When I chat with customers about their session replay tools, the conversations start with a good deal of excitement. They say something along the lines of “watching replays is SO valuable, I don’t know what I’d do without session replay.” Then comes the pause. Then comes the “but.”
“But my replays aren’t tied to anything else.”
The excitement deflates. They wish they could sort replays by account. They wish they could see replays of a specific feature. They wish they could see replays of their in-app guides. Without tying your replays to other behavioral data or your in-app messaging strategy, you lack key pieces of context and you’re forced to jump into another tool in order to take action.
Now, imagine a world where you could see exactly how users navigate your product, understand their pain points in real-time, and then offer personalized guidance to nudge them towards success. It’s the beauty of having replays deeply embedded in a platform vs. living on their own. Let’s take a deeper look into why replays shouldn’t stand on their own.
Pssst…if you want to check our session replay guide out.
Reason #1: You’ll struggle to find impactful sessions
Instead of sifting through countless replays blindly, you can filter based on specific user actions, like interactions with a certain feature. Or you can pinpoint replays from the areas of the product that you care about. Or filter to a specific segment to watch replays from the most relevant set of users or accounts. And when you have replays tied to your analytics, those replays can appear within your analytics workflows — such as a funnel. You can go straight to watching the right replays when you notice a drop off or want to explore an unexpected pattern.
Reason #2: You’ll lack proper context
Your product analytics tool houses all your valuable metadata, telling you who your users are and their behavior. This means instead of watching User18675309, you can know precisely who you’re watching and layer in anything else that’s important to you — such as account information or a specific segment. As you watch replays, this makes it easier to draw connections between your users and their actions. If you’re a healthcare organization, you might notice your nurses are successfully completing a task, yet your doctors are getting stuck. The replays show that Doctors aren’t finding the next step in the process, suggesting that segment could use a tooltip and some updated training documentation.
Reason #3: You may find problems, but you won’t be able to quickly fix them
As you watch your users experience friction throughout your product, you build empathy for their struggles, but you also discover how to address those problems. For some issues, adding a tooltip can provide the clarification needed to fix the issue. For others, you may want to quickly survey end users to gather additional insights or even reach out to schedule research interviews. If your replay tool doesn’t offer any methods for in-app interventions, you’ll be stuck wishing you could intervene.
It’s not just about watching replays; it’s about making sure they’re part of how you build your digital experiences. At Pendo, we built Session Replay directly into our entire platform, helping you understand your users’ digital experiences from every angle. With Pendo, you can fully understand the problem and have tools at your fingertips to improve your customer experiences faster. Here’s to replays that don’t stand alone!
Want to see the power of a platform-based Session Replay tool? Get in touch for your personalized demo.
