Digital Experience Intelligence, as we discussed in previous posts, is the powerful combination of quantitative and qualitative data that unlocks a comprehensive understanding of digital experiences.
But—how does that work, exactly?
Quantitative data is intuitive enough: it’s the percentages and visualizations that can steer teams’ decisions at a glance. But how is qualitative data gathered, and how do the two combine?
The answer, for Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI) tools such as FullStory, is Session Replay. By recreating—not recording—user sessions, product, engineering, and UX teams get total visibility into why your users interact with your website or native mobile app in the way they do.
Below, find a quick Q&A on some of the most common questions about Session Replay.
The five most common questions about Session Replay
Do I need to manually tag elements to use DXI?
No—forget manual tagging. Best-in-class DXI platforms such as FullStory should automatically capture and filter any interaction from any user on your site. This builds a faultless foundation for all qualitative data gathered from users.
Example: Imagine you’re an ecommerce product manager, and you’re rolling out a new checkout option onto your site. You want to see how your customers are interacting with it, but because it’s new, your team hasn’t manually tagged it yet. FullStory’s Session Replay relies on instrumentation-free data, so there are no blindspots, even for new or updated elements.
Can Session Replay be implemented out of the box?
Yes. When you choose a DXI platform such as FullStory that's straightforward to implement and works with complex JavaScript frameworks, custom components, or frameworks that rely on shadow DOM, Session Replay works in just a few clicks.
Example: Imagine you’re a front-end website developer. You’ve had trouble finding web analytics tools that are compatible with the tailor-made way your site or mobile app was built, so you have limited visibility into performance. DXI platforms that offer simple implementations and compatibility across frameworks can help—even for the most complex sites and apps.
Are Session Replay recordings detailed enough to create useful insight?
Absolutely. Best-in-class DXI platforms allow you to fast-forward through irrelevant interactions, skip inactivity, scroll to pivotal moments, and log custom events to add context to sessions, allowing you to create useful insights.
Example: Imagine you’re prioritizing your company’s engineering backlog, and you want to identify the most urgent work that also has the most potential for impact. You want to escalate the top growth opportunities, but don’t want to watch user sessions for hours to determine the right course of action. Instead, rely on a DXI platform that offers tools to quickly and effectively surface insights for you, saving you time and helping you prioritize with confidence.
Can Session Replay help teams work more closely together?
Yes. Session Replay captures what a customer sees and what is going on behind the scenes of their user experience—what browser they’re using, their operating system, and previous sessions, among other data.
This helps teams better understand and support them, and helps teams internally communicate user errors across teams—from product to UX to engineering.
Example: Imagine you’re an engineer tasked with fixing a widespread bug on your company’s website. You’re overwhelmed by the amount of data you’ll need to filter through to understand when the glitch occurs. With a DXI platform that surfaces the essential information about user sessions, you’re able to identify where and when users are experiencing the bug, whether it’s occurring in a specific browser or operating system, and collaborate with product and customer success teams in communicating the issue.
Does Session Replay risk user privacy?
Absolutely not. By default, leading DXI tools such as FullStory do not log sensitive user data. This equips you with tools to manage privacy, consent, and selective exclusion of on-screen text to protect both your customers and you.
Example: Imagine you’re a mobile product manager at a fintech company who wants to see how customers navigate through your redesigned mobile experience to apply for a new account. Of course, you want to do this without capturing (or seeing) any of the personally identifiable information customers have to provide to open an account. Put your trust in a DXI platform that empowers your organization to manage privacy seamlessly—without the need for external support.
With a DXI platform that creates superior session replays, you’ll get 20/20 vision into how and why your customers interact with your site or app the way they do.
See Digital Experience Intelligence in action.
Request a demo of the FullStory DXI platform for your product team.
