Every web analytics tool seeks to provide insight into the user. Conventional analytics tools seek to understand the experience of users through statistics. While helpful, these tools do not give a complete picture of the user’s experiences on a site or app.
Session replay comes in to solve that problem. Session replay is a valuable tool for improving conversion rate optimization (CRO) and user experience. It improves conventional analytics tools by showing what happens on a site or app.
As a result, you can improve your understanding of the user and create better products. Session replay is helpful for businesses across every industry. Read on for an in-depth explanation of what session replay entails.
Table of Contents
Session replay defined
Session replay refers to replicating how a user interacts with a website or web app. It uses user events to reproduce the user’s actions on the platform. User events include clicks, scrolling, mouse movements, and page visits.
Think of it as someone following you around a store and taking notes on your actions. They then use that information to replicate your shopping experience. That’s how a session replay functions, except that it is a digital experience.
A session replay isn’t a recorded video of the user using the platform. It’s also not a recording of the user’s screen as they use the site. Instead, the user’s actions get recorded in a change log and then used to create a presentation.
Problems that a session replay solves
Knowing which issues a session replay solves will help you understand its importance. These issues include:
Design problems
Designers need to understand if their website design makes sense to users. But, UX (user experience) research is very costly. That is because interviewing and surveying users is quite time-consuming.
Session replays provide designers with UX research whenever they need it. Thus, designers can know which design elements are hard for users to understand. They can also understand how users relate to the site across different devices. With that information, designers can improve the user experience.
Website errors
After developing a website, it is not now immune to problems. When errors occur, identifying and correcting them takes a lot of time. Session replays can help with that. They help engineers easily identify bugs and errors to fix them.
A lack of context for customer support
Many customers provide feedback about a problem they faced on a platform but fail to give enough context. So, a customer support team usually has to get more information from the client. The issue may remain unsolved if the client can’t provide more accurate information.
A session replay gives the customer support team more context on an issue. All the team has to do is link a customer’s raised ticket with a session replay. Thus, solving problems becomes easy and fast.
Low conversion rates
With session replay, you get access to more detail about what happens on a site. The information you get will help with CRO. As you observe the replay, you can come up with potential ways to improve conversions. You can also test your hypotheses.
Wrap-up
Session replays let you evaluate the user’s actions and how the site responded. Through evaluation, you can enhance the platform and improve customer satisfaction.
-
-
-
-
-
-
