Using the Element Selection Tool

InsightEmbed's element selection tool lets website visitors pick any element on the current page — a pricing card, a table, an error message, a product block — and analyze its content instantly. This guide explains how the tool works and how to get the most out of it.

How Element Selection Works

When a visitor activates the element tool, they hover over the page to highlight individual elements and click one to analyze it. The widget extracts the element's visible text directly in the visitor's browser and sends it to the analysis API — no screenshots, no server-side page reloads.

Because everything happens on the page the visitor is already looking at, the tool works reliably everywhere:

• On pages behind a login — the visitor analyzes exactly what they see, including private dashboards and account areas
• On interactive or personalized pages — content that only appears after filtering, searching, or scrolling is analyzed as-is
• On any site configuration — no domain-fetching infrastructure that firewalls, bot protection, or strict referrer policies can block

Selecting and Analyzing an Element

For Website Visitors

1. Open the Widget: Click on the InsightEmbed icon on the webpage
2. Select the Element Tool: Click on the target icon in the widget
3. Pick an Element: Move the cursor over the page — elements highlight as you hover — and click the one you want to analyze. Press ESC at any time to exit
4. View Results: The element's text loads into the widget and a summary analysis runs automatically
5. Change Analysis Type: Use the dropdown in the widget to re-run the analysis as Key Points, Sentiment, Suggestions, or a Custom Prompt

Elements without any visible text (such as standalone images or icons) cannot be analyzed with this tool — visitors will see a hint to use text selection instead.

For Website Visitors: Text Selection

The text tool remains available alongside element selection: visitors can also highlight any passage of text and use the floating action menu to analyze just that selection.

Analysis Types

Element and text selections share the same pre-configured analysis types:

• Summary — a concise summary of the content (runs automatically after picking an element)
• Key Points — the main points, extracted and listed
• Sentiment — the sentiment and tone of the content
• Suggestions — constructive suggestions to improve the content
• Custom Prompt — any prompt the site owner defines

Technical Details

How Element Content Is Processed

1. The visitor clicks an element; the widget extracts its visible text (innerText) in the browser
2. The text is sent to the InsightEmbed analysis API together with your site's configured context
3. The AI analyzes the text based on the selected analysis type
4. Results are returned to the widget for display

The element's text is treated exactly like a text selection: it is not a screenshot, and no visual capture of the page is taken or transmitted.

Privacy and Security

• Only the text of the single element the visitor deliberately picks is sent for analysis
• Analysis history is stored locally in the visitor's browser, never on InsightEmbed servers
• Because the tool runs on the visitor's own session, private or logged-in content stays between the visitor and the site owner

Best Practices

• Mention the element tool to visitors on data-heavy pages (pricing tables, comparison lists, dashboards) where selecting text is fiddly
• Use your widget's context setting in the dashboard to describe what the site is about — it grounds every analysis
• Use preview mode to test both selection tools before publishing changes

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

• "This element has no analyzable text content": The picked element has no visible text (e.g., an image or icon). Pick a surrounding element that includes text, or use the text tool
• Highlighted the wrong element: Hover slightly differently — the highlight snaps to the smallest element under the cursor; parent containers can be picked by hovering their padding or headings
• Analysis Not Relevant: Improve your site's context description in the dashboard

For more help, refer to our Common Errors guide or contact our support team at support@insightembed.com.