While traditional analytics detail what users tap in an app, they don’t show what happens in between. If only developers could watch their users in action. With Y Combinator-backed Watchsend, developers can get a peek by remotely recording users’ screens, and learn how to refine their apps.
Whether the app is in beta or live, Watchsend users can specify exactly what pages they want to record, which are then encrypted and secured in its data base. All recordings come with screen annotations of taps, swipes and presses, as well as a timeline of the user’s actions. App developers can then go in and view them, using very specific search terms to navigate the vast number of videos collected.
Watchsend is meant to complement traditional app testing methods such as conversion rates and A/B testing, not replace them. ”There’s a lot of stuff that you get from traditional analytics that’s absolutely indispensable, and we don’t claim to be able to give you any of that,” Gulrajani says. “But there’s a lot of stuff that analytics misses out on, stuff that you didn’t think to track.”
Instead, it’s offering an alternative solution for apps where user progress is harder to track. For example, analyzing data from mobile gaming apps can show at what level users are dropping off, but its a lot more difficult to determine exactly what the user is doing wrong. Maybe the ladder to the next level is blocked by in-game shrubbery, or that last gem to be collected is too hard to find. Analytics also show which pages are reached by users, but not how far down they scroll before clicking “next” or “buy”.
