Mobile represents an increasingly important channel for website owners as a growing percentage of consumer activity comes from tablets and smartphones. This industry mega-trend looks set to continue with many industry forecasts confidently predicting that mobile will become established as a significant channel for online sales and servicing.

New challenges to understand the customer experience delivered on mobile devices

The rapid emergence and adoption of smartphones, tablets and notebooks present new challenges to understanding customer behaviour and conversion.

As this new channel continues to develop, web site owners have a keen interest in understanding the actual online experience they deliver to their individual end-users on a mobile device and comparing the performance of the mobile channel as a segment in its own right.

Understanding how a customer’s online behaviour differs between a smartphone, a tablet or a desktop PC has never been more important. Your analytics data won’t tell you why your mobile customers are converting at a higher rate than your desktop customers for example. You might know you’ve got a problem but it’s not until you start watching customers that you’ll really be able to ascertain why you’ve got a problem.

SessionCam and Mobile

SessionCam works seamlessly with any JavaScript enabled browser that is being used on a smartphone or tablet; this includes Apple iPads and iPhones and Android devices. Session data is securely recorded using the same processes that we use for PCs and other fixed-line devices.

You can replay a session recorded on a mobile device. Web sites that have been developed using responsive web design will playback beautifully as SessionCam accurately shows the page content that has been delivered to the end user using the appropriate screen sizes. Changes to the screen size as a user tilts their tablet or smartphone will accurately playback in SessionCam.

Of course it’s not only about replay, we capture all mobile session data in exactly the same way as desktop sessions, allowing us to generate live data feeds and alerts for your mobile business as well.

Activity recorded from mobile is available in all areas of our reporting console including Activity Insight, Conversion Insight and Behavioural Heatmaps. You can segment recorded activity using the “device type” filter to see recorded activity from specific mobile devices such as an Apple iPad.

Want to learn more?

Contact us now for an informal discussion of the new challenges in understanding customer experience on mobile devices and a demonstration of how SessionCam solves these problems.

It’s been pretty awesome to find out that SessionCam had been listed in the latest LUMAscape that has been published this week and focuses on marketing technologies.

The scope of the LUMAscape includes 1) Sales and Marketing software used to plan, execute and analyse marketing campaigns and 2) Website technologies used to create, manage and optimize website. There are a number of different areas identified within the LUMAscape.

SessionCam is placed in the “Analytics” section alongside such industry heavy-weights as Google Analytics, Omniture, Core Metrics and Webtrends.

Research from Econsultancy has identified that session replay is considered to be the most effective method for identifying online customer experience issues.

In fact, session replay was considered more effective than learning from usability studies, customer calls to your contact centre, customer emails and customer feedback programs.

Our own experience gained from working with our clients across the world validates this research – session replay is a very effective method for identifying customer experience issues – but there are many other ways in which session replay can work harder for your business. We see different levels of maturity when it comes to using session replay as a business tool:

Early adoption around a single use case
Typically, just one area of a business will start to use session replay for one very specific use case.
Most commonly, it will start within an online customer experience team looking for a cost effective way of seeing real customer use of a web site so that they can identify issues with the design and usability of a web site to reduce abandonment and improve conversion.

Wider usage as knowledge improves
As knowledge and understanding of session replay increases, the number of users increase as new and different use cases emerge. The use of session replay quickly spreads into different areas of the business:
- Analytics teams integrate session replay with their systems to enhance the actionable insight they can offer.
- Contact centres use session replay to improve the support and service they can provide customers.
- IT use session replay to reduce the time to diagnose real system problems encountered by real customers and it is one of the most effective way to create real time performance and error alerts.
- Marketing use session replay to create re-marketing programs personalised with customer data that rescues revenue following drop-off and abandonment.
- Legal and compliance functions use session replay to record and evidence the offer made and accepted by the customer and the input data supplied at the point of sale.

Session replay becomes fundamental to the enterprise
As multiple use cases for session replay are established and embedded within a company, it becomes a fundamental tool for the business across many different functional lines. The different use cases provide greater justification for the costs and benefits delivered from the use of session replay.

Want to learn more?
We love talking about session replay and we can share our experiences of the different uses. Just contact us for an informal discussion.

Heatmaps are not just for seeing where you’re wasting electricity or gas through poor home insulation. Nor are they just for spotting where the escaping house burglar is hiding. Heatmaps are a great way to quickly see what your web visitors are doing on your site, so that you don’t end up wasting your energy getting them to visit your site, only to disappear or hide up on the wrong pages.

So, what is a website heatmap?

So, imagine you have an interesting and pivotal page on your website, with lots of page views, but you’re not sure where all those visitors are looking, clicking, scrolling or giving their attention.

