Website session recordings: everything you need to know

Are you looking to upskill yourself around the topic of session recordings? Well, you couldn’t pick a better place to do it. 

Join us for today’s article on everything session recordings - what they are, what they tell you, how they help businesses and more. 

Let’s jump right in. 

What are website session recordings?

Website session recordings are videos of a visitor’s interactions and actions taken on a website.

The recordings are usually generated by cloud-based session recording software. It’s done by tracking the actions of visitors on the website in real time, such as mouse movements, scrolling patterns and clicks.

Such replays can be used to gain insights into user behavior, as well as improve the design, functionality, and overall user experience of a website.

Businesses and website owners can use such information to benefit in a variety of different ways.

What can session recordings tell you?

You may think that watching your website user visits isn’t useful at all. After all, what value can looking at what somebody does on your website bring you?

Well, if that’s what’s going through your mind right now, it’s about to change.

The reality is that these inconspicuous videos hold a HUGE repository of valuable insights.

But let’s get to the specifics. Session recordings can tell you:

🧐 how users use your application

Tools for recording website sessions can deliver insights into how users interact with and navigate your application. This can be accomplished by tracking and recording users’ actions and movements on your website.

🧐 where and why users drop off

No one likes it when people leave your website. To fix this problem, you should use session recordings. It’s because they can reveal the drop-off points and reasons for leaving your website too early.

🧐 what your best-performing web content and app elements are

Moving on, session replay tools can provide rich data on users’ interaction with your website, allowing you to identify the design elements or graphic elements that are most important to them. 

As a result, you can easily optimize the layout and design of your website, improve the user experience, and engage with conversion rate optimization activities.

🧐 which features are most used in your product

Using a tool that can record and analyze all the steps that visitors take on your website, it’s also possible to identify the most popular features in your products. Product teams can benefit from this data to make products even better for customers.

🧐 what Javascript and network errors users have

Going even further, session recordings can shed light on the technical challenges faced by your user. Solid website session tools will detect and analyze JavaScript and network errors that occur during sessions. This information can help you identify any performance issues that may impact the user experience.

🧐 what the frustration signals on your page are

Finally, website session recording tools are able to uncover pain points on your page. This happens by analyzing mouse movements, clicks, scrolling patterns, page exits, and other actions that may indicate: confusion, difficulty, or dissatisfaction. 

Once you identify and understand these signals, it’s easy to improve the user experience on your website.

On top of all this, website session recording tools like LiveSession also give you crucial details on more technical data, such as:

• session date and time,
• user email,
• first and last visit date and time,
• number of sessions,
• total and average time of session,
• resolution of the session,
• browser used,
• operating system and device type used,
• currency, language and total spent (if applicable),
• user location and name (if applicable).

Looks interesting, doesn’t it?

4 ways session recordings help your business

Now you know all about the great things that session recordings can tell you about your website visitors. 

But what to do with this valuable data?

Interpreting the recorded sessions of your visitors can benefit your business in a number of different and attractive ways:

💪 perfecting your customer experience

Recorded sessions will help you improve navigation and usability on your website. Through analyzing customer behavior, you’ll make the experience of your customers far better. 

In turn, they’ll have a much better opinion about your brand, connected with positive rather than negative thoughts. 

You can even do customer journey mappings with tools for creating recordings of visitors. 

That’s an easy win, wouldn’t you say?

💪 strengthening your customer support

Sometimes it’s challenging to understand your customer issues (or website users issues). You receive reports of issues that you cannot really see, while users have trouble describing them.

You can greatly benefit from session recordings at this exact point. 

With the ability to see exactly what users did (or didn’t do) on the website, helping them becomes a piece of cake.

💪 making data-driven decisions

Going forward, recorded sessions provide actionable insights that can be used to make confident business decisions. 

These decisions can concern aspects like your website and marketing strategies for example.

Things like tracking metrics, identifying trends, and even measuring the effectiveness of changes is made easy with session recordings.

💪 boosting user retention

Finally, boosting user retention is another benefit, along with the others we have already mentioned. Using data from website visit videos, it is possible to identify areas for improvement within the user experience.

People often abandon websites because of confusing navigation or poor website speed, among other issues.

By addressing these problems you can reduce the bounce rate in no time. Outcome? Users will be more likely to visit your website again in the future.

Read more about the benefits that recorded sessions can bring your SaaS business here.

Who should use visitor recordings?

At this point in the article you might be thinking: “ok, but are visitor recordings for me?”.

Well, yes.

And they’re not just for you, but for various people in your company:

👉 digital marketers

Digital marketers can learn a lot from session recordings. 

For example, they can see how users engage with their website, including which pages they visit, how long they spend on the site, and what actions they take. 

This information can be used to craft personalized and well-timed marketing campaigns targeting the right people and promoting the right products.

Read more here

👉 UX designers

Session recordings are also a great tool for UX designers. 

