About 94% of people say bad web design is the main reason they won’t trust a brand. Another 94% of people judge websites on responsive design. Meanwhile, nearly 90% of people won’t return to a site after a bad experience.
Do you know how to pinpoint issues on your website? If not, you could keep frustrating users. They could leave and decide to never come back.
Instead, consider using session replay tools. These tools can help you better understand how users explore your site.
Then, you can make beneficial changes to your site to improve the user experience.
What is session replay, exactly, and how can it benefit your business? Read on to find out!
Table of Contents
What is Session Replay?
First, let’s answer the question that’s likely on your mind: what is session replay?
Session replay tools replicate a visitor’s individual journey on your website. The recording is also called a:
- Session playback
- User replay
- Session recording
Session replays can help you visualize an anonymous visitor experience. You can recognize flaws in the design, then update your website or app. The improvements you make can boost your conversion rates and ROI.
Otherwise, you’re left to make assumptions about potential issues on your site.
Session replay tools record each visitor’s movements in real-time, including:
- Scrolls
- Clicks
- Taps
- Keystrokes
Learning how to replay a session can help you improve the user experience. A stronger user experience will keep people on your website longer. You can make it easier for visitors to explore your content and interact with the page.
If your website is difficult to use, they could leave without converting. Your bounce rate might rise as a result.
A higher bounce rate could hurt your search engine ranking. If your ranking drops, you might struggle to generate fresh traffic.
How It Works
How does session replay work, exactly?
The software allows website owners to watch how visitors behave on each page. As the site owner, you can see:
- How the cursor moves
- What elements the user clicks on
- How long they view the page
This live recording of the visitor’s experience can help you recognize what the user is interested in. You can also detect potential flaws in the design.
Comparing recordings from various sessions can help you develop a baseline. Then, you can find ways to improve the online user experience.
Why You Need Session Replay
With session replay tools, optimizing the online user experience can become time-consuming and costly. You might need to resort to vigorous A/B testing. Unfortunately, it can take time to gather the data you need.
Even then, you might not have accurate, in-depth insights that will help you make informed changes to your site.
Instead, you can use session replay to better understand customer behaviors. Session replay tools can fill in the gaps created by heatmaps. You can gather the data you need to understand how people interact with your content.
Other tools like Google Analytics only provide you with user metrics. They don’t tell you why those metrics increase or decrease. You won’t gather information about the user experience or specific engagements, either.
For example, Google Analytics can tell you a visitor spent two minutes on a page before bouncing. Heatmaps can tell you they remained above the fold for the majority of the session. Session replay can tell you they struggled to fill out a form before leaving.
You can learn more about why to use session replay here.
Using Session Replay
Now that we’ve answered the question “what is session replay,” let’s discuss putting it to use. There are a few ways you can use session replays to gather rich insights. Here are a few uses to consider.
Boosting Conversions
It’s not enough to generate traffic to your website. You also need to make sure your call-to-action (CTA) language incites action. Otherwise, it could mean you’re struggling to convert visitors into leads and customers.
You can use session replay tools to determine if your lead generation tactics are working. A replay will help you better understand each interaction. You can determine:
- Where visitors encountered issues
- Where they converted on the page (if they did)
- What’s preventing the user from converting
- What elements frustrate the user and cause a bounce
The data you gather can help you improve your landing pages for conversions. For example, impulse buyers are triggered by blue, black, and red-orange. Updating your CTA buttons could trigger more purchases.
Longer landing pages generate more conversions, too. You might want to add more white space to your pages.
Meanwhile, conversions drop 20% per second of site load time. You could recognize slow speeds are impacting your bounce rate.
Then, you can make adjustments to those areas of the page to boost your conversion rates.
Pinpointing UX Issues
A frustrating user experience could increase your bounce rate. You can use session replay tools to determine:
- If your website is difficult to navigate or use
- Where people abandon your site
- Which design elements work best per devices, resolutions, audiences, and browsers
- Areas that exert a cognitive load
Tracking UX issues can help you better understand high bounce rates and low conversion rates
Tracking Page Issues
Optimizing your website continuously can improve the user experience, too. You can use session replays to identify:
- Load time issues
- Form-related issues
- Broken links
- Hidden CTA buttons
You can better understand what causes users to drop off on a page.
Resolving Onboarding Problems
Once you convert visitors into customers, you’ll need to onboard them. If the onboarding process causes issues, you’ll experience customer churn. You’ll lose revenue as a result.
You can use replays to track user behaviors, identify issues, and reduce churn.
Improving Customer Support
If the user feels frustrated with your website, they could leave and never come back. Instead, you can offer better customer support. Your customers will find the help they need.
Session replays can help you understand the context of the consumer’s question without asking for more detail. You can resolve issues faster than before, showing customers you’re there to help.
Press Replay: 5 Reasons You Should Use Session Replay Tools Right Away
Don’t let small issues with your website have a big impact on your business. Instead, consider using session replay tools. With session replay, you can improve the customer’s online experience with ease.
Then, you can retain long-time customers to boost your ROI!
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