Now imagine that you have a tool that lets you see all that.  Imagine that the areas with lots of clicks are a bright red, an area on the page where the mouse pays only a fleeting visit is a pale yellow and there is no colour when there is no attention. You are imagining a website heatmap! Your analysis might be better if you use a tool that can turn your imagination to reality.

 So, what do the best heatmap tools give you?

1. Four different flavours of behavioural heatmap showing: mouse movements, mouse clicks, scrolling (up/down, left/right) and attention (areas of a page where visitors linger).
2. Filtering allowing you just to take into account particular sessions. For example, sessions on a large resolution screen, sessions that used Chrome 25, sessions in a specific date range, or sessions performed on a particular device (e.g. iPad). A great tool will of course let you combine these filters.
3. Filtering based on what happened after your page – this is really useful! So, make sure your heatmap tool allows you to show the heatmap for only the visitors to the page who subsequently bought, or dropped out of the site on this page, or whose visit covered more than 20 pages.
4. Filtering based on what happened before the page you’re wanting to heatmap – also really useful! So, a good tool let’s you compare heatmaps for people who arrived from a marketing landing page versus the arrival from the standard home page.
5. The facility to replay all the individual sessions that were combined to produce the heatmap.

So, what will a good heatmap tell me? 

• Where to put your adverts or calls-to-action.
• Whether version A, B or even C is the most effective version of the page.
• Where you’ve built content that isn’t being accessed by any visitors.
• Whether your page is better for browsers or purchasers.
• Where you can make improvements to your design.
• Whether the page is effective with all types of browsers and devices.

SessionCam comes with all this as standard, so if you don’t have SessionCam, or are not using the heatmap features, then why not start now.

Our simple ambition for SessionCam is to provide the world’s best session replay solution. Today, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve taken another good step towards that ambition as SessionCam’s replay capability has been enhanced to support responsive web design.

Responsive web design

We believe responsive web design is a major trend of massive importance that’s gaining wide scale adoption across the digital design and development community.  As an approach, responsive web design aims to craft sites to provide the optimal viewing experience for the end user. That means easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning and scrolling across a wide range of devices from traditional desktop computers through to tablets and smart phones.

Mashable has declared that 2013 to be the year of responsive web design!

Beautiful playback for responsive web design sites

SessionCam’s replay capability has been enhanced to accurately replay a site that has been developed with responsive web site design in mind. This means in playback you can see exactly how the web page content was rendered for each individual user whose activity has been recorded by SessionCam. Changes to the screen size as a user tilts their tablet or smart phone will playback beautifully in SessionCam.

If we can be permitted to say so ourselves, it’s pretty stunning to watch a replay of a web site where the screen sizes are changing as a mobile device is tilted. However, we’re not finished with session replay yet! We’ve got a number of new ideas we’re currently working on and should be able to announce some more exciting developments in the next few weeks.

Campaign Monitor is a one of the world’s favourite broadcast email solutions and is used by over 700,000 companies across the world to send over 1 billion email messages every month.

You can now use SessionCam to trigger email activity within Campaign Monitor using our latest API integration.

Using recorded session data to enable a real-time action like “send an email” opens up endless new possibilities for digital marketers to quickly add extra business value and benefit. For example, you could use SessionCam to trigger “dropped basket” email marketing to customers that abandon a retail checkout process.

Details on how to connect SessionCam to Campaign Monitor are included in our support web site.

This new integration quickly follows on from our recent announcement of an integration with Experian Cheetahmail.

There are many tools to help with your understanding of what is happening on your website. These tools might count the number clicks, length of stay or total pages visited. Some tools will help you analyse these numbers and tell you which types of visitors are most likely to convert or recommend your site.

That’s all well and good – but can sometimes be a bit dry with only a ‘dedicated few’ claiming that hours spent studying rows of numbers in a spread sheet is fun! On the other hand, visible web analytics, through Session Replay, is engaging, stimulating and ultimately most rewarding.

So, what does Playback deliver that you can’t get elsewhere

Here are some of things that Playback has to offer over and above a row of numbers:

1. Well, for a start it really is an enjoyable experience and a great way to spend time sitting virtually alongside your customers, seeing and probably feeling what they feel. This means that you’ll want to give the task the time is deserves, which then means that you’ll want to make the improvements that the playback so clearly highlights.
2. Playback gives you a real sense of what is frustrating your customer. Watch them jump between pages, scroll up down and click where they are not meant to click – you’ll soon realise which are the good things and which the not so good things about your site’s design and functionality.
3. Watching in real time can quickly show you how engaged your customers are with your site. Do they move around with no sense of purpose, are they just browsing, or are they really focussed in seeking out some specific information or a product?
4. Filtering your web sessions, for example by browser type or by device allows you to determine pretty quickly whether or not your site functions correctly for those customers.
5. Watching customers fill in forms can be very revealing. Do they try many different options to get a better quote, or do they spend time entering different email addresses, and if so should you be wondering why?

