Session recording tools lets you understand how users experience and move through your site.
But with so many tools that suit different purposes, how do you pick the right one for your business and customer needs?
Today, we’re exploring eight of the best website recording software so you feel confident in your tech stack and the changes you make to your site.
What is website session recording software?
Website session recording software is any tool that lets website owners track and record user interactions and sessions on their websites. These session replay tools give you playbacks (videos) of real user actions on your digital product, so you can closely monitor
User movements
Searches
Clicks
Pages
Keyboard strokes
Taps
Scroll depth
And when you pair this information with metrics from other analytics tools (like Google Analytics) you can uncover why people behave the way they do on your site.
Benefits of adding session recording software to your tech stack
Recording software gives you insight to:
Improve user experience: See where users run into bugs, hit dead ends, or get distracted so you can implement fixes to better your site’s UX
Increase conversion rates: See where users drop off and abandon their carts. Then, test changes to reduce these drop-offs
Improve customer experience: Watch how users perform with post-purchase pages and fix any places they may get stuck
Understand user behavior: Observe how users behave so you can build better products and better experiences, which can ultimately increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
Top 8 session recording tools for website owners
When searching for a website session recording software, you’ll want to find one that
Takes a privacy-first approach so you can still glean valuable insights from your recordings without risking customer loyalty or legal complications
Encourages cross-functional team collaboration and makes it easy to share recordings and insight with other team members
Presents data in a way that’s easy to interpret and analyze so you can prioritize updates
Helps you understand user behavior across segments
Our list of tools takes these points into consideration so you can be confident with whichever recording software you add to your tech stack:
1. Contentsquare
Contentsquare (hi there, that's us 👋) is an all-in-one experience intelligence platform that teams can use to monitor their site’s digital experience.
Our Session Replay tool captures anonymous user sessions so you can see every interaction on your site, including where people get stuck, what they click, and the path they take to convert.
Session Replay’s also has a module that summarizes key events within each recording, so you can quickly jump to relevant points.
It also alerts you to spikes in errors and links each error to the relevant user session, so you can watch the errors occur in real-time and identify a fix.
How Contentsquare’s Session Replay software helps you delight your users:
Follow a privacy-first approach by using a software that records user sessions anonymously
Find and fix bugs on your site with Contentsquare’s error modules that list out errors so you can quickly jump to the right spot in each replay
View the entire performance of your product and understand why users behave the way they do by combining Session Replays with other tools like
Customer Journey Analysis so you can see how users move through your site
Heatmaps that show you how users interact with each element on your site
Impact Quantification so you can tie site errors back to important KPIs and prioritize what to fix first
Form Analysis to help you optimize site forms and increases conversions
Voice of Customer to hear directly from users on your site through surveys and feedback
Product Analytics to improve retention
Increase team collaboration and alignment by leaving and reviewing comments at key instances with replays
Compare replays with visitors who rated their sessions either highly or poorly to spot commonalities and identify fixes
Confirm hypothesis by watching how real users interact with your site
2. LogRocket
LogRocket is a session replay and product monitoring platform made for product and engineering teams. Its session replay tool records sessions across web and native mobile apps so you can spot issues and see how users behave across a range of sessions.
With its AI-detection features, you can get deeper insight into errors to understand how they affect your business, how many users were affected, and when the first error occurred.
And with 50+ search filters, you can find specific recordings based on criteria like errors, user segments, and custom events. You can even sort recordings based on support tickets, so your support team can see users’ errors in real-time.
LogRocket is a powerful session recording tool, but it currently doesn’t have the ability to collect voice of customer data via surveys and feedback.
LogRocket records user sessions across sites and apps. Source: LogRocket
How LogRocket’s website session recording software helps you understand your users:
Finds errors related to support tickets for faster resolution
Uses AI to quantify elements like the impact that certain errors have and how many users have been affected so you can prioritize fixes
Has multiple filters to help you find the right recordings
Combines multiple filters to create highly-targeted filters
Sends insights directly to platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams so you never miss important details
Masks sensitive data so users remain anonymous
GDPR and CCPA compliant
3. Mouseflow
Mouseflow is a website tracking tool that monitors clicks, scrolls, and mouse movement within recordings of user sessions. It lets you watch retroactive recordings of your entire funnel, so you can see where users drop off or what makes them stay along their journey.
Mouseflow also lets you watch recordings of users navigating different forms on your site so you can understand how forms block or trigger conversions,
However, Mouseflow’s data retention varies depending on the pricing plan you select—which can negatively impact teams collecting insights or recordings over a longer period of time.
Mouseflow’s session recordings tool lets you filter recordings by different criteria. Source: Mouseflow
How Mouseflow's website session recording software helps you understand your users:
Sorts recordings by the number of friction events with a friction score
Observes funnel health and user drop-off with funnel analytics
Monitors user behavior with form analytics on specific website forms
Segments users with six types of heatmaps
Filters recordings by traffic sources and user type
GDPR and CCPA compliant with data centers in the US and Europe
4. FullStory
FullStory is a behavioral analytics platform that lets you record and filter user sessions and collaborate with your team. The platform lets you index and search for recordings by event and user data, so you can sift through user sessions based on criteria like buttons clicked or URLs visited.
