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Session replay is the ability to replay a visitor's journey on a web site or within a mobile application or web application. Replay can include the user's view (browser or screen output), user input (keyboard and mouse inputs), and logs of network events or console logs. Session replay is supposed to help improve customer experience [1] and help identify obstacles in conversion processes on websites. However, it can also be used to study a website's usability, customer behavior, and the handling of customer service questions as the customer journey, with all interactions, can be replayed. Some organizations also use this capability to analyse fraudulent behavior on websites.
Some solutions augment the session replay with advanced analytics that can identify segments of customers that are struggling to use the website. [2] This allows for the replay capability to be used much more efficiently and reduces the need to replay other customer sessions unnecessarily.
There are generally two ways to capture and replay visitor sessions, client side and tag-free server side.
There are many tag-based solutions that offer video-like replay of a visitor's session. While replay is analogous to video, it is more accurately a reproduction of a specific user's experience detailing mouse movements, clicks, taps, and scrolls. The underlying data for the session recordings is captured by tagging pages. Some advanced tools are able to access the Document Object Model (DOM) directly and can play back most interactions within the DOM including all mutations with a high degree of accuracy. There are a number of tools that provide similar functions, with the advantage of being able to replay the entire client experience in a movie-like format. It also can deal with modern single-page applications. The disadvantage is that the tracking script can easily be detected and blocked by any ad blocker which has become normal (2017: 615M devices with active adblock). [3]
These solutions capture all website traffic and replay every visitor interaction from every device, and these include all mobile users from any location. Sessions are replayed step-by-step, providing the ability to search, locate and analyze aspects of a visitor's session including clicks and form entry. Server-side solutions require hardware and software to be installed "on premises." An advantage of server-side recording is that the solution cannot be blocked. However, one will not be able to see a video-like replay of client-side activities such as scrolling and mouse movements. This also poorly handles modern single-page applications.
A hybrid approach combines the advantages without the weaknesses. The hybrid approach ensures that every session is recorded (important for compliance) by server-side capturing and enriched with client-side tracking data of mouse movements, clicks, scrolling, keystrokes, and user behavior (driven by customer experience insights). This approach works very well with modern single-page applications. There is the presence of a movie-like replay and 100% compliant capturing. This can be deployed either "on premises" or as Software as a service (SaaS).
All of the tools listed below are available as Software as a service (SaaS) solutions.
Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is "intentional group processes plus software to support them."
Load testing is the process of putting demand on a structure or system and measuring its response.
Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web. A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears in the foreground of the visual interface. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript that uses cross-site scripting (XSS), sometimes with a secondary payload that uses Adobe Flash. They can also be generated by other vulnerabilities/security holes in browser security.
In computer science and networking in particular, a session is a time-delimited two-way link, a practical layer in the TCP/IP protocol enabling interactive expression and information exchange between two or more communication devices or ends – be they computers, automated systems, or live active users. A session is established at a certain point in time, and then ‘torn down’ - brought to an end - at some later point. An established communication session may involve more than one message in each direction. A session is typically stateful, meaning that at least one of the communicating parties needs to hold current state information and save information about the session history to be able to communicate, as opposed to stateless communication, where the communication consists of independent requests with responses.
A dynamic web page is a web page constructed at runtime, as opposed to a static web page, delivered as it is stored. A server-side dynamic web page is a web page whose construction is controlled by an application server processing server-side scripts. In server-side scripting, parameters determine how the assembly of every new web page proceeds, and including the setting up of more client-side processing. A client-side dynamic web page processes the web page using JavaScript running in the browser as it loads. JavaScript can interact with the page via Document Object Model (DOM), to query page state and modify it. Even though a web page can be dynamic on the client-side, it can still be hosted on a static hosting service such as GitHub Pages or Amazon S3 as long as there is not any server-side code included.
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research and assess and improve website effectiveness. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print or broadcast advertising campaigns. It can be used to estimate how traffic to a website changes after launching a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides information about the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views, or creates user behavior profiles. It helps gauge traffic and popularity trends, which is useful for market research.
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic and also mobile app traffic & events, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin.
