Session replay is a technology that can be used to reconstruct a user's interactions with a website or web application, letting teams review a replay of a session. Unlike traditional screen recording, session replay typically captures browser events such as clicks, scrolls, page changes and DOM changes, then recreates them as a visual playback.
Product, customer support, UX and engineering teams use session replay tools to make sense of what users experience, troubleshoot issues, understand friction, investigate and recreate bugs, without asking a customer to describe what went wrong or provide a screenshot that only shows one moment in time.
Teams looking for a solution can explore Fullview Session Replays.
What is session replay?
Session replay is a technology that can be used to visually reconstruct a user's interaction with a website or a web application. It's a common point of confusion, but a session replay generally isn't a video in the traditional sense. Most session replay software records the underlying interaction data: DOM mutations, clicks, scrolls, mouse movements and similar events, then recreates those events on playback to show what the user actually did.
That distinction matters because session replay records interaction data rather than a continuous video stream. The captured data can then be searched through or filtered, rather than treated as an unclear video file.
Product managers, developers, UX researchers and support agents alike will generally use session replay for slightly different reasons, but the underlying common goal is the same: seeing what actually happened during a session rather than piecing it together secondhand.
What does session replay capture?
User interactions
Most tools generally capture the kinds of everyday actions a visitor would take on a page: clicks, mouse movement, scrolling, form interactions, page navigation and interaction with specific elements on the page.
Technical context
Depending on the platform, a session replay can capture technical context alongside the interaction itself: JavaScript errors, console logs, network activity, warnings or other errors that occurred during the session.
Adding that context turns a session replay from 'here's what the user did' to 'here's what the user did and what was going wrong behind the scenes as they did it'.
Frustration signals
Some tools will flag or highlight common 'signals' that imply a user ran into an issue: rage clicks, repeated clicks on an element, abandoned interactions or navigation, or dead ends in a flow. Not every product captures every kind of signal and signals vary between vendors, so it's worth taking a closer look at a given tool's capabilities rather than assuming parity across the category.
How does session replay work?
Session replay tools capture browser interaction data such as clicks, scrolls, navigation and DOM changes and then reconstruct those events into a playable session.
1. A user interacts with the website or app
The process starts with ordinary usage: a visitor clicks, scrolls, navigates between pages, or interacts with elements on the page, exactly as they would if no tool were watching.
2. Interaction data is captured
A session replay tool captures the relevant browser-side events and DOM changes as they occur, rather than capturing a continuous video stream of the session. What specific events are captured, and how much detail is captured with them, will vary between tools.
3. The session is reconstructed
The captured events are then processed and reconstructed into a visual representation of the session that can be reviewed and analysed.
4. Teams review the replay
Once the session has been reconstructed, the resulting playback can be reviewed, investigated, or analysed.
Why use session replay?
Diagnose user issues
Session replay gives a team the ability to see the events that led up to a particular issue, rather than simply relying on a customer's description of what went wrong. If a customer says checkout isn't working, the support or product team can review the session and see what happened, rather than having to guess based on a secondhand account.
Reproduce bugs faster
For developers, session context can help them understand what a user actually did, where in the flow the issue occurred, and what happened right before an error, which can be the difference between minutes and hours of reproduction work.
Identify UX friction
Reviewing real sessions tends to surface friction that's hard to spot from analytics alone: confusing navigation, broken interactions, abandoned workflows, repeated clicks on something that isn't responding, or forms that are harder to complete than they look on paper.
Improve product onboarding
Watching sessions during sign-up, activation or early-product feature adoption tends to highlight exactly where new users get stuck, which is hard to understand from aggregate funnel metrics.
Improve customer support resolution
For support teams specifically, replay gives agents visual context on an issue without asking the customer to reproduce it, sometimes more than once, over chat or a call. Support teams can combine session replays with real-time cobrowsing when an issue needs live, hands-on assistance rather than after-the-fact investigation.
Session replay vs screen recording
It's worth noting that session replay isn't inherently more secure or automatically lighter on data than screen recording. It depends on the vendor's implementation, what data is collected and how that data is protected.
Session replay vs google analytics
Google Analytics and session replay serve different purposes. Analytics can show that a conversion rate dropped; session replay can help investigate what users experienced during that drop.
Neither tool replaces the other; analytics is generally the better choice for understanding that something changed, and session replay is generally the better choice for understanding why.
