A short guide to session recordings

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Everything we would tell a client about session recordings in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

Measurement is only useful when someone has agreed in advance what they would do differently. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

What is actually at stake

Ten recordings will teach you something surprising. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

How we handle it

Mask personal data before recording anything. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Warning signs

Watch the sessions that failed, not the happy paths. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What this looks like day to day

Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. Three things worth confirming about session recordings before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Ten recordings will teach you something surprising — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.