How do I use Session recording player in Website Testing?

In this help, we'll discuss how to use the Session recording player for:

• Replaying tasks
• Switching between tasks and analyzing task details
• Navigating the task timeline
• Assessing page performance
• Sharing replays
• Taking notes

Replaying tasks 

In the Session recording player, you can replay a video-like reproduction of respondents interacting with your website while trying to solve tasks. You'll get to learn exactly how your respondents behaved, which in some cases can tell you much more about your site than explicit feedback (questionnaires, comments) ever could.

• See Respondents tab to learn how to access the Session recording player
• The majority of the Session recording player screen is dedicated to task playback. Use the standard video controls (play, pause, rewind, video speed, video timeline) to play back the task recording like you would with an actual video.
• Skipping inactivity - The respondent is considered inactive if they haven't moved the cursor, scrolled, clicked, pressed any keys or used the browser's back button in the last four seconds. Time of inactivity is marked on the playback timeline with lighter color. By enabling Skip inactivity, you can pass even over long periods of inactivity very quickly, allowing for more efficient analysis.
• If you enabled voice recording, you can adjust the volume of the voice recording playback with the volume controls.
• The player area portrays exactly what the respondent was seeing at any point in time (except for any parts of your website that you've purposefully obscured in study setup for data protection and privacy reasons). This includes the Website Testing task bar in the top part of the screen.
• The top section of the player contains a dropdown that lists all of the URLs visited by the respondent while completing the task. The first one tells you the time when the task started, the rest give you their timestamp on the session's timeline. Click any of the pages to rewind the player to the exact moment when the page opens.
• Click the ellipsis button to copy the visited URL or to visit the page directly.
• The information in the upper right corner tells you what exact display resolution the respondent is currently using.

Switching between tasks and analyzing task details 

The panel on the left side of the player allows you to switch between the current respondent's task recordings. It also contains additional details about the replayed task's completion and the respondent themselves.

• The absolute top of the panel contains the current respondent's name, icon and location.
• Click the task dropdown to switch between respondent's completion of tasks. Tasks are marked by their text and presented in the same order as they were created in in setup.
• In task details, you will see the tasks's result (succes/failure/skip/close) and the task's duration.
• Click the task details to view even more details about the task and the respondent. The details are split into four main sections:

Task result :

• Respondent's end page - On what URL the respondent declared that the task was done
• Defined start page - On what URL the task started
• Defined end page - The URL matching string and method used to determine whether respondent's end page is a successful result or not.

Current task statistics :

• Duration - How long it took the respondent to complete the task.
• Active time - Activity means that the respondent was doing any of the following: moving the cursor, scrolling, clicking, pressing keys, using browser back button.
• Inactive time - A visitor is considered inactive if they haven't done any of the above in 4 second span.
• Number of pageviews
• Number of unique pages - The number of pageviews with unique URLs in the task recording.
• Number of events

Aggregated statistics accross tasks (only shows up if the respondent has more than one task):

• Total number of pageviews
• Total number of unique pages - How many unique URLs they visited
• Total number of events

Other respondent's information :

• Device type
• Device
• Operating system
• Browser
• Screen resolution

Navigating the task timeline 

Below the task details, you will find the task timeline. This timeline serves as an overview of all of the respondent's behavior while they were completing the task.

• The top of the timeline contains the referrer.
• After the referrer, the task timeline contains an ordered list of all the pageviews in the task recording. By looking at the pageview URL addresses, we can gain understanding of the respondent's website navigation flow in the context of the task.
• On the right side of each pageview, you will find the page load data. See assessing page performance to learn how to better understand page load data.
• Click a pageview to rewind the Session recording player to the pageview's start, copy its URL or to visit the page directly
• If a pageview had any events, you will see a list events in the order they happened in once you open the pageview
• Click an event to rewind the task recording to the moment the event was activated or to copy the event's CSS selector
• By opening an event, you can see the CSS selector of the DOM element it was bound to, its type and text

There are two types of events:

• Click - the respondent clicked a DOM element on the page (e.g. clicked a button)
• Form change - respondent changed the value of a form input (e.g. typed something into a search bar, selected a checkbox)

Assess page performance 

Under each page view, you will find four performance metrics. These metrics are used as an indicator of the page's responsiveness - an important aspect for your page to leave a good impression. The metrics are as follows:

• FCP (First Contentful Paint) - the time until the browser renders the first pixels of the content from the DOM e.g. text, image
• DOM Content Loaded - time until all DOM content has been loaded and parsed (without CSS files, images, subframes)
• Page Load - time until the whole page is loaded, including resources like CSS files and images
• TTI (Time to Interactive) - the time until the page is both visually rendered and reliably responding to user input (e.g. javascript is loaded and there aren't any tasks blocking the main thread)

Some of the metrics might be missing from some of your Website Testing task recordings. This is because not all browsers support all performance metrics (e.g. only Chrome supports TTI at the moment).

Events that trigger performance metrics usually happen in the same order that we listed them in. However, that might not always be the case. For example, if you you open a page and then reload it, the page is still going to be in your browser's cache. This decreases the time for DOM Content Loaded and Page Load dramatically, so they can happen faster than even First Contentful Paint.

Performance is a key factor in shaping the experience that the users are going to have with your website. A site' slowness can vary from some mildly annoying delays up to something that renders the site outright unusable. Because users abandon anything that annoys them, this means bad performance can severely limit how successful your site is going to be. This can especially be true with mobile devices, which have limited CPU, memory and data plans. Examining your site for performance and looking for ways to optimize can help you get the upper hand on competition. See this guide by Google for case studies of companies which achieved better user retention, conversion rates and user experience through performance optimization.

Sharing replays 

On the right side of the replay bar, you will find the share button. You can use this button to share replays of tasks with others via a link. You can share replays even to people who aren't part of your UXtweak team.

Clicking this button gives you two options:

• Share this session starting at (current time) - Simple sharing. Use this option if you only want to share a link to the current replay. Copy a link or send it out through social channels. You can adjust the time that you want the replay to start at when the link is clicked.
• Advanced sharing - Use this option when you want to share more than one replay from this respondent. See below for more details.

In advanced sharing, you have additional options for sharing the respondent's replays. There are three main options.

• Do not share sessions - Disables sharing. Please note that this will also disable simple sharing links for all the respondent's tasks.
• Share sessions with a secret URL - Allows you to pick which task sessions you want to share via a link. You can pick all tasks, or only select ones. Please note that selecting which task replays to share here is the equivalent of simple sharing the same task replays. If you previously did simple sharing of this respondent's tasks, once you come here, you will find all of those task replays selected for sharing. Unchecking them will disable their simple sharing.
• Share sessions protected by a password - The same as the above option but all share links to this respondent's task replays will be protected by a custom password.

You need to have at least Editor role in the team your study belongs to in order to change sharing options for replays.

Taking notes 

You can annotate your task recordings. This can be useful to note down your findings or to mark significant moments in recordings. You can manage the notes in recordings by clicking Notes on the right side of the replay bar.

Clicking Notes will open the notes panel. There, you will find:

• List of all notes in this recording - Each note has an author, the note's contents and the time in the task recording that it is tied to. Click Edit to change the text or Delete to remove a note.
• Bubble notes - When this checkbox is enabled, notes will appear as bubbles while you're replaying a task recording.
• Create note - Allows you to create a new note by typing the text. After you click Save note, the note will be added to the recording timeline.

You can also view and edit a specific note by clicking in on the replay timeline.