Trends & best practices
Session replay tools for enterprises.
By Alex Torres
Aug 17, 2021
7 min read
Session replay tools enable companies to create a visual rendering a user’s session to gain visibility into the user experience, especially errors, bugs, and clumsy designs that are not detected in traditional analytics tools. In particular, session replay tools help teams to improve ineffective calls to action (CTAs), wonky pop-ups, broken page elements, page loading issues, and difficult workflows.
With session replay technology, teams develop behavioral insights as well as understand the entire user journey, including clicks, scrolls, tabs, micro-gestures, keyboard strokes, and mouse movements.
Thanks to session replay tools, teams can step into the user’s shoes and surface problems in an app’s UI, or performance mistakes on the website. As a qualitative analytics tool for UX designers, session replay makes it easier for organizations to enhance the UX in order to drive conversion rates.
In addition, session replay technology is part of the larger movement to simplify cloud complexity and drive digital transformation for companies replatforming their legacy technology.
Who uses session replay tools?
Many teams use session replay tools, including product, engineering, IT, executive, business, compliance, CX specialists, UX researchers, analysts, and customer support.
Industries such as tech, retail, retail banking, financial services, travel, hospitality, quick service restaurants (QSRs), telecommunications, and media use session replay technology to enhance their website’s user experience.
Learn more in our enterprise guide to session replay.
What companies offer session replay tools?
A number of startups and tech companies offer session replay tools, including:
- Quantum Metric
- Dynatrace
- Smartlook
- HotJar
- FullStory
- LogRocket
- MouseFlow
- Contentsquare
- GlassBox
- Auryc
What should you look for in a session replay tool?
Each session replay tool comes with its own set of advantages, but in general you should think carefully about the following qualities as you determine what makes the most sense for your organization.
Cross-Channel Visibility.
Many session replay tools provide access to websites or web applications, but not other channels, including mobile native apps, tablets, and kiosks. Session replay technology should provide visibility into how the user experience shifts depending on device type, screen size, and browser choice.
Additional features.
Session replay technology can help teams understand pain points. However, teams first need to identify where the problem is occurring using tools like anomaly detection, which help them pinpoint which user sessions to watch.
Segmented replays.
Binge watching session replays is time consuming. The best session replay tools come with segmentation features that flag specific actions (such as rage clicking or shopping cart abandonment) in each recording so people can get down to business addressing the problem at hand.
Quantum Metric, for instance, has a feature known as “see more like this,” which aggregates analytics for every customer who had the same experience as the user session in question.
Filter recordings based on specific problems.
Session replay tools in platforms such as Quantum Metric enable organizations to filter user recordings based on specific issues, such as a broken link. This empowers teams to understand how one problem is affecting one user across their customer journey, or multiple users at the same point in the customer journey.
Real-time alerts and notifications.
Unlike brick-and-mortar businesses, online stores never close. This means that organizations need to be alerted of potential problems as soon as possible, especially in industries impacted by supply chains, like retail. The best session replay tools come with real-time alerts, making it easier for teams to step into the user’s shoes and diagnose a problem before it impacts more users.
Site-wide, not just single-page, recording.
Some session replay tools only enable people to see one page at a time. This makes it difficult to understand how users navigate through the website. Instead, they should offer visibility into the entire customer journey to better understand what is stumping users, what they click on, and how they navigate through the website or application in question.
Encryption and security, especially for keyboard stroke recording.
Keyboard stroke recording helps teams understand how people are inputting information into forms, site-wide searchers, and other places. This technology also comes with security challenges, as people enter personal data such as passwords, credit card info, and social security numbers, especially in industries such as banking and financial services.
Quantum Metric’s uniquely secure data capture method, device level encryption, ensures that any personal information is encrypted and secured. Sensitive data is encrypted on your customer’s device, so data is always encrypted when it is sent and stored.
Adjustable replay speed.
Slowing down a user session can help teams dig in and understand a problem, whereas speeding up a session replay enables them to fast forward through the less important parts of the user session.
Ability to share individual recordings.
Platforms like Quantum Metric make it easy to share individual user recordings. This can help teams explain to management, executives, project managers, and other stakeholders what is actually happening for the customer.
Sharing session recordings helps teams to collaborate more efficiently and empowers companies to make better product decisions.
Traditional analytics tools.
Session replay tools complement traditional analytics software, like Google Analytics, which provide information such as bounce rates, time on page, and page views.
The Quantum Metric platform and other session replay tools capture the metadata behind each replay, including user platform, API calls, network details, as well as dozens of other events and errors that are usually overlooked by traditional analytics tools.
Learn more about how Quantum Metric features session replay tools today.
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