It also indexes recordings by frustration signals like error clicks, rage clicks, and thrashing cursors, which help you isolate and spot problem areas on your website.
Since FullStory records all user sessions (instead of samples), it automatically includes links to session recordings on related support tickets or bug reports, so you can identify the root of the problem.
However, FullStory lacks crucial voice of customer feedback tools that let you ask users questions to understand why they behave the way they do.
FullStory's website session recording software shows you where users click and scroll Source: FullStory
How FullStory's website session recording software helps you understand your users:
Indexes recordings by event data, user data, and frustration signals to isolate and spot problem areas
Speeds up research and analysis with the 'skip inactivity' feature
Links recordings to bug reports and support tickets
Privacy control features
5. Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a popular website session recording tool for tracking user activity. Its session recordings feature helps you track and segment the journeys of specific types of customers—giving you key insights into form abandonment based on user personas, so you can improve your lead-generation process.
Although it has a less intuitive user interface (UI) compared to other tools and doesn’t let you ask users why they act the way they do, Crazy Egg helps you monitor the effectiveness of your web pages and adjust your design and content according to what users click on—and what they don’t.
Crazy Egg's screen recording software tracks mouse movement and user clicks. Source: Crazy Egg
How Crazy Egg's website session recording software helps you understand your users:
Dashboard for data visualization
Filters recordings by campaign or user segment
Displays session recordings from new or returning visitors
Segments customers with 22 heatmap filters
Recording annotations and notes
GDPR compliant
6. Lucky Orange
Lucky Orange offers session recording and replay tools that capture user-generated gestures and movements. It’s an intuitive platform that gives you control of your recordings by attaching them to specific customer profiles, and showing you when visitors enter your site in real-time, as well as the number of visitors currently active on your site.
It lets you filter and segment recordings to see where users drop off in their journey—so you can better understand why your website’s generating traffic that doesn’t convert.
Lucky Orange website session recording platform lets you view users’ rage clicks Source: Lucky Orange
Lucky Orange's key website session recording attributes include:
Visitor profiles containing links to recordings history
Real-time website visitor alerts and updates
Unlimited and customizable dashboards
Form analytics and recordings for conversion rate optimization (CRO)
Dynamic heatmaps for layered insights
GDPR compliance
7. Smartlook
Smartlook’s session recording and replay software lets you choose your recording quality output, so you can strike a balance between recording users without overwhelming your server’s infrastructure.
The software takes an ‘always-on’ approach to monitoring user sessions and records every single visitor session on your website or app, while automatic event tracking lets you see when users complete certain actions, and how often. Although it can be tricky to filter recordings based on user type, it’s a powerful tool that helps you understand precisely how users interact with your app or website.
SmartLook website session recording software shows you active and completed user sessions Source: SmartLook
SmartLook's key website session recording features include:
GDPR compliance
Session recording on Android and iOS devices
Wireframe mode to zoom in on recordings based on UI
Retention tables to spot user engagement and churn
Always-on event tracking, statistics, and breakdown
Heatmaps with options to filter by device or visitor type
Conversion funnel optimization
8. Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity is a user-friendly website session recording software that typically helps SMBs—like startups, personal bloggers, or small ecommerce site owners—better understand and retain their visitors. Its simple-to-use UI lets you keep track of user session recordings without needing to navigate additional bells and whistles.
While Clarity offers a lot of heatmaps and recordings functionality, users express concerns around its GDPR compliance, and often comment that it is a cumbersome tool that leaves you to do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Microsoft Clarity lets you filter and segment session recordings Source: Microsoft Clarity
How Microsoft Clarity's session recording software helps you understand user actions:
Filters recordings by customer segment for added insights
Integrates with Google Analytics 360
Gives you detailed user behavior tracking with heatmaps
Dashboards for comprehensive overviews and visualizations
Pick your website session recording software and delight users
There’s no easier way to gain empathy with users than by seeing what frustrates and delights them in real-time.
With a website session recording software in your tech stack, you’ll have no problem empathizing with users and making website improvements based on your observations.
Remember: choosing a tool that gives you granular insights into what your visitors do on your website and why they do it lets you prioritize updates that will delight your users.
FAQs about website session recording software
What is screen recording software?
Screen recording software is a tool that lets website owners track and record user interactions and sessions on their websites. These tools provide playbacks of real user actions on your digital product so you can monitor user actions like clicks, scrolls, and keyboard strokes.
What are the benefits of website session recording software?
Website session recording software has a variety of benefits for your users and business. Some of these include:
Improving website usability
Elevating the user experience
Promoting empathy and understanding of user behavior
Protecting user privacy
Encouraging cross-functional team collaboration
Enabling easy data visualization and analysis
What are the best website session recording tools to use?
There are many website session recording tools available, but some of the best on the market include:
Contentsquare
MouseFlow
FullStory
Crazy Egg
Lucky Orange
SmartLook
Microsoft Clarity
While all these tools let you monitor user behavior on your website, Contentsquare is the only software that helps you understand the ‘why’ behind user actions with unobtrusive feedback widgets and survey tools.