Session Recordings with Google Analytics

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Session recordings are a must have for analysis around UX, quick identification of issues and bugs, and insights into your users that you cannot get with other forms of tracking.  These session recordings allow you playbacks of your users visits as if you were looking over their shoulder. The primary challenge with most session recording platforms is finding the right videos to watch.  No one has time to watch every video. SessionCam is one of my favorite providers and surfaces the most important sessions for you to replay through Machine Learning, as well as a unique integration with Google Analytics.

SessionCam Installation

Installation of SessionCam took 5 minutes from beginning to end.
  1. Create a Free Starter Account that will provide you 50 session replays that are ranked as most important
  2. SessionCam will e-mail you Account Credentials and the installation tag
  3. As shown in the image below, simply add the tag into Google Tag Manager using a Custom HTML tag, set to fire on all pages. Thats it!

SessionCam Recordings

When you login to SessionCam the next morning after installation, you can start analyzing your recording. The image below shows what the SessionCam interface looks like. Right away, you can see where SessionCam differentiates from other session replay providers. Instead of randomly picking some videos to watch and hoping to find something interesting, SessionCam uses a Customer Struggle Score (CS Score), which provides you the pages and users on your site that have the highest indication of potential issues. You can select any of the recordings and immediately see the session replay, just as if you were looking over that users shoulder. You can easily speed up, slow down, or skip to any page in the recording. Collaboration is encouraged and you have the ability to add notes, annotations, as well as to reassign a score to the recording to better train the Customer Struggle models. Here is an example of a session recording from our website: [video width="1734" height="1146" mp4="https://www.adswerve.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Untitled.mp4" loop="on" autoplay="on"][/video]

SessionCam and Google Analytics Integration

Integrating SessionCam with Google Analytics unlocks the opportunities for deeper analysis and exploration. When you are doing analysis in Google Analytics, you can immediately use the audience you are looking at to observe their specific interactions. As an example: those who purchased more than 150 dollars, users who viewed more than 5 pages and left the site without converting, or users who interacted with a certain feature or widget on the site. Additionally, the SessionCam Google Analytics Chrome plugin allows you to launch the recordings directly from Google Analytics. I'll cover how to enable that and then use the integration.

Enabling the Integration

  • Ask your SessionCam rep to enable the Google Analytics Integration
  • Enable the plugin by simply sliding the toggle on and entering the custom dimension slot from Google Analytics.
SessionCam Google Analytics Integration Toggle   Google Analytics - Custom Dimension Settings for Session Cam Thats it! Total setup is less than five minutes, which means in less than 10 minutes from beginning to end you can have a fully implemented session replay solution that is integrated with Google Analytics. SessionCam will start sending events into Google Analytics automatically that contain the SessionCam User ID, which is stored in a custom dimension. We can use this to immediately watch high value sessions. Below are a few examples:

Watch Sessions That Lead to High-Value Transactions

Watch Sessions That Lead to Errors (Forms or JavaScript)

Watch Sessions from Custom Audiences (Advanced Segments)

Advanced Segments in Google Analytics is its most powerful feature and you can use it with SessionCam. As an example, let's say you want to watch session recordings for users who've purchased a particular products and are repeat purchasers . The images below show that in seconds you can have an audience with multiple conditions applied and immediately launch into SessionCam to see how these audiences interact with your site. Building the Audience     The power of SessionCam and Google Analytics together is incredibly valuable. By integrating the two platforms you have the ability to perform analysis and quickly launch the session recordings. The ability to combine qualitative analysis with the quantitative data allows for powerful use cases around form analysis, analysis of widgets and features, and general UI/UX exploration. Session replays are a must have tool for any Analytics team. If you need any help getting started contact us for more info: gethelp@analyticspros.com.