What is session replay?

Session replay captures and replays your users’ experiences on your website so you can see what they did, when they did it, and what happened during their interactions. With session replay, you can see if any bugs in your web app affected the user experience , where they had difficulty navigating pages or menus, and any other actions or performance issues they encountered. 

But session replay doesn’t just focus on finding problems on your website. It also lets you see what’s running smoothly and efficiently, keeping your users engaged and coming back for more. And that’s helpful to your DevOps, User Experience (UX) and marketing teams.

How does session replay work?

Session replay relies on web technologies and APIs to capture user activity on your site. It does not literally create a video recording of their experience. All session replay data is encrypted to protect user information. It does not record sensitive data and can be tuned to mask any personally Identifiable Information (PII) that should not be captured. When you configure session replay for a page, you have the option of masking any information that you consider too sensitive to capture or display. 

Session replay lets you see how users navigate through your website, giving you the tools needed to understand their experience and optimize your site for a better, frictionless experience. When integrated with other application performance monitoring (APM)  and observability data, session replay provides rich feedback regarding your web design and your users’ experiences.

New Relic’s session replay offering is safe for users and complies with current regulations. As an integral part of the fully-integrated digital experience monitoring (DEM) tools, it uses technologies based on 1) your web page design and 2) user activities on the page to provide a video-like playback of user interactions, with AI-driven insights and context to reproduce and resolve issues faster.. 

Learn more about New Relic’s session replay platform. 

How does session replay capture user experience?

Web pages are built on a Document Object Model (DOM). The DOM describes the page’s logical construction and content, including objects like tables and form fields. Session replay records the DOM, plus a page’s Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) so it has a complete image of the page. It then records any activities on the page as the user navigates through the content. User actions—such as clicks, mouse movements, and input data—are recorded as modifications to the DOM.

When the recorded activities are reconstructed over the DOM and CSS styles, alongside any APM data integrated into it, you have a clear view of the user’s interactions during their visit to the page. You can see where they got stuck, where page loads interrupted their activities, and other steps in their journey that you can use to fix problems and relay to your DevOps, UX and marketing teams, alerting them to what works and what doesn’t.

Session replay captures the DOM and CSS, after the page loads for the user. By waiting until the page loads to begin recording, session replay capture does not affect your users’ experience. 

Session replay and compliance

It is important to know that session replay complies with current data privacy regulations, such as GDPR. The tool doesn’t take a literal video or screen capture of everything your users do. It encrypts everything, does not record sensitive data, and can be configured to mask any sensitive data that should not be captured and displayed based on applicable legal requirements.

Why is session replay important?

As an integral part of DEM solutions, session replay provides key insights into your users’ experiences and how they interact with your site and web design. These insights benefit users, customer support, design teams, and product marketers by identifying issues with a website or page to make the necessary changes to drive a more positive user experience. 

Benefits of session replay for users

Session replay provides invaluable insights of your users’ interactions  throughout your website. These insights can help teams to  quickly identify issues and debug faster to provide users with an  improved experience  each visit. Pain points turn into positive experiences and users keep coming back because you make it enjoyable for them to use your platform.

Benefits of session replay for your organization

It’s virtually impossible to directly ask every user—or even a statistically important number of them—about their experiences on your website. However, understanding how users navigate your web platform is top-of-mind for business managers responsible for web content and user experiences. Session replay limits (or altogether eliminates) managers having to rely on costly focus groups and inefficient user surveys to understand their customers’ experiences. It takes the guesswork out of wondering how your users are experiencing your platform, giving you insights needed to:

• Solve problems early on after launching a new page
• Improve their experiences with a more efficient flow through the page
• Increase use and conversion rates

Challenges of session replay

Session replay can provide you with a wealth of information about how your users interact with your site. However, there are a few challenges to be mindful of when configuring session replay. 

Sensitive user data: When it comes to user data, a session replay tool needs to protect your users’ private information. If you can’t protect it, you may unwittingly expose your users—and your organization—to bad actors. New Relic’s session replay platform encrypts all data, does not capture certain types of sensitive data, and allows you to mask any data you consider to be too sensitive to record or display.

Archiving designs: Session replay collects data in real-time. As you evolve your app or website, session replay tools will likely reflect design updates, while past user experiences might be based on archived DOMs and CSS. You will need to maintain archives of these pages to accurately play back user experiences and accurately compare old and new versions of your website. 

