3 important steps in session recording analysis
In my opinion, the most effective and easiest way to get qualitative feedbacks is Session Recording Videos.
In this method of research, I use tools such as mouseflow.com, hotjar.com, fullstory.com and etc. These tools can record user behaviour from session starting in a landing page until session terminates in an exit page of site or application. Session record tools will definitely answer the important question: “What is happening in my product?”
With session replay(or session records) we finally find out customers behaviour that helps to improve their experience.
Which actions can be recorded with Session Record tools?
- Scroll
- Click / Tap
- Mouse Movement
- Form Interaction
- Device Rotation
- Drag and Drop
- CSS animations
- HTML and CSS (And all the most basic web page and app elements)
- Hover cursors and effects
- Vector graphics in SVG (including animations)
- Embedded <iframe>s
- AJAX URL navigation
- Script-modified input values
- Window resizing
- HTML5 <audio> and <video> playback
It’s really useful to look up users interactions and find how they use our product and how people performing tasks and achieving goals that are important to them! But we need to know how to discover UX problems from hundreds of sessions records.
Before start, write important points of your product on a sticky note:
- Touchpoints
- Important Landing and Exit Pages
- Important Pages
- Call to Action
- Segments or Personas
All over the analysis process put these notes in front of your view.
Let’s do these 3 important steps of analysis:
1. Segments Records
Think about thousands of videos recorded to watch, if you are watching randomly, you just waste your time. Because our mind can’t find a relation between a variety of behaviors.
The first step of analyzing sessions record is segmentation.
Some suggestion for segmentation:
- Landing pages(Home, Product, Article, Pricing and etc.)
- Exit pages
- Pages / Session(2, 4, 6 and more)
- Bounced Users(Pages / Session EQUAL one)
- Session Duration(Less than 1min, 1–2min, longer than 3min sessions)
- Shopping cart abandonment sessions
- Converted sessions
- Exit in each step of funnels
- Guest Users
- Subscribed Users(For SaaS businesses)
- Device Category(Desktop, Tablet, Mobile)
- Referral Path(Organic Search, Direct, Ad. Campaigns and etc.)
- Logged-in Users
- Custom personas of your application
All types of products will not need these segments, before start watching, decide about choosing the segments that are proper for your product. Then focus and watch all the records of each segment in bursts.
Watching in this way will help your mind to categorize behaviour and find common patterns in sessions.
2. Everything in Comparison
We learn when compared behaviors of segments are together. In order for segments to be compared, they must have characteristics that are similar enough in relevant ways to merit comparison.
These are useful segments to get the benefit of comparison:
- Converted Sessions vs. Abandon Sessions
- Bounced Sessions vs. Pages per session more than one
- Session Duration less than a minute vs more than 3 minutes
- Home landed sessions vs. Detailed page(product or article) landed sessions
- New Users vs Returning Users
- Subscribers vs Guess users(for SaaS businesses)
- Earlier Signup vs Loyal User
Let’s choose segments, watch all recorded session in the first segment then watch all records of the second segment.
Don’t forget to note every signal watching in each group.
How to learn from Compare Segments?
Each segment has a specific property that makes different users characteristics in compression. While we review records based on segments, we have to focus on those different properties.
For example, when I analyze the behaviour of New Users vs Returning Users, that mean I compare users don’t know how our application works vs users has experienced before. In this comprehension, we need to attention behavioral features related to knowing how our site/app works. Ask these questions from yourself:
- Which information is important for each group?
- New Users find main CTAs easily as Returning Users?
3. The brain as a pattern recognition machine
Now it’s time to discovering behaviour patterns. Watch based on segments and note behavior’s signals that help to discover patterns.
The brain can find a relation between signals, and we can learn from good or bad patterns to improve our design and ideation for some A/B Testing.
Behavioral Signal Processing
Watch the mouse movements and guessing what the action might means.
Take attention to these signals:
- The order of the element’s attention
- The journey users passed to complete actions.
- Users use which links to navigate pages
- How users move around on the page and where they stop scrolling
- Which actions completions take a too long time
- Witch elements ignored and witch messages are missed
- How visitors interact or fail to with buttons and clickable elements
- Unusual mouse activity, for example, wild scrolling or repeated clicking
- See how users interact with specific elements
- Find out why people are leaving your website
- Why they clicked on the link and suddenly clicked back button?
- Did they read all page’s texts or just scanning page?
- And etc.
Feel free to discuss this subject in comments or @parhumm.
