Userfly

The service lets you record your site’s users' actions and then play them back in your own browser. You are able to see exactly what people are doing, which includes mouse clicks, keystrokes (except for those in password fields for obvious security reasons), page scrolling and navigation across multiple pages.

I went ahead and tried it right here on this blog. Installation was as simple advertised, I just had to put a line of JavaScript in the head section of the site’s template code. Once that was done, Userfly began recording every new visitor’s actions. All I had to do was wait and keep refreshing the Playbacks page to see the new captures appear. I’ll also add that I didn’t notice any negative effects on site performance when using the script.

Here’s what the main Playbacks page recordings list looks like :


Very simple, just a list of captures, each labeled as either New, Watched or Saved. New captures appear at the top of the list. If you click on the IP address link, you’re taken to the capture’s own page. You’re presented with the following controls:


And it does really work. I could see people browsing through a bunch of sections on my site and reading or skimming through the articles. Granted, the recordings would be a lot more interesting on a marketing oriented site or some form of online service, where you’ll be able to see where people are going and what they’re doing.

Seeing how users browse your site is eye opening. People might say one thing about the site, but they may actually be doing something else entirely. A lot of browsing decisions happen at a sub-conscious levels, so seeing people actually browse your site rather than asking them questions about it is the only way of getting an accurate picture of what people are doing and what parts of the site are confusing to them.

Userfly is cheap. You get 10 free captures when you sign up, and can then purchase more at $0.05 each. That’s just $5 for 100 captures.

However,Userfly doesn’t present us with the full solution. The playbacks are just that — playbacks of visitors browsing your site. There is no verbal or written feedback from the users. You don’t really know what they’re thinking about at the time. You don’t know whether they’re enjoying surfing your site or not, or things that may be annoying them.