 

SessionCam’s playback is the best, so how can you make the most of the best?

We believe that SessionCam has the best playback around. That’s because we probably show the most accurate representation of what the customer saw, whatever their browser, operating system or device. We also play back all Ajax and ensure a customer switching across protocols or domains is treated a single session. Here are some ideas to help you get the most from your Playback:

• Select the right session to watch. Use the filters to make sure you are looking at what you want to understand. ‘Filters’ allow you to quickly home in on the sessions you particularly want. Maybe you just want to see long sessions, or short; night time sessions or daytime sessions; sessions on a tablet; sessions using the IE9 browser; sessions hitting the payment page. Just some examples – and of course you can combine selection criteria. SessionCam has a superb range of filters.

• Play back at the right speed for your task.  You may want to playback in actual speed, or double speed, or even faster. If you want to look at every detailed movement of the mouse position, then go slow. If all you really care about is a quick glance at the pages visited, go fast, and then slow down at an interesting point. You may want to skip periods of where the visitor is inactive (distracted, making a call or perhaps just thinking). SessionCam lets you do all this.

• List all the pages in the Session, and jump directly to the page that is of most interest. Use the Session Info button in SessionCam to list pages and other useful information about the session.

•  Time Stamp points in your playback so you can quickly jump to that point when sharing your insight. In addition, you can add a series of comments to the session. Each comment can be time-stamped too.  A number of SessionCam clients requested these features. At SessionCam we love to respond to feedback and are continually adding useful new features.

• Finally, get the most from your Playback by combining with Heatmap. When replaying any page there will be a button to link directly to a heatmap – which you can also do by ‘hovering-over’ any url in the Sessions list. SessionCam’s Playback and Heatmap combination is unrivalled.

 

Read about some of the other business benefits from SessionCam.

If you don’t yet have a SessionCam account, why not get yourself an account today.

 

A great evening at Conversion Thursday last night, the event was held at “22-26 Farringdon” a great little subterranean café hidden away on Farringdon Lane, thank you to our friends at Elisa DBI for such a great event.

A cracking turn out and some great questions from the audience following our presentation, it was great to have so much interest in our approach to data collection and the advantages of the asynchronous data capture we deploy.

As it turned out, we were perfectly matched with our co-presenter, Colton Perry, from Monetate, we use very similar technology which enables SessionCam to capture all of the dynamic promotions and content that Monetate inject in real time into the pages of their customers.

We have met with so many people recently where our next generation approach to data collection has provided a real advantage, with no need to tag AJAX and other dynamic content and the ability to capture content injected into your pages from MVT and other third party solutions we are finding that SessionCam provides a real edge.

We look forward to seeing you all again at the next Conversion Thursday.

SessionCam’s innovative session recording solution has now been integrated with Experian Cheetahmail; a market leading solution used by many of the world leading brands for their broadcast email requirements.

This integration creates new value for digital marketers seeking to enhance the value created from their web site and can be used in many different ways. One of the most popular use cases for this integration is to improve conversion activity by introducing email-based customer re-engagement processes targeted at reducing online customer abandonment and rescuing revenue that would otherwise be lost.

Using SessionCam’s API, digital marketers can quickly and easily create business rules that will pass data, such as an email address, recorded from a web site by SessionCam, into Experian Cheetahmail to automatically trigger the sending of an email. As part of this process, additional data fields can also be sent to Cheetahmail to further personalise the content of the outbound email.

If required, business rules that control the data sent to Cheetahmail can be defined to trigger based on recorded customer behaviour and targeted at very tightly defined customer segments for any online process. Business rules can also be enabled to action during specific time periods. For example, SessionCam can be used to trigger outbound email via Cheetahmail outside of normal office hours only.

Please contact us if you would like more information on the integration of SessionCam with Cheetahmail.

Many website owners are already seeing the benefits of adding SessionCam tracking to their site.

Now you can also benefit financially – by spreading the word and helping other people reap some of the many benefits of SessionCam.

By joining the SessionCam Affiliate Partner Program, you can earn a regular monthly income – which will grow each time a site that you pass to SessionCam signs up for one of the paid plans. It’s really easy to join the program – just apply on our site here: SessionCam.com/affiliates

Some of the benefits that website owners gain from adding SessionCam to their site include:

• Improved user experience
• Improved conversion rates
• Improved sales through remarketing
• Improved customer service

And just look as some of this feedback we’ve received in the past few days:

“This is the first product I’ve tried that easily supported dynamic page elements and styles without any invasive code changes to our codebase.”

“Thanks for all the quick support on everything. I will definitely recommend you guys.”

“This is great stuff! Just getting into it, but I am loving it. No better way to be sure that visitors are using the site the way you intended than to watch them use it!”

“I love this. It was so easy to install in our WordPress site.”

“I can’t imagine web analytics without it. Thanks!”

For more information, please visit www.sessioncam.com