How can you tell when users are frustrated? Typically, there are a bunch of user reactions that reveal frustration. In detail, user frustration signals fall into the categories below.

Rage Clicks

Rage clicks are when users click or tap several times an element of a website or app. Most of the time, this indicates frustration. Users click on a button, nothing happens, and they click it again and again.

Our latest release supports capturing rage clicks. You can configure the click interval and the number of clicks ranging from 3 to 5. It is also worth mentioning that rage clicks are only tracked on clickable elements, as defined by the selectors in this blog post. Therefore, if a user clicks multiple times on a paragraph, the series of clicks will not be tracked as a rage click but rather should be tracked as a dead click.

Rage Clicks Settings

Rage Clicks Settings

Dead Clicks

Dead clicks are when users click or tap on non-clickable elements. For example, users tend to click on an image with no link associated.

One approach for signaling dead links is to define a list of clickable element selectors. If the element clicked does not match any of the selectors in the list, then the click should be tracked as a dead click. Cubicast has already defined a similar list of selectors, but this list might need to be revised, mainly because clicking on form elements is not a dead click.

Error Clicks

Error clicks have to do with clicks that lead to errors or broken links. Tracking clicks that produce errors is indirectly supported by capturing caught and uncaught JavaScript errors.

Tracking broken links is more complicated. If the link is located on the same website (same-origin resource), the client can check if the link is broken or not. Unlike if the link resides on an external website (cross-origin resource), your best bet is to use an API endpoint to validate the link.

Rapid Mouse Movement

This is when users move the mouse rapidly back and forth or circularly, in a small area, without any functional intent. It might also indicate impatience in the case of slow-updating UIs.

The mouse movement in Cubicast is throttled to avoid chunky recordings and reduce the API calls for each session. Tracking rapid mouse movement requires keeping track of mouse speed movement in conjunction with the area in which this movement took place within a certain amount of time.

Do you think Cubicast should track dead clicks, broken links, or rapid mouse movement? If yes, we would love to hear from you.