Manual tracking vs. autocapture: what’s the difference?

Traditional manual tracking forces teams to decide in advance what user interactions to measure—essentially requiring a magic 8-ball to predict which user interactions and behavior metrics will matter (and we all know how reliable magic 8-balls are).

But what happens when you need event data you didn’t plan to track?

Enter autocapture.

Autocapture automatically records every user interaction, so you always get a complete picture of their needs. 

This blog post explores both types of data collection methods, and when it makes sense to use each.

Key insights

• The best website tracking strategy is flexible and evolves with your product and users. Using autocapture gives you a competitive advantage—you’ll always have useful data to make better product decisions.

• Your team can spend time analyzing insights and building better experiences for your users when you’re not busy chasing engineers to implement new tracking

• Users don't live in silos—they constantly switch between mobile, web, and desktop. Autocapture reveals interactions that you might miss if you rely only on manual tracking.

• With Contentsquare’s Smart Capture, you can use both manual tracking and autocapture. We adapt to meet your needs so you get your data, your way.

Autocapture vs. manual tracking

Autocapture is a data collection method where a tool automatically captures user interactions on a website or app without any additional setup. 

Manual tracking requires engineering teams to write code for every interaction they want to track.

Both types let you track website engagement, but they differ in terms of setup, insights, and scalability. 

Here’s a deeper look at the differences between manual tracking and autocapture.

Setup and maintenance 

Manual tracking gives teams full control over what they measure. Every event is deliberately chosen and coded, which can reassure teams that want to know exactly what data is flowing in and from where.

But this level of control comes at a cost: implementing and maintaining coded tags across pages, features, and new releases is time-consuming. Not to mention the level of technical expertise required to create these tags anytime you need more data. 

Autocapture eliminates the need to write code for every event tracking requirement. For example, Contentsquare’s Smart Capture collects every click, tap, scroll, and user interaction with a single tracking code. This level of user insights adds additional context to your web and mobile analytics.

While some teams may worry about the security implications of autocapture, Contentsquare’s Smart Capture is built with enterprise-grade security and data protection—meaning your users’ data is always safe.

Insight and relevance

Manual tracking only lets you collect what you plan to in advance. This gives you highly relevant data at the time of implementation, but what happens when your users behave unexpectedly?

For example, imagine you launch a new product and set up manual tracking to measure page views for your most important funnel: homepage > product page > checkout. For months, the data looks solid, and you’re confident that you understand your users.

Then one day, conversion rates drop, and leadership wants to know why.

With manual tracking, you won’t have the answers because you didn’t tag any extra interactions beyond the ones you initially thought you needed.

But autocapture provides a complete dataset without additional coding, so leadership and product teams can get answers to their questions—and to any follow-up questions they may not have initially anticipated.

Picture a SaaS company releasing a new product feature. The team uses manual tracking for button clicks, but that only tells part of the story. Without capturing behaviors like button hovers, hesitations, or rage clicks, they miss critical context. And without that insight, it’s impossible to know what users truly need. 

Unsure how you’ll manage all of your data from autocapture?

AI analytics sorts through all your data to surface the most relevant insights for your product analytics strategy. 

Ask Contentsquare’s AI agent Sense, and get immediate answers. No more poring over data-heavy spreadsheets to find the insights you need.

Scalability

Manual tracking becomes increasingly complex as your product grows. Every new page, feature, or campaign requires more tagging and maintenance. Scaling quickly across web and mobile channels can overwhelm your teams, slow down development, and make product monitoring feel impossible.  

But autocapture scales with your product, and teams don’t need to worry about adding more tags and code as the product evolves. 

And Contentsquare’s Smart Capture provides access to retroactive data, meaning you can access past interactions at any time—even if you hadn’t originally planned to track them.

Whether you’re rolling out a new feature or expanding into new markets, autocapture technology like Smart Capture keeps your data relevant and complete.

Should you use manual or autotracking?

Whether you choose manual tracking or autocapture depends on your team’s resources and goals. Consider the following factors:

• Team resources: manual tracking requires ongoing engineering support to implement and maintain tags. If your dev team is already stretched thin, autocapture can remove that bottleneck.

• Data needs: if your team only needs a narrow slice of captured data, manual tracking may be sufficient—but keep in mind that as your goals change, you may miss out on key data. If your data needs are broader (or you aren’t quite sure what data you need), autocapture gives you endless data points and far more flexibility, right from the start.

• Goals: for highly complex goals that demand specific measurements, manual tracking can be useful. For day-to-day analysis of user journeys, product performance, and unexpected user behaviors, autocapture gives teams the flexibility to explore without any guesswork.

Autocapture helps you improve the user experience

At the end of the day, the goal of any tracking strategy isn’t simply data collection—it’s using that data to create a delightful experience for your users.

Autocapture gives you the freedom to spot friction points and uncover hidden user behaviors without the burden of needing to anticipate every possible scenario. And with your full dataset, your team can effortlessly answer any questions they have. 

But you don’t need to choose between control and flexibility. Contentsquare lets you have the best of both worlds: combine manual tracking with autocapture to build a data collection strategy that lets your team put users at the heart of your analytics. 

FAQs about manual tracking vs autocapture