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Ask DN: (How) do you use FullStory?

7 years ago from , A consultant product design leader. Specialising in strategy, improving design maturity & design systems.

Hey all!

I've just installed FullStory (https://www.fullstory.com) on my personal website (http://lukejamestaylor.com) to see how I can bring this into other work.

"FullStory lets your company easily record, replay, search, and analyze each user's actual experience with your website."

It looks like it could be a very powerful tool, but I'm wondering what experience any of you have with the tool and how you make sense of all the data collected?

Thanks

10 comments

  • Sam SolomonSam Solomon, 7 years ago (edited 7 years ago )

    Responding to Support Inquiries

    This is absolutely the number one use case. We would get detail-free emails all the time that said things like "it's broken"or "why won't it work?" Before Fullstory, I'd have to inquire what the user, specifically was trying to accomplish. With Fullstory, I'd look up the user's email and see what, specifically, they were trying to do. Huge time saver.

    Iterating on the Product

    Seeing how people are using your product in the wild is incredibly valuable. With Fullstory, it's easier to see when a user was confused about a form element or trying to figure out what to do next.

    I think Fullstory is meant more for software products than websites. It can also get pretty pricey. It would be a lot to shell out for something that is not already making money.

    5 points
  • rok pregeljrok pregelj, 7 years ago (edited 7 years ago )

    Well, when I was head of UX at an ad-tech company we used Fullstory in many ways:

    • it helped us see how much the dashboard was being used and what it was used for
    • we could immediately see if something wasn't working and could raise the issue with engineering (if they somehow missed it)
    • we could plan features better because we knew exactly what people did in the dashboard
    • when we implemented a new feature we could look exactly at that class and see if anyone has used it and how

    It was one of the best tools I've used as a UX person and it helped the PM even more. Didn't drastically change how we worked, but was a great conversation starter with other parts of the company.

    4 points
    • Luke James TaylorLuke James Taylor, 7 years ago

      That's very useful, thank you. So in summary you used it mainly just as a high-level analysis tool to identify areas to investigate/improve, less a tool to do a deep analysis?

      3 points
      • rok pregeljrok pregelj, 7 years ago

        Yep, it was a sneaky way to get some qualitative input without having to decipher what users really meant when they talked about how they use the product. But it doesn't replace talking to users, of course.

        3 points
  • Sander VisserSander Visser, 7 years ago

    I haven't used Fullstory (it's quite expensive) but I have used Hotjar in two projects. I'm assuming it's comparable and that Fullstory is just better executed.

    In the two projects I used Hotjar it has been an extremely valuable tool – especially in the beginning of the projects. After weeks of design and development (without enough testing), the first beta user interactions are worth so much to see recorded.

    The downside is that it goes down to getting a big cup of coffee, watching recording after recording and writing down everything you notice. I, therefore, wouldn't use the recordings as a tool to track thousands of users. In that stage conversion funnels, heat maps and face to face user testing might be more useful.

    1 point
    • Giovanni HobbinsGiovanni Hobbins, 7 years ago

      FullStory lets you search and create segments by a variety of queries like page referrer, device/browser, css selectors, rage clicks etc. Session replay can feel like a fire hydrant of data. FS is designed to help you make sense of it with analysis tools to complement session replay.

      full disclosure, I'm at designer at FullStory

      4 points
  • Fabrizio Casella, 7 years ago

    I'm really interested too on the HOW you use this tool? How you look at every single session? It will require a lot of time I think..

    1 point
  • Alex StillwellAlex Stillwell, 7 years ago

    FullStory, HotJar or Inspectlet are all a tool in understanding users post-implementation. I use it in combination with analytic tools and A/B tests to understand the why to the what we see in analytics and tests.

    At my company, we saw that users were dropping off on the first step of a multi-step checkout flow for a ecommerce site. Initially we thought that the user was having a problem with something on that first step. However, after looking at the recordings, we were noticing that users were using the checkout flow as a product details page. The user would click between the shopping page and the checkout page to compare the products.

    So instead of working on the checkout page, we decided to build a product details page. That allowed the users to get the details they wanted and conversion rates went up as a result.

    0 points
  • Taylor Cooney, 7 years ago

    I second Sam's point of using Fullstory as a "Support First" tool. With cross-platform builds, it simplifies the process of identifying the problem.

    A week ago a client contacted our support team, because the nav bar on Android was appended to the top, opposed to the bottom nav in iOS. He was contacting us because the nav wasn't working, after some back and forth it turns out his screen was cracked! Unfortunately, Fullstory can't dig this deep :(

    0 points