Too many tools: Session replay is data-driven and often integrates other APM data to provide the insight needed to optimize your site. This can lead to teams stacking up multiple tools that can eventually become obsolete or costly to maintain. Implementing these tools also typically requires some kind of developer involvement, adding to their workloads. When selecting a session replay platform, it’s important to investigate any other tools needed and maintain your library of tools.

Use cases of session replay

Session replay takes the guesswork out of uncovering what your users are experiencing on your web properties. Session replay can help benefit different users and departments across your organization, including: 

Developers: When your developers can see exactly where users face difficulties, they’re able to act faster to fix those problems. Following the user’s journey identifies issues as they happen and allows you to prioritize the appropriate fixes more effectively. 

Customer support: Communication is a key part of a customer support agent’s job —whether it’s in real-time or from a complaint form. And without seeing what a user is doing or has done, troubleshooting becomes difficult. When an agent can review a user’s journey as it happened, they can pinpoint the root cause of a problem —whether it’s what the user is doing or an issue with the page itself. When agents are armed with the right information, it becomes faster and easier to create satisfying resolutions to customer problems.  

Product managers and marketers: How effective is your web property at turning visitors into customers? Session replay can help you understand what is motivating users on their journey through your site. With insight from the tool, you can optimize their journey—and conversion rates. When you have insights into your visitors’ interactions, you can see:

• Where they were turned off by something
• What slowed them down or caused delays in making a purchase
• When and where they made their purchase

You can also combine session replay with other sales analysis tools to gain greater insight into their path to conversion.

User Experience (UX) researchers and designers: Focus groups, test subjects, and surveys have their limitations when it comes to interface design. Incorporating session replay into UX practices empowers teams with data-driven insights that lead to informed decisions by understanding user behavior, identifying usability issues, enhancing onboarding processes, streamlining bug resolution, optimizing conversion rates, and supporting customer service efforts.. Plus, testing design ideas with session replay software gives you data that’s available instantly and continuously, helping create a more agile development workflow. 

How to choose the right session replay platform

Session replay can be a critical tool across your organization, offering valuable insights to various teams spanning business development, design, customer support, and data security. Here are some features to look for when investigating the right session replay platform for your company:

•  Playback features: Quick insight comes from rich data and intuitive interpretation. Session replay is as close as it gets to “looking over your user’s shoulder” as possible, giving you insight into how they experience a page in real-time.
• Privacy and security: Your users’ data must be protected, so look for features that limit who can see what during playback. Role-based access and configuration controls allow you to maintain and protect user privacy, restricting access and visibility into sensitive and/or personally identifiable information (PII). All data should be encrypted and the tool you choose should adhere to GDPR and other regulatory requirements.
• Filtering capabilities: Deeper insights can be buried in your data. Look for a tool that allows you to filter your data to help pinpoint possible causes of issues and accelerate fixes. 
• Scalability and performance: Whether you want to understand what your users are experiencing on just a few pages or want to see how users are interacting with a completely redesigned website, a session replay tool should be helpful without being intrusive. Your tool should be efficient to implement and easy to use, without slowing down your business or your customers.
• Integration with DEM tools: Point solutions can create disjointed partial views of digital experiences. A full-integrated session replay provides an end-to-end view of customer experiences and insights in the context of the entire application stack, while providing significant operational efficiencies and cost savings. 
• Cost and value for money:  When choosing a session replay tool, look for features that give you rich insights with an affordable price tag. Some offerings, such as New Relic’s session reply platform, let you test-drive a tool during a free trial period so you can see the value before you invest.

Frequently asked questions

Can Session Replay capture streamed or video content?

Session replay is a reconstruction of actions overlaying the design of your web page, so it does not replay streamed or video content. If something is not part of your page, such as a pop-up from another app, it cannot capture it. 

Can you use session replay for mobile?

Yes. Since Session Replay captures user interactions and plays them over the web page’s DOM, it can provide useful information about the user’s experiences on mobile. However, instead of capturing mouse clicks typical on desktop systems, mobile session replay captures taps, swipes, pinches, and other common interactions on smartphones and other mobile devices. 

What is the difference between session recording and replay?

The terms “session recording” and “session replay” are often used interchangeably. Session replay (or session recording) recreates a user’s actions on a website in real-time. These actions include clicks, hovering, and scrolling on a given page. Session replay encrypts user activity, and also gives organizations added control to protect user privacy in accordance with regulatory laws like GDPR.