Real user monitoring (RUM) is a passive monitoring technology that records all user interaction with a website or client interacting with a server or cloud-based application. Monitoring actual user interaction with a website or an application is important to operators to determine if users are being served quickly and without errors and, if not, which part of a business process is failing. Software as a service (SaaS) and application service providers (ASP) use RUM to monitor and manage service quality delivered to their clients. Real user monitoring data is used to determine the actual service-level quality delivered to end-users and to detect errors or slowdowns on websites. The data may also be used to determine if changes that are propagated to sites have the intended effect or cause errors.
This article details features of the Opera web browser.
In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely from one system, while being displayed on a separate client device. Remote desktop applications have varying features. Some allow attaching to an existing user's session and "remote controlling", either displaying the remote control session or blanking the screen. Taking over a desktop remotely is a form of remote administration.
Remote Desktop Services (RDS), known as Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 and earlier, is one of the components of Microsoft Windows that allow a user to initiate and control an interactive session on a remote computer or virtual machine over a network connection. RDS was first released in 1998 as Terminal Server in Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition, a stand-alone edition of Windows NT 4.0 Server that allowed users to log in remotely. Starting with Windows 2000, it was integrated under the name of Terminal Services as an optional component in the server editions of the Windows NT family of operating systems, receiving updates and improvements with each version of Windows. Terminal Services were then renamed to Remote Desktop Services with Windows Server 2008 R2 in 2009.
Mobile web analytics studies the behaviour of mobile website users in a similar way to traditional web analytics. In a commercial context, mobile web analytics refers to the data collected from the users who access a website from a mobile phone. It helps to determine which aspects of the website work best for mobile traffic and which mobile marketing campaigns work best for the business, including mobile advertising, mobile search marketing, text campaigns, and desktop promotion of mobile sites and services.
Web tracking is the practice by which operators of websites and third parties collect, store and share information about visitors' activities on the World Wide Web. Analysis of a user's behaviour may be used to provide content that enables the operator to infer their preferences and may be of interest to various parties, such as advertisers. Web tracking can be part of visitor management.
ConnectWise ScreenConnect, previously ConnectWise Control, is a self-hosted remote desktop software application. It was originally developed by Elsinore Technologies in 2008 under the name ScreenConnect, and is now owned by ConnectWise Inc.
LiveChat is an online customer service software with online chat, help desk software, and web analytics capabilities.
Mouse tracking is the use of software to collect users' mouse cursor positions on the computer. This goal is to automatically gather richer information about what people are doing, typically to improve the design of an interface. Often this is done on the Web and can supplement eye tracking in some situations.
Cloud computing architecture refers to the components and subcomponents required for cloud computing. These components typically consist of a front end platform, back end platforms, a cloud based delivery, and a network. Combined, these components make up cloud computing architecture.
A software-defined perimeter (SDP), also called a "black cloud", is an approach to computer security. Software-defined perimeter (SDP) framework was developed by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) to control access to resources based on identity. Connectivity in a Software Defined Perimeter is based on a need-to-know model, in which device posture and identity are verified before access to application infrastructure is granted. Application infrastructure is effectively “black”, without visible DNS information or IP addresses. The inventors of these systems claim that a Software Defined Perimeter mitigates the most common network-based attacks, including: server scanning, denial of service, SQL injection, operating system and application vulnerability exploits, man-in-the-middle, pass-the-hash, pass-the-ticket, and other attacks by unauthorized users.
Click tracking is when user click behavior or user navigational behavior is collected in order to derive insights and fingerprint users. Click behavior is commonly tracked using server logs which encompass click paths and clicked URLs. This log is often presented in a standard format including information like the hostname, date, and username. However, as technology develops, new software allows for in depth analysis of user click behavior using hypervideo tools. Given that the internet can be considered a risky environment, research strives to understand why users click certain links and not others. Research has also been conducted to explore the user experience of privacy with making user personal identification information individually anonymized and improving how data collection consent forms are written and structured.
The term load testing or stress testing is used in different ways in the professional software testing community. Load testing generally refers to the practice of modeling the expected usage of a software program by simulating multiple users accessing the program concurrently. As such, this testing is most relevant for multi-user systems; often one built using a client/server model, such as web servers. However, other types of software systems can also be load tested. For example, a word processor or graphics editor can be forced to read an extremely large document; or a financial package can be forced to generate a report based on several years' worth of data. The most accurate load testing simulates actual use, as opposed to testing using theoretical or analytical modeling.