How to identify bugs on your website in 3 steps 

Most of the time, we update and redesign our website with the purpose of making it better. And if it goes wrong, then we need to invest money again. However, you can’t know priorly the impact of the changes. But its important to identify website issues and for that you need to find the right solution.

Now, you must be thinking how to find bugs. Here, in this blog, we will give you a 3-step process that you can utilize to find website bugs and issues after launching the website. You can execute this 3-step process by using the WebMaxy Analyzer. The 3-step process is as follows:

— Step 1: Watch session recordings to discover issues that need to be fixed priorly.

— Step 2: Set heatmaps on web pages to identify the problems that might be occurring.

— Step 3: Take direct feedback about your website experience from your users.

A 3-Step Checklist to finding bugs and issues in website post-launch

Step 1. Watch recordings to identify the areas with issues and fix them on priority

The best way to discover the issues on the website is to see how people interact with your website. This is helpful if you have less traffic on your website and have no one to carry out the usability testing. Once you have redesigned or launch a new page on the website, you can record the sessions and watch them at your convenience.

Session recordings are also known as session replays. It helps you see the activities and actions done by the visitor on your website. You can see their recorded activities like clicks, mouse movement, taps, and scrolled areas on the mobile or desktop.

Recordings let you see your website through the visitors’ eyes. You can identify any technical glitches or issues that they might be encountering. Most of the time, people don’t report the website issues to the creators. When they get irritated or frustrated after trying, they just leave.

WebMaxy Analyzer can help you record the users’ sessions with ease. You can set up session recordings for your website when you have made changes or redesigned it.

How to do it? 

Sign- In to your WebMaxy Analyzer account. You can create an account and start with the free version as well. Click on the ‘Analyze’ option, and underneath it, you will find the recordings sessions.

Once you have installed the code on your website, Analyzer will start recording the sessions of your visitors.

Filter out the recordings and watch user journeys

If you have made alterations or launched your website recently- then you must watch your users’ recordings. It will help you discover bug site or issues that the web pages might be having. You can sort the recordings on the following basis:

— Watch the sessions in which users have exited quickly. You can see what made them leave early. At what point they dropped from their buying journey?

— View the long recordings so that you get an idea of the whole journey of the users. You can see where they are getting stuck and how they’re navigating through the different pages.

Viewing the recordings 

Your website may be getting ten visitors or hundreds of visitors, depending upon the popularity of your website. It takes about watching 5-10 sessions in a row for one to get into the good watching flow. If you are just starting, then you can do the following:

— Make everyone in your team watch 25-30 recordings and tell them to discuss in the end.

— Watch 20-30 recordings on your own.

— Skip the pauses and watch at an increased speed to save time.

5 website bugs that you can identify with session recordings 

By watching the session replays, you can check for the following types of bugs:

Share recordings with your team members 

Once you finding bugs in the recordings, you can share those session recordings with your team members. This way the team members whosoever is the incharge will fix those bug site as soon as possible.

Step 2: Use heatmaps on different webpages 

Session recordings helps you see the individual journeys of visitors across different webpages. However, heatmaps lets you see how all your visitors experience each page. Heatmaps enable you to see the data of different visitors and create informative visualizations of where people are clicking, what they’re scrolling and ignoring.

Example of Scroll heatmap and a Click map 

Heatmaps use different colors to show the parts of the website that have got more clicks and less clicks. The least clicked areas are indicated with blue and the most clicked areas is represented by the bright red color.

Heatmaps are extremely useful when you have made significant design changes to your website. You can see if the users are able to identify the elements in the new layout and design pattern.

By comparing the heatmaps of the page before and after changes, you can see the difference in the user behavior. For instance, how people engage with different elements and how they interact with the CTAs.

You can follow these 2 steps to set-up heatmaps:

1. Prior to making changes, you can set-up heatmaps on your most important  or relevant webpages.
2. After making the changes, set-up heatmaps again on the same pages. This way you can spot the difference between the user behavior prior and post changes of the webpage.

Note: The heatmaps start recording the data as soon as they are setup. However, data based on just few visitors isn’t enough. You must atleast collect data of 100 to 200 visitors to understand user behavior and make significant changes.

There are many benefits of click heatmaps. It can help you know what website elements visitors’ are interacting with the most. It can help you identify areas that are getting users’ attention where you can add links to take visitors to different pages.

You can find out important areas which are being ignored or missed out by the users. You can then change the placing of those page elements accordingly.

Scroll Maps to know till where users are scrolling 

WebMaxy Scroll maps can help you know till where users have scrolled.

Scroll maps shows how far your website visitors have scrolled and if they’re seeing the important information. If you track down that people are not seeing the relevant information then, you can make design adjustments to make it visible.

In scroll maps if you see the change in color is too direct rather than gradual, then that means many people are exiting your website from that point. This infers there’s a problem with your webpage interface or design. That’s why most people are exiting without going to the end of the page.

Share heatmaps with your team

Since heatmaps are visual representations, it makes it easy for teams to understand what impact the changes are having on user behavior. You can share heatmaps with your team and see how you can make further  improvements.

Step 3: Take on-site Surveys to gather customer feedback 

Apart from fixing the bugs and broken links, you must try to know your customers’ viewpoints and feedback. For instance, with session recording you can know till which web page the visitor went and with heatmap you can discover where users have clicked. But you can’t know why they suddenly exited your website without converting.

To know ‘why’ it happened, you need to ask directly to your customers. You can do it by conducting on site-surveys. With WebMaxy Analyzer you can execute surveys within few minutes with well researched survey templates.

WebMaxy Analyzer starts taking surveys once you launch it. However, the data that you gather will depend on the number of people taking survey. Surveys help you know the users’ needs, wants and issues. Once you get feedback from your website visitors, you can make modifications accordingly.

Nonetheless, the effectiveness of surveys depend on the questions you ask in them. By asking the right questions, you can uncover many real insights from your website visitors.

Ask people why they are leaving your site? 

If you see too many customers dropping off from a particular page. Then, you can set-up a survey on that page and ask people questions like:

You can set-up surveys on the high-exit rate page. Decide when you want the survey to pop-up- when a person is about to exit the page or after a specified time.

Ask for suggestions from visitors

For instance, if you see most of the people exit without registering. Then, you can ask your website visitors for suggestions. In such cases you should ask open ended questions to your visitors. Ask questions which let people express their views, concerns, and issues. You can ask questions like:

— What do you expect to happen when you click on (this element)?

— How do you think we can enhance your experience?

— What would make you take this (registration, subscription) action?

It’s not necessary that you ask open ended questions only. You can have a mix of questions and include yes/ no questions. This type of questions are easy to answer and mostly visitors answer them. You can ask questions like:

— Would you like to see [X] menu on the page?  Yes/No

— Are you satisfied with your experience? Yes/No

The final note 

How to find bug in website? In the above blog, we have given different methods using which you can find website bugs and website issues. You can execute these processes with the help of WebMaxy Analyzer.

WebMaxy Analyzer is a user behavior analytics software that can help you understand your users better. It comes with a wide range of features such as live session recordings, heatmaps, surveys & polls, funnel view, form analytics and much more.

Schedule a call with our experts to learn more about WebMaxy Analyzer, or email us at [email protected].