Session replay for BigCommerce, through checkout.
Candler records visits to your BigCommerce store, checkout included, and ties each one to the paid order. Orders come from BigCommerce itself through a read-only orders key, so a shopper's ad blocker can't hide a sale.
In short.
- What gets recorded
- Every page, including checkout and the order confirmation page, with every form field masked.
- How orders count
- BigCommerce tells Candler about each order. Candler fetches it once it's paid and ties it to the visit.
- What it needs
- A Stencil theme and an API account with read-only access to orders.
- What it costs
- Free for 1,000 recorded sessions a month. Paid plans from $24 a month.
Checkout is recorded, with every field masked.
BigCommerce lets a store's scripts run on checkout, so Candler records it like any other page. You can watch the shoppers who reached shipping or payment and left, and see what they did first.
Every form field is masked in the browser before anything is sent. Card fields sit in the payment provider's own secure frames, and Candler doesn't record inside them at all.
Every recording knows what happened to the cart.
- Session replay with clicks, cart changes and rage clicks marked on the timeline.
- Checkout funnels from product page to paid order. Each step links to recordings of the people who stopped there.
- Click and scroll heatmaps for any page, split by phone and desktop.
- Rage clicks and dead clicks flagged by page, with the element people hit.
- Revenue, orders and add to cart rates by product and traffic source.
- Live view of who's on the store and what's in their cart.
Product views and cart changes come from BigCommerce's own data layer, which the tracker reads by itself. Nothing is scraped from the page.
Orders come from BigCommerce, not the browser.
You give Candler an API account that can read orders and nothing else. Candler checks it, then creates two webhooks on your store. When an order is placed or changes status, Candler fetches it, waits until it's paid and ties it to the visit by its order number. An order reported twice is counted once. Disconnecting removes the webhooks.
If you'd rather not make an API account, Candler can count the purchases the browser reports on the confirmation page instead. Those count before payment is checked, can be faked, and miss shoppers who block Candler or never reach that page. The orders key is the better choice.
Set it up late? Orders from the last 30 days can still be counted. Export them from BigCommerce and upload the file in Candler. Each paid order that Candler saw the visit for is counted.
Setup takes three steps.
Candler's Settings, Installation page shows each one with your own codes filled in.
- Script. In Storefront, Script Manager, create a script: location Head, All pages, category Analytics. Paste the snippet from Candler. All pages includes checkout.
- Data layer. In Settings, Data solutions, show advanced settings and turn on the data layer.
- Orders. In Settings, Store-level API accounts, create one with Orders set to read-only and everything else set to None. Paste its API path and access token into Candler.
Privacy settings are on before you change anything.
- Form fields are masked in the browser.
- Visitors whose browser sends Global Privacy Control aren't tracked.
- Your privacy policy gets an opt-out link that works from any page.
- The orders key can't change anything on your store. Candler encrypts it before saving it.
Questions BigCommerce owners ask.
- Does it work with every theme?
- Recording works on any storefront. Product and cart events need BigCommerce's data layer, which Stencil themes have. A headless storefront can send the same events with
candler.track(). - Is there a Marketplace app?
- Not listed yet. Setup is the three steps above.
- Will it slow the store down?
- The tracker is about 12 KB compressed and loads without blocking the page. The recorder waits until the page has loaded.
- Can I run it next to Clarity, Hotjar or Lucky Orange?
- Yes. They don't interfere with each other.