Decode Behavioral Signals in Session Recordings

About Behavioral Signals

Behavioral Signals in VWO Insights are standard events that track and represent how users interact with your website. They record user actions through session recordings and frictionmaps to provide useful insights. These insights help you understand the areas or components on your website that are causing frustration or confusion for your website visitors.

For example, a broken Submit button on your sign-up page may lead to Rage Clicks (multiple clicks in the same area). You can filter the session recordings using the Rage Clicks signal filter for that page and identify instances where visitors repeatedly click the unresponsive button. Similarly, you can analyze different behavioral signals (explained in the following table) to identify areas of friction and optimize your website experience.
The following table explains all the behavioral signals available in VWO and offers insights into possible reasons that indicate end users' frustration or confusion.

Signal	Description	Behavioral Signals Indicator
Rage Clicks	Multiple clicks in rapid succession on the same area.	Rage clicks indicate extreme frustration, as the user expects something to work, but it's not responding. It could be a broken button or a slow-loading element.
Dead Clicks	Clicks on elements that look interactive but do not function.	Dead clicks indicate non-clickable elements that look clickable. This could be due to misleading design, broken links, or disabled buttons.
Error Clicks	Clicks that trigger a website error (API, network, or code issue).	Error clicks indicate broken functionality on the site, such as forms with CTAs redirecting to faulty links that do not work as expected.
Page Refresh	Manually refreshing the page.	A Page Refresh may indicate that the webpage is slow to load, the content is not displayed properly, or the user expects updated information.
Quick Back	Quickly returning to the previous page.	Quick Back indicates that the user did not find what they were looking for either because the content was irrelevant or they encountered an issue, for example, an out-of-stock product.
Tab Out	Switching to another browser tab.	Tab Out indicates that the user might be: Distracted Comparing products on another site, or Searching for discount codes on a third-party site.
Tab In	Returning to the tab after switching away.	Tab In indicates that the user has returned to the tab and is ready to browse or purchase after checking other information. Frequent switching could mean hesitation or distractions.
Cursor Thrashes	Rapid and erratic mouse movements.	Cursor Thrashes indicates that the user is confused, frustrated, or struggling with a technical issue, such as broken elements or unclear navigation.
Repeated Scroll	Scrolling up and down repeatedly on the same page.	Repeated Scroll indicates that the user might struggle to find specific content, be overwhelmed by too many options, or deal with poor navigation.
Repeated Hover	Hovering over the same element multiple times.	Repeated Hover indicates that the user is hesitant to click over an element, such as a tooltip, for extra information that isn’t appearing or is unsure about their next step.

These events signify usability issues and help optimize your website for better user experience and conversions. 

Key Benefits of Tracking and Analyzing Behavioral Signals

Behavioral signals in a session recording help you gain valuable insights into user interactions. At a high level, they allow you to:

• Detect frustration: Identify friction points that cause confusion for the end users.
• Improve user experience: Detect any broken elements and refine the web design based on interaction insights.
• Enhance conversion: Identify and eliminate obstacles in the user journey to boost engagement and conversion rates.
• Prioritize optimization efforts: Focus on the most critical website issues by analyzing the behavioral signals to determine their frequency and impact. This helps teams allocate resources efficiently, addressing high-friction areas on priority.

Analyze Behavioral Signals in Session Recordings

To analyze the behavioral signals for the recorded sessions:

1. Log in to your VWO account.
2. Navigate to Insights > Session Recordings.
3. From the list of available recordings, click Play on the video you want to analyze. 

The behavioral signals appear in two areas:

• Event Stream: The Events of current session tab on the panel displays the behavioral signals for each page the user visited during that session. You can scroll through the list to see when and where each signal is recorded.

• Seek Bar (Bottom Progress Bar): Behavioral signals are marked with distinct icons on the timeline. Click on the icons to jump directly to moments where the behavioral signals appear to analyze the type of signal and possible user intent.

Filter Session Recordings by Behavioral Signals

VWO allows you to filter session recordings based on specific behavioral signals. This helps you quickly identify sessions where users exhibit similar behaviors on a particular page or element.

To filter session recording by behavioral signals:

1. Navigate to Insights > Session Recordings.
2. Go to Visitor Segment > Custom Segment. 
3. Select the where dropdown and navigate to Standard Events. 
4. From the available list, select the behavioral signal (e.g., Rage Click, Dead Click) and click Filter to filter the session recordings accordingly. Refer to the following image for clarity.

After you click Filter, you get a filtered view of recordings that include the selected behavioral signal and other signals.
You can refine your analysis further by filtering each visitor's recording based on events from the current session or all of the sessions. To do so:

1. Click Play on any of the filtered recording sessions. A session player loads, displaying all the recorded events for the selected session.
2. Click Filters from the Event Stream panel on the right under the Events of current session section. A dropdown menu with different behavioral signal options appears.
3. Select the behavioral signals based on which you want to filter the recordings and click Apply.
   The event stream updates to display only the selected behavioral signals the user performed in the current session.
   
4. To filter behavioral signals for all sessions of that visitor, navigate to the All sessions of this visitor tab and use the same Filter dropdown to refine the behavioral signals.

Analyze Frictionmaps with Behavioral Signals

Frictionmaps visually represent problematic user interactions on a specific webpage, highlighting areas with Dead clicks, Rage clicks, and Error clicks. This allows you to pinpoint sections where users encounter issues or frustrations quickly.

To analyze Frictionmaps:

1. Navigate to Insights > Heatmaps.
2. Enter the URL of the page you want to analyze.
3. Select Frictionmap from the Visualization dropdown.
4. Add filters as per your requirement and click View Heatmap.
5. After loading successfully, Frictionmaps displays the areas where users struggle by highlighting problem clicks (like Dead clicks, Rage clicks, and Error clicks) on a heatmap, as shown in the following image.

Best Practices to Analyze Behavioral Signals

Follow these best practices to analyze behavioral signals and gain meaningful insights: 

• Study multiple signals: Don’t analyze behavioral signals in isolation. For example, if you observe Rage Clicks and Cursor Thrashing signals together, it likely indicates user frustration. Similarly, Quick Backs combined with Tab-outs may suggest users are leaving to compare alternatives.
• Use filters and segmentation: Leverage VWO’s filtering and segmentation tools to refine your analysis. You can filter session recordings by behavioral signals, page URLs, and visitor segments to pinpoint issues affecting specific user groups or pages.
• Correlate with other data: Combine behavioral signals with VWO Insights features like Heatmaps and Scrollmaps. You can also analyze qualitative feedback from surveys or feedback widgets for a complete picture of user behavior and motivations.

Once you identify potential issues, develop hypotheses and run A/B tests to validate solutions. This helps optimize your website for a better user experience and improved performance.

Need more help?

For further assistance or more information, contact VWO Support