Today we're announcing a very important feature that makes Mouseflow an invaluable tool for e-businesses that not only want to track their anonymous visitors, but also monitor the behavior of ther signed-in users and their online shoppers that use the shopping cart and checkout pages.
These types of pages that depend on the user's previous actions (putting items in the cart, signing up for a membership) and pages with password protection aren't reproduced correctly in the playback window since we overlay the mouse and keyboard actions on top of a cached version of the page. And this cached version is unaware of session state.
The good news is that Mouseflow now fully supports precise playback and analysis of the mentioned page types. This means that you get an accurate playback of all pages, and you can follow your users through checkout processes, through logins and postbacks without losing track of the visitor.
A little tech stuff
You need to be able to upload an executable script file to your web server. We're currently supporting ASP.NET, Classic ASP and PHP, but we'll be adding new scripts along the way. The script file is needed so that the recording javascript can proxy HTML information through to the Mouseflow recording server. Read the full instructions below.
Try it out today!
The feature can be used immediately. Please note that the support of session-dependent pages is available for all paid subscriptions.
If you are using the free plan, you can get started for only 10 € today, and at the same time encourage us to develop even more features!
Instructions
- Click "Edit" on your Websites list and go to the "Installation" section.
- Click "Session support"
- Select your server-side script language, and click "Next"
If you're not sure which language your server can use, a suggestion could be to start from the top. You can test the script at a later stage before activating the function. If your web server uses a technology that is not in the list, please let us know through the contact form.
- Now, a link to the proxy script appears. Click it, and save the script on your local machine, e.g. your desktop.
- Next step is to upload the file to your web server. This is usually done with an FTP client, such as FileZilla or through a control panel such as Plesk. If in doubt, please ask your web host or browse the host's documentation. You are free to decide what folder to upload to. The path is needed in the next step.
- You need to tell Mouseflow where you've put the script. If you own the domain and you have uploaded the script to the www root, just try and hit "Test". But if you've put the script in a subfolder, please fill in the missing part of the URL, and remember to end with a slash (/). Hit "Test" when the URL is complete.
- The result of the test appears under the test button. A green "OK" means that everything is OK. Read more about the error messages and the corresponding resolution below.
- When you've got the OK, hit "Finish". A new recording script appears that you have to paste into your pages. Remember that the old recording script must be replaced with the new one. When this is done, you'll be recording session-dependent pages. Have fun!
Error messages, what they mean, and how to fix them
"Not found" - means that the script was not found on the given URL. Please double check that your URL is correct and that you have uploaded the script to the given folder.
"Script returned an error" - means that the script was found, but that it could be executed. There are two possibilities: (1) the script type could not execute on the web server. In this case go back and try some of the other script languages, or consult your web host to hear which script languages can be used. (2) there is a firewall that is blocking outgoing http requests. If this is the case, create firewall rule that permits outgoing http requests on port 80.
"Script returned error XX" - means that the script was found, but that there was a problem while accessing the script. Make sure that you have access rights to execute the script. XX represents the HTTP status code, so you could also check out what exactly the code means here.
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