Userback offers two types of replay to help you understand user behavior and resolve issues faster. This article explains the difference between them and how to set each one up.
What's the Difference?
Session Replay and User Sessions both give you a video-like recreation of how users interact with your app or website, showing every click, hover, and scroll. The key difference is what they capture and when.
Session Replay captures approximately the last 3 minutes of a user's activity before they open the feedback widget. It's automatically attached to the feedback submission, giving you instant context around every bug report or piece of feedback.
User Sessions start when a user logs in or visits your site and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity or up to 6 hours of active use. These are stored independently in the Replays tab and are ideal for understanding full user journeys, identifying UX patterns, and spotting issues that users never reported.
| Session Replay | User Session |
What it captures | ~3 min before widget open | Full session |
Where it lives | Attached to feedback/surveys | Sessions tab |
Triggered by | User submitting feedback | Page visit |
Available on | Business Plan and above | Business Plus Plan |
What Can You See?
Both Session Replay and User Sessions go beyond a standard video recording. Userback captures not just the actions but the intent behind them, revealing the story of how users truly interact with your app or website.
🎥 In-Depth Replay: Go beyond standard video replays. Userback captures not just the actions but the intent behind them. See each click, hover, and scroll, revealing the story of how users truly interact with your website or application.
🔍 Console Logs: Transform your technical troubleshooting with Console Log Capture. Catching errors and warnings as they happen.
🌐Network Requests: Gain visibility into your app’s performance by capturing outbound HTTP requests made during a user’s session with Network Requests. Perfect for spotting issues in real time.
📈 Event Tracking: Elevate your understanding with our sophisticated Event Tracking. We move past numbers to narratives, capturing each user action as a chapter in a broader story, highlighting their journey and preferences.
💥 Rage Clicks: Turn user frustration into actionable insights. Rage Click Detection does more than track annoyed clicks; it highlights critical usability issues, guiding you to make targeted improvements where they matter most.
Activating Session Replay
Session Replay is enabled per Widget or Survey and requires the Userback Code Script to be installed on your app or website. If you haven't done that yet, start here: Install the Userback Widget.
Navigate to your feedback project and open the Widget Tab
Go to the More Tab and under Session Replay select Yes or No
Configure any privacy rules as needed from the Project Settings. See More.
Watching Session Replay
Each piece of feedback that includes a Session Replay is marked with a ▶ icon.
From a bug report or feedback item:
Open the feedback item from your project
In the right panel under the Overview tab, click Session Replay
From a survey response:
Open the survey and select the Responses menu
Click a response and click the Session Replay button
💡 Tip: When users are identified, clicking the user from the responses menu lets you view all sessions for that user.
Activating User Sessions
Navigate to the Replays tab from the left-hand menu
Click the Settings button
Toggle the domains you would like to record
Configure privacy rules and dev tools settings as needed
Replay Privacy Rules
Both replay types support privacy rules so sensitive information is never captured. You can specify exactly which elements to block, ignore, or mask. Privacy rules for each are located in the following locations
.userback-block
Blocks elements, the element itself, and its child elements will be completely ignored by recording.
.userback-ignore
For ignored elements, the element's styling will be preserved but all the user input will be ignored.
input[type="email"] and input[type="password"]
For masked elements containing text, all text will be replaced by irreversibly-transformed placeholder text meant to resemble a wireframe of the original content.
Using the Session Player
Userback's Session Player transforms how you interact with and understand user behavior. It’s designed not just for replaying sessions but for providing an insightful and interactive exploration of user interactions. Here’s how it elevates your analysis:
Advanced Playback Features:
Effortless Navigation: Play, pause, and skip through sessions with ease, ensuring you never miss a crucial user interaction.
Rapid Speed Adjustment: Swiftly locate key moments by speeding up the playback by up to 8x, making your analysis both thorough and time-efficient.
Event and Console Log Overlays: These overlays add a layer of depth to your session replays, offering detailed insights into user actions and the technical events behind them.
Customize Your Analytical Approach:
Timeline Customization: Selectively display the most relevant events on your timeline, focusing your analysis on significant user actions.
Skip Inactivity: This feature allows you to bypass periods of no user activity, concentrating your attention on the most dynamic and interactive segments of the session.
Event-Specific Navigation: Directly jump to specific events within the session, streamlining your analysis and saving valuable time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What's the difference between Session Replay and User Sessions?
A: Session Replay captures approximately the last 3 minutes of activity before a user opens the feedback widget and is attached directly to their submission. User Sessions record the user's entire visit independently of any feedback submitted and are stored in the Sessions tab. Session Replay is available on the Business plan, User Sessions on Business Plus.
Q: Which HTML elements does Userback Session Replay support?
A: Userback supports most HTML elements, including forms, buttons, links, and images. However, it does not support the following HTML elements: iFrame, video, audio, or canvas. We do expect to add Canvas support soon!
Q: Can I download Session Replays as a video?
A: Session Replay and User Sessions are a recreation of the browser experience played back in a video-like format rather than a traditional video file and cannot be downloaded as a video.
Q: Is Userback Session Replay GDPR-compliant?
A: Yes. You can configure privacy rules to automatically mask sensitive data such as passwords and email addresses. Click here to go to Privacy Settings.
Q: How does Userback User Session handle user privacy?
A: Userback User Session is designed to protect user privacy. It allows you to configure which pages or URLs to record, and you can also exclude certain IP addresses or user agents from being recorded. Click here to go to Privacy Settings.
Q: What are some common Session replay use cases?
Troubleshooting bug reports
Reviewing users such as Detractor in an NPS to gain additional context to their answers
Looking at rage clicks and cross-correlation with any bug reports or survey responses
Looking at user flows within your application
Identifying opportunities to survey users to gain additional user insight
Q: Why is the session replay not recording?
A: Session replay will only record where the page size (DOM) is less than 5MB. Anything over 5MB will not be recorded.
Q: Why is the session replay different from what the user experienced?
A: It is entirely possible that between the time the session replay was recorded and when you are watching it, there have been changes to the page such as CSS changes. What you’re seeing is the updated page (DOM) and the user experienced the old version. This could be reflected in the mouse movements and click events that were recorded not aligning with the replay. We offer a CSS storage option for session replay to ensure the accuracy of sessions on our custom plan.
Q: How long can a User Session be?
A: User Sessions can be up to 6 hours. After 30 minutes of inactivity a new session will be created.
Q: What permissions do collaborators have with session replay
A: Session replay is disabled for collaborators by default. To enable session replay for collaborators, head to the members page and edit the member.
If a collaborator has access to a project with Session Replay enabled, and users have been identified, they will be able to view all sessions associated with users on that project. When viewing sessions for a user, the collaborator will have viewing access to sessions across all projects that user is associated with.
Q: What does LIVE/ONLINE mean
A: Live / Online means that the user session is current and has not yet been completed.
The session will be available for viewing once the user either logs out of your application / leaves the website or closes the browser. If the user is inactive for more than 30 minutes, the session will save and a new recording will start.