift changes in improving the UX experience.
In addition to having the freedom of customizing your feedback form, you can also choose which device or URL your feedback widget should show up on.
3. Frustration Signals
Frustration Signals are unique to Fullstory and display why your users may get frustrated and when. They function like behavior analytics tools by showing rage clicks, dead clicks, thrashed cursors, and error clicks.
Rage clicks are when a visitor repeatedly taps on a single place on your site. This could be out of frustration when a button doesn’t respond or a form doesn’t load efficiently. Dead clicks are when a user clicks on some option/button but there is no response from the page.
A thrashed cursor indicates that the user is simply circling the mouse without purpose on your site, meaning he/she is waiting for a response or is confused about a decision. Error clicks are mostly console errors or JavaScript errors. In short, any of these frustration signals indicate broken elements that need immediate attention for a better UX experience.
4. Surveys
Hotjar’s most unique feature is the ability to customize surveys based on each user’s individual needs, allowing companies to gain insight into their customer base with tailored questions and assessments. Surveys can be easily distributed over multiple channels such as email or web pages to ensure maximum responses and engagement.
And if you’re feeling stuck on how to develop your questions, Hotjar provides an amazing array of templates created by experienced researchers that can help get your survey underway quickly and accurately.
5. Funnels & Conversions
Fullstory offers an incredibly unique feature that can help analyze and optimize your digital experiences. With the funnel and conversion feature, you can identify areas in a customer journey that can be improved, such as pinpointing where customers are leaving a website or the checkout process without placing an order.
All data gathered from this feature can also be used to get accurate and personal insights on how to convert your visitors into customers. Fullstory makes it easy for businesses of any size to observe and understand user behavior, enabling them to make changes and funnel more users toward conversions.
Final Thoughts on FullStory vs. Hotjar
After closely evaluating the capabilities and features of Fullstory versus Hotjar, it’s clear that both offer fantastic options for digital analytics and insights. Both products provide a wide range of integrations which makes them powerful tools to gain insight into customer behavior.
They can also bring together important metrics like source attribution, engagement ratings, and more that provide useful data to fuel website optimization strategies. That said, they each have strengths and weaknesses dependent on the type of business being run. That is why it’s crucial to understand the needs of your specific business model before making a decision on which platform best suits your individual needs.
And if you need some professional help to get your success story kickstarted, Growth Hackers is your perfect digital marketing partner.
Growth Hackers provides growth hacking solutions that can help you take customer experience to the next level. We offer a comprehensive suite of services customized to your business’s specific needs, like detailed insights into customer behavior. Leveraging data to devise the most effective strategies, our experienced team can generate in-depth reports analyzing your customers’ activities and preferences.
With our help, you’ll be able to identify areas where improvement is needed so you can build powerful campaigns tailored to engage with your customers on a whole new level. Let Growth Hackers provide all the information and expertise necessary to create a unique customer journey that will leave a lasting impression on them.
