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Session replays

Watch what visitors actually did, with form inputs masked, and jump straight to the sessions that paid or went wrong.

A replay is a reconstruction of a session: the pages, the mouse, the scrolling, the clicks. It answers the question no chart can, which is why. Replays are off until you turn them on, and record only visitors in Full mode.

Turning them on

In Site settings › Tracking, switch on Session replay and set the random sample, which defaults to 5% of sessions. Statsy also records any session whose purchase intent rises high enough, whether or not it was sampled, so the sessions most likely to matter are captured even at a low sample rate.

Watch out. Every form input is masked in the browser before anything leaves it, so passwords and card fields are never recorded. Other text on the page is recorded. Do not enable replays on pages that display somebody else's personal data, such as an account or admin screen.

Finding the session worth watching

Nobody has time to watch a random sample. The list is organised around that:

FilterShows
PaidSessions from visitors who paid. The default, and the one to study.
RefundedVisitors who paid and later got a refund.
High intent, no purchaseIntent of 50% or more with no payment. Where the money leaks out.
Rage clicksThree or more rapid clicks on the same spot. Something looked clickable and was not.
AllEvery recorded session.

Sort by newest, by value or by intent. j and k move through the list without touching the mouse.

The player

Play at 1×, 2× or 4×, and leave Skip idle on so you are not watching somebody read. Restart and full screen are there too.

The timeline under the video is the useful part. It marks page views, goals, checkout starts, payments, refunds and rage clicks; click a marker to jump to just before it happened, or use the arrow keys to move five seconds at a time. A payment that arrives by webhook shortly after the session ends is still marked, so you can watch the session that produced it.

Retention

Replays are kept for 90 days and then deleted. They are the heaviest thing Statsy stores, and the least useful when stale.

The other half of the picture

A replay shows one person. Heatmaps show everybody at once, and journeys show one person across months rather than one sitting. The three answer different questions; the usual order is heatmap to find the page, replay to find the problem.

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