Occasionally Asked Questions

This provides provides answers to questions that people occasionally ask. Let's be honest--they don't ask all that frequently.

What is RobotReplay?

It's an online service that records and plays back visitor sessions for nearly any website, corporate site or blog. The recorded sessions show how visitors interact with a website--every mouse movement and click, keystroke, where users click, how far down the page they scroll and how long they stay on a site.

What the heck is 'cinelytics'?

There are two or three other services like RobotReplay out there, and we couldn't find a common name to describe them. So, we made one up. RobotReplay complements existing web analytics tools like Google Analytics, StatCounter or ClickTracks, and generates little 'movies'. We merged 'cinema' and 'analytics' and got 'cinelytics'.

How much does it cost?

RobotReplay is currently free, as in beer. We plan to create a premium package for those users who want more advanced features, but we'll always have a free version available.

Will my users be aware of RobotReplay?

Nope, not unless you tell them.

Should I tell my users about RobotReplay?

We think so. It's a good idea to update your privacy policy to include a description of what RobotReplay does. We suggest something like this: We use Robot Replay (www.robotreplay.com ), a third-party tool that captures detailed information about how users interact with our site and what pages they visit. Robot Replay collects mouse gestures and keypress data. If you provide personal information to us on our website, this personal information will attach to the information Robot Replay captures. The data we collect from this tool is used internally to better understand and support our users.

Is my user data safe with RobotReplay?

Your user data will not be sold, or mined, or shared with any other party. The data is not backed up and older data is subject to removal for housekeeping purposes as your session count grows. For the purposes of building an accurate playback, ALL keystrokes, form fields and mouse movements are recorded. RobotReplay is not appropriate where user security is of the utmost importance. If you run a bank, it wouldn't necessarily be wise to have RobotReplay monitor your login page.

Will RobotReplay slow down my site?

Nope. Your site visitors download a tiny javascript file--less than 15KB, so there should be no impact on them. Depending on how busy RobotReplay's servers are, you may notice a bit of sluggishness when you're playing back recorded sessions, but that's only during playback--it has no impact on the live site.

My site gets tons of users. Is that a problem?

Nope. We can handle all of them.

Is RobotReplay a web stats package?

Not really. We built RobotReplay to complement services like Google Analytics, StatCounter or ClickTracks, not replace them. We definitely recommend that you use one of those services in conjunction with RobotReplay. Here's one way to think about it: your analytics package provides the empirical data, while RobotReplay delivers the anecdotal information. RobotReplay tells stories about your site visitors.

What browsers and operating systems does RobotReplay work on?

RobotReplay supports all modern browsers and operating systems. For browsers, that means Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and later, Internet Explorer 6.0 and later, Safari 1.2 and later, Opera 8.0 and later and Netscape 8.0 and later.

What about heat maps? SSL support? Recorded sessions behind site logins? Ajax-rich sites?

These features are all on our road map, along with a bunch of others we're keeping under wraps for the moment. We'd love to hear which features you'd like to see--let us know. And yes, we do see the irony in the fact that we make Ajax components but RobotReplay doesn't currently work in Ajax-powered environments like online spreadsheets. We can we tell you? We're working on it.

Who makes and maintains RobotReplay?

We're Nitobi, a software company in Vancouver, Canada. We make Ajax user-interface components for enterprise web applications. Our customers include Bank of America, Time Warner, KBR and NASA.

Is RobotReplay powered by actual robots?

We wish. Then we could just hang out by the pool drinking pina coladas while those little guys did all the hard work. In fact, RobotReplay is powered by human Canadians. Canadian humans. Whatever.