Answer · Conversion Engineering
What’s Session Replay?
The short answer
Session replay records anonymized visitor sessions on your site so you can play them back like a video. You see what the visitor saw, where they clicked, where they scrolled, where they hesitated. Available free in Microsoft Clarity; also in Hotjar ($39+/mo) and FullStory ($299+/mo).
№ 01The longer answer
Session replay is a recording of one visitor’s entire interaction with your site — mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, form interactions, page navigations. PII (form input values, sensitive data) is masked by default in all major tools.
The right use case: watch 5-10 sessions of users who took a specific action (or didn’t). “Show me 10 sessions of users who started the form but abandoned.” “Show me 10 sessions of users who scrolled past pricing.” Watch with a hypothesis. The unstructured “just watch some sessions” approach burns hours and produces nothing.
What you learn from replays that data alone misses: emotional friction (rage clicks, repeated hesitation), confused navigation (users clicking on non-interactive elements), unexpected workflows (users finding paths through your site you didn’t anticipate), and copy-comprehension issues (users skim-skipping sections you thought were critical).
What you DON’T learn from replays: statistical truth. A single replay is one data point; never make changes based on watching three sessions. Use replays to generate hypotheses, then validate the hypothesis with quantitative data before shipping.
№ 02How do I find the right sessions to watch?
Filter by behavior. In Clarity: “sessions with rage clicks,” “sessions with dead clicks,” “sessions where form was started but not submitted.” In Hotjar: filter by event tags. Don’t watch random sessions; filter for the behavior you want to understand.
№ 03How long should I spend watching replays?
30-60 minutes per session, watching at 2x or 4x speed. Make notes on each. Stop after 10 sessions or when you’ve seen the same pattern 3-4 times — whichever comes first. More watching past pattern-saturation produces diminishing returns.
№ 04Is session replay legal?
Yes, with proper disclosure. Update your privacy policy to mention session recording. Offer opt-out per GDPR/CCPA. For HIPAA or financial-services, you may need additional masking and possibly a BAA — check with legal.
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