Session replay use cases
Customer support
Support agents see exactly what a customer experienced rather than relying on a textual description, which speeds up resolution and reduces back-and-forth. Customer-facing teams can also use cobrowsing when an issue needs to be resolved in real-time rather than investigated after the fact.
Product management
Reviewing sessions helps product teams identify recurring friction and prioritise fixes based on what's actually happening, rather than what users choose to report.
UX and design
Designers can use replay to directly understand navigation patterns and interaction problems rather than relying solely on user feedback.
Engineering
Developers can use session context to investigate and reproduce frontend issues, especially those that are difficult to reproduce from a bug report alone.
Conversion optimisation
Replay helps teams investigate where users abandon important journeys, checkout, signup, multi-step flows or anywhere else where a drop-off is costing conversions.
How to choose a session replay tool
Implementation
Look at the installation requirements, SDKs necessary, framework compatibility and how long it realistically takes for a tool to be implemented.
Performance impact
Script size, number of network requests, general data collection approach and the tool's impact on your application's performance are all relevant factors.
Privacy and data controls
Consider PII masking, sensitive-field masking, custom privacy controls, data retention options and access controls.
Technical context
Look for whether the tool captures JavaScript errors, console logs, network errors, user interactions and frustration signals alongside the replay itself.
Integrations
Consider how well the tool connects with your existing customer support platforms, CRM, product analytics, issue tracking and communication tools.
See how Fullview Session Replays combine session playback with technical context for faster troubleshooting.
Is session replay GDPR compliant?
Does GDPR apply to session replay?
Session replay may process personal data, depending on what information is captured and how. Personal data, as defined under the GDPR, is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.
Whether a particular implementation of session replay falls under that definition and what it must do to comply depends on your configuration, not the category as a whole. The GDPR does not contain a rule specifically for session replay, but other rules governing cookies, trackers and access to user devices may require consent. Requirements can therefore differ by country and implementation.
Since Fullview offers a session replay product that doesn't anonymize data, we get this question a lot: will I still be GDPR compliant if I use Fullview? The answer is yes!
What should companies consider?
Relevant considerations generally include lawful basis for processing, data minimisation, privacy by design, PII masking, exclusion of sensitive data, data retention periods, access controls, data processing agreements and data residency if it applies to your business.
How do session replay tools protect user privacy?
Technical controls include masking, redaction, blocking specific fields from being captured in the first place, role-based access to sessions, configurable data collection and retention controls.
Fullview provides privacy controls designed to prevent sensitive information from being exposed in session replays, including redaction at the source. See Fullview's current security and compliance documentation for implementation details.
Privacy and GDPR requirements can depend on your implementation, users, jurisdictions and processing activities. Consult a qualified legal or privacy professional who can advise your particular situation.
Session replay example
A customer reports that they can't complete checkout. The support team opens the customer's session replay and sees that the checkout button becomes unresponsive right after an address field is completed. From there, the team can investigate the specific frontend error or interaction directly, rather than asking the customer to reproduce the problem across several support messages.
Frequently asked questions
What is session replay?
Session replay is technology that reconstructs a user's interactions with a website or web application, letting teams review what happened during a session without relying on the user's own account of it.
How does session replay work?
It captures browser-side interaction data, scrolls, navigation and DOM changes and then rebuilds those events into a visual playback that can be reviewed.
What does session replay record?
Most tools capture some form of interaction data such as clicks, scrolling, page navigation, form interactions and other on-page events, and sometimes technical context alongside them.
Is session replay the same as screen recording?
No, session replay generally captures interaction data rather than recording continuous video, which is what distinguishes it from screen recording, though the outcome looks similar when played back.
Is session replay GDPR compliant?
Compliance depends on your specific implementation, what data is captured, and how you handle consent, retention and access, not on session replay as a category. Consult a privacy professional for guidance specific to your setup
Does session replay affect website performance?
It can, depending on the implementation, data collection approach, SDK and configuration. Lighter implementations tend to have minimal impact, but it's best to review a vendor's specific performance benchmarks rather than assuming.
What can session replay be used for?
Common applications include bug investigation, UX research, customer support, product improvements, onboarding analysis and conversion optimisation.
What should I look for in session replay software?
Privacy controls, implementation requirements, performance impact, technical context alongside the replay, integration capability, search and filtering and the tool's scalability with your traffic.
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