Everything you need to know about session recordings, including what they are, how they may help you improve your website, and how to utilize them to acquire useful information.
What exactly are session recordings (or replays)?
Visitors’ actual activities as they surf a website are rendered in session recordings. On desktop and mobile devices, recordings capture mouse movement, clicks, taps, and scrolling across many sites.
Web site recording, also known as user recording or user/visitor replay tools, are used to acquire a true knowledge of how people interact with a website, which may then be utilized to rectify faults, enhance UX, and eventually increase conversion rates.
5 ways session records aid with customer comprehension
Recordings and replays are the next best thing to being in the same room with people and observing how they use your website. Here are five ways to learn about your customers using session data.
1. Feel your visitors’ pain.
By empathizing with your website users, you may build a better user experience. Ten to twenty recordings may reveal where visitors are stalled and what’s driving conversions.
2. Examine how visitors use website elements.
Session recordings show how users use your website’s features. What people notice, click, spend time on, and dismiss… Stop pondering and start improving with recordings.
3. Find defects, issues, and obstacles.
One of the easiest ways to improve your website is to check visitor session recordings when they encounter issues.
Broken parts, loading problems, false microcopy, and ambiguous guidance are examples of technical and informational hurdles.
4. Determine why website visitors leave.
By evaluating session records from non-converting visitors, you may find ways to minimize bounce rates and retain customers.
Did users behave erratically? Miss a link? A bug? Answer these questions to detect errors.
- Help team, customers, and stakeholders make decisions.
Recordings are easy to share and see, and they show support for design decisions and improvements.
UX designers, CRO experts, and marketers may use user session recordings to make data-driven decisions and illustrate their work’s success.
What are the benefits of session recordings?
Session records demonstrate what a user sees in their browser.
- On the desktop, record mouse movement, scrolling, and clicks.
Each user session recording will show real-time mouse movement, clicks, and scrolling (though you may always speed up or slow down the video you’re seeing). Movement is represented as red lines that stay on the screen to make it easier to notice patterns.
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Replay mobile scrolling and taps
On mobile, session replay features operate exactly as well—scrolling and taps are recorded.
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Views of many pages
When a user navigates to a new page (or refreshes a page), the session continues to record in its entirety, allowing you to see a video replay of a visitor’s trip across numerous pages without interruption.
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Record your keystrokes.
If you enable specific fields, session recordings will capture keystroke data (information inputted by users). Trustworthy session recording systems, such as Hotjar, anonymize personally-identifying information (such as the information a user might provide in a credit card field) by default and include capabilities to allow you to conceal certain aspects.
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Extra reading material
If you decide to use https://creabl.com/ recordings, you should be aware that we value your privacy. Read more about Creabl privacy policies to learn what information you can and can’t view in recordings—and, yes, our session records can be used to comply with the GDPR.
What to look for in your recording sessions?
If you’ve never seen user recordings, we recommend sitting back, pushing “play,” and watching a few. Seeing real people interact with your website for the first time is always a “wow!” moment.
After a few recordings, you’ll see trends in how people use your website or app. Observe:
- How do visitors navigate between pages?
- How visitors click buttons and other components.
- Unusual mouse activity, such as frenzied scrolling or clicking
- If something takes too long,
- Where website visitors get stuck
- You’ll notice difficulties like:
- Page(s) that don’t load on multiple devices/browsers
- faulty functionality (example: log in not working, search bar not returning results)
- Missing and/or damaged rendering components
