What if there was a way to find out exactly what your customers want from your website?
In the past, answers to these questions could only be found if you hired a marketing team. The cost of that could easily run into thousands of dollars. These days, marketing software can take the place of expensive firms. But it can be hard to find platforms that give you specific insights into your demographic's engagement with your website.
Two affordable options for gathering website data are Mouseflow and Hotjar. These systems are priced around the same way. Both analyze the user behavior on your website and give you important reports therein. This can help you tailor webpages to keep the interest of your clientele, increasing conversion rates and reducing bounced connections.
I've taken a look at the similarities between these two programs. I've also broken down the biggest differences in their features to help you determine which works best for your business model.
Overview of Mouseflow and Hotjar
Shared Features
Unique Mouseflow Features
Unique Hotjar Features
Limitations and Integrations
Mouseflow
For the majority of plan options, there are limitations on the number of feedback tools, forms, and funnels you can use. These limitations are removed if you get the Enterprise plan, which costs around $400 per month.
As for integrations, the system can integrate with a great deal of third party applications. These include customer management software, marketing software, website software, and other data and analytics reporting tools.
When you get the Pro plan or higher, you can access the company's API. This allows for customized web development, which the competition lacks. At the Growth plan or higher, you get access to phone support for troubleshooting and other issues. The competition also lacks this.
Hotjar
Every paying Hotjar plan gives you unlimited access to the following:
This can be very helpful for customers who struggle with the limitations in the other program's plans.
There are multiple third party integrations for this software as well, but not quite as many unique ones as you get with the competing system.
Winner: Mouseflow
Mouseflow wins because the higher plans give you access to an API for website customization and ongoing phone support. You don't get this with Hotjar. However, if you want unlimited data for a fraction of the price, Hotjar is a better choice.
Features
Both systems come with a suite of vital features:
The heatmaps create visual representations of activity on your website. This lets you see what pages and buttons are performing best, along with the ones that aren't performing as well as they should be.
In addition to giving you an overview of page and button popularity, the heatmaps can give you a more in-depth look at user behavior on individual pages. This includes scrolling behavior and movement, so you can see exact spots where you're losing people's interest.
This gives you better insight into how to alter your page design and content to boost customer engagement.
The visitor recording feature records exact user movement on your webpages. You can play back and watch in real time how people's cursors moved during their sessions and how long they spent on each page.
After you create the recordings, you can organize them by tagging them and adding notes. This makes it easy to reference them later.
Some marketing tools help you create forms, but they don't show you how users interact with those forms once they're launched. With these software options, you can have your forms analyzed to determine whether they're too offputting.
Every time a customer submits a form, you'll be given a data breakdown of how much time is spent on every entry box or overall form. The system will also tell you where you're losing user interest and how many users are ignoring the form entirely.
Both services have some level of ability to gather user feedback. Some of the things you can do include:
You have the ability to customize these options to suit your needs. There are a lot of questions you can ask through a lot of different methods. This can help to drive user engagement. In general, though, Hotjar tends to have more comprehensive survey creation and reporting options.
Mouseflow
Mouseflow has video tutorials available to help people learn. For those who aren't sure yet whether the system is right for them, there's an option to do a demo of the visitor recording software.
The service is set up with a credit system. Depending on what plan you choose, you'll be given a certain number of monthly credits. Every credit tracks a single user session. This system can be beneficial if you determine the best ways to use your credits resourcefully. For some people, though, it's just a hassle.
Mouseflow has much more comprehensive customization tools for your data and analytics. You can even have your reports visualized in graphs and other tools. This is great for helping you assess different performance issues and strengths at a glance.
Hotjar
Hotjar allows you to create and distribute customer surveys. When customers give their feedback, you can sort their responses. There are a variety of survey creation tools that let you customize both the survey itself and the reporting metrics.
This works best for websites with high traffic volume and a very engaged userbase.
Winner: Mouseflow
Mouseflow has more comprehensive available features when it comes to customized reporting. If you want a system that lets you create unique user surveys, though, Hotjar works best.
See Full Review of - Mouseflow | Hotjar
Pros and Cons of Mouseflow
Pros
Cons
Pros and Cons of Hotjar
Pros
Cons
Final Thoughts: Which Is Better?
Both of these systems are a good option for tracking your customer data and analytics. The biggest difference between them is in an active versus passive approach. Other than that, the most important note is that Hotjar comes with iOS and Android apps, while Mouseflow comes with a Windows Phone app.
Hotjar is best for those who want to take an active approach to their customer engagement analysis. That means people who want to create and distribute surveys to their consumers. This system is set up to compile, sort, and analyze customer survey responses to give you a better idea of your company's performance.
Mouseflow allows you to take a more passive approach. Rather than having customers engage proactively, the software gathers a great deal of data based on consumer interaction with your website. From there, it can create visual data representations and create customized reports to give you a better idea of your demographic's interests.
