Can Lucky Orange track and playback iframe content within recordings?
First, let’s start at the beginning.
An inline frame – better known as an iframe – is an HTML document placed within another HTML document. Basically, it’s content (like a video) from one source (like YouTube) that is embedded into another source (like your website).
If you’ve seen the explainer video on the Lucky Orange homepage, you’ve already seen an example of iframe content.
Other iframe content examples include third-party widgets (such as social media feeds), forms, and advertisements…to name a few.
The Iframe Tracking Challenge
Tracking an iframe just isn’t easy, regardless of the conversion or analytic tracking tool you may use. The reasons why can be very technical, but the purpose of this documentation, we’ll try to simplify it as best we can.
Essentially, let’s say you’ve hired Lucky Orange to come to your house. You asked us to record and track what guests do while in your house, what rooms they enter, how long they stay in each room, what they did in each room, and so on.
An iframe, in this case, is like the house next door. Yes, you may be able to see it from your house, and you may even see that your guests go into it. That being said, Lucky Orange would not have access or permission to also track how guests are interacting within your neighbor’s house as well.
Back to your website though.
Like the house next door, Lucky Orange’s tracking code recognizes that an iframe is there but cannot peek into how visitors are actually using it.
Wait! All Hope Is Not Lost
Now you know that iframes can be a bit of an issue when it comes to tracking and recording data. As we said earlier – it’s not just us. All conversion and analytic tools have similar blind spots due to the nature of iframes.
But what does that mean for your site? That’s really why you’re reading this help documentation, right?
When it comes to recordings, interactions within the iframe just won’t be recorded. The challenges and limitations of iframes mean recordings simply won’t be able to capture or show a visitor’s interactions within the iframe.
The good news is that there is a workaround!
The javascript code can be placed within the iframe as well. However, that recording will be separate and not integrated within the original recording. Basically, you would need to check a separate recording just of that iframe.
If you are interested in learning more about this, please contact us at support@LuckyOrange.com.