What is Session Recording?
Session Recording is pretty much exactly what you would expect from the name – It is where a user journey, or ‘session’, is recorded as a video.
Why is Session Recording useful?
Most developers have a good idea of creating page content that works well. And more companies are utilising AB testing to create the optimal experience for their visitor. As part of their testing, having a number of video recordings to actually see user engagement, shows where there may be friction in moving from one page to another or interacting with the page.
Is there any reason why you should not use Session Recording?
Within Europe, as long as the visitor has agreed to cookies and data retention then it’s OK to use session recording. But remember even with permission, you should not record any personal data as defined within GDPR guidelines (Names, email addresses, credit card details etc).
To be on the safe side, having a session recording opt-out may allow visitors to have a normal and personalised experience without being recorded.
How to use Session Recording
As a Marketer, using session recording without an AB testing solution could be a little frustrating. You may actually see significant problems within your pages or funnels and not be able to do anything about them unless you have full access to your CMS solution or some developer resource.
Session recording is not a substitute for testing, but a complimentary technology. It allows you to see glitches and blockages which can then be rectified and tested. These test pages can be also monitored to visualise how they affect the user journey. This can all be done without the need for developer involvement until the best performing page is identified.
Should you choose Session Recording or AB Testing?
The answer is ideally you should have both for the reasons stated above. Session recording on its own highlights the problems but is not designed to rectify them. Although AB Testing on its own cannot visualise the customer journeys of your visitors it does allow you to test existing pages and compare their performance to new ones. With ABn and multivariate testing solutions you can also test multiple variants of sections of content as well as whole pages.
Webtrends Optimize has a close partnership with SessionCam which allows you to combine session recording as part of your CRO and testing strategy, allowing both technologies to compliment and inform the other.