Thanks to these videos, they get a chance to see exactly how exactly people interact with the website.

These insights help with identifying any pain points in the user experience, such as slow page load times or confusing navigation.

Read more here

👉 product developers

Website visit replays also provide product developers with insights into how visitors interact with the website and how they use specific features. 

Using this information can help product developers to inform product decisions, such as which features should be added or removed. 

This can be especially helpful with collaboration during project development between product teams.

Read more here

👉 customer support teams

Last but not least, do you realize how big of a help watching session replays is when it comes to resolving customer support tickets? 

Having the option to see customer actions on the website is a massive game changer in terms of helping users quickly and successfully. 

Imagine being able to see customer events in a way that you can easily improve the online customer experience. Sounds good? Happy customers = happy business. Easy!

<div class=“info-box”> Practical example: a customer support team member could use session recordings to see if users are having trouble completing a specific task, and then provide guidance or make changes to make it easier. </div>

Read more here

Best session recordings tool for your needs

When it comes to session recordings, everything starts with a reliable and solid tool.

Without it, it’ll be practically impossible to reap the benefits that these videos can bring to your business.

So which tool should you pick for this purpose? Our recommendation is LiveSession.

LiveSession is a powerful platform for all things website user behavior, UX improvements, bug detection and conversion funnels optimization.

We provide our users with the best quality features to make sure they can analyze every single move of their website visitors. How do we do this? See yourself.

LiveSession solutions - see what we’re best at:

💯 conversion optimization

Grow your conversion funnels by relying on qualitative data provided by LiveSession. See why something works (or why it doesn’t) using session recordings. Develop more relevant hypotheses based on insights you gain with our tool.

💯 user engagement tracking

With LiveSession’s engagement score, you can find the most active users and the most interesting sessions. Use custom properties to see how the engagement varies depending on different factors.

Read how RocketLink got 40% more paid subscribers with LiveSession here.

💯 usability testing

Start usability testing with LiveSession session recording features. Find out exactly how your website’s users interact with it. Test your ideas anywhere and access the results whenever you want. Get even more insights with qualitative data.

💯 application debugging

Debugging is easier and faster with our user session recording. Once you access session recordings, you can see exactly what caused the error. Use error clicks to find JavaScript errors and rage clicks to detect frustration points. Cooperate with your tech support team and add support tier data to recordings.

💯 customer support

Using LiveSession will simplify the work of your technical support team. Different levels of support can be assigned to your recordings, ranging from frequently asked questions to more complex problems.

Handle customer issues faster with LiveSession and Intercom.

So give us a try today if you want to enter a whole new level of your website user behaviour analysis. Choose from various pricing plans: a Free plan, Basic plan, Pro plan and Enterprise plan to choose from.

We even have a 14-day free trial and a forever free plan waiting for you! And if you’re looking for a custom plan - that won’t be a problem either.

Final remarks

And that’s wrap!

To sum everything up, let’s quickly go over the things we have covered today. You now know:

• what session videos are,
• what session recordings tell you about your website visitors,
• how session videos can benefit your business,
• who should use session recording tools and what for,
• what the best tool for recording your website visits is,

We hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as we enjoyed crafting it together for you! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. And if you want to get started with session recordings immediately - subscribe to our tool. It will be an absolute pleasure for us to have you as our user.

Learn more about LiveSession, our cloud-based session recording software, from our blog, guides and tutorials.

Until next time and good luck!

Session recordings FAQ

Find out the answers to the most commonly asked questions about session recordings and session replay tools here.

What are session recordings?

Website session recordings are videos of a visitor’s interactions and actions taken on a website. The recordings are generated by tracking the actions of visitors on the website in real time, like mouse movements, scrolling patterns and clicks.

What can session replay tools tell me?

Session recordings of your website visits can give you insights into various aspects of your users. Examples include: how users use your website, why and where they leave, as well as what elements of your website are most important. What’s more, such videos can also tell you the location of your users, their email browser used, session length, number of visits and more.

How can session recordings help my business?

Thanks to reliable session replay software, your business can benefit in several ways. Examples of perks you can expect include: improved customer experience, strengthened customer support, better business decisions and boosted user retention.

Who should use session recordings?

Many professionals should engage with recorded sessions of website users, including digital marketers, UX designers, product managers and customer support representatives.

What are the best session replay tools out there?

The most reliable and affordable recording sessions tool is LiveSession. The software provides a variety of features, including session replay, heatmaps, form analytics, and funnels. All these can help you improve the user experience and optimize your website for increased engagement and conversions rates.

Which session replay tools should I choose?

While there are many session recording tools on the software market, our honest recommendation is LiveSession - the best session replay software. It’s the ultimate solution for analyzing user behavior, improving UX, finding bugs and increasing conversion rates. The tool is budget-friendly, rich in features and easy to implement.

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