Session Recordings

Watch recordings of real visitor sessions on your website.

Overview

Session Recordings let you see exactly how visitors interact with your website. Watch mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and page navigation in playback — like looking over a visitor’s shoulder.

Recordings are only captured after you explicitly create a session recording configuration — see Creating a Session Recording. Completed recordings appear under Session Recordings in the left reporting menu, grouped by the recording configuration they belong to.

Creating a Session Recording

1. Navigate to Session Recordings → Manage Session Recording
2. Click Create New Session Recording
3. Enter a descriptive name
4. Optionally restrict target pages using match rules (URL, URL path, or URL parameter — with a built-in validator to test whether a given URL matches)
5. Review the advanced options below
6. Save — sessions start being recorded as soon as visitors hit matching pages

Creating and managing recordings requires write access to the site; view-access users can watch the resulting recordings.

Advanced Options

• Requires activity (on by default) — Only record sessions where the visitor actually clicked and scrolled, filtering out idle sessions.
• Min session time — Only record sessions lasting at least this long.
• Capture keystrokes (off by default) — Record what visitors type into form fields. Even when enabled, captured input is masked with asterisks unless you explicitly unmask a specific field. See Privacy and Compliance.
• Number of sessions — How many sessions to record before the recording automatically ends (options range from 50 up to 5,000 — if you need more, contact support).
• Sample rate — The percentage of eligible sessions that get recorded (0.1%–100%).

Managing Recordings

Session Recordings → Manage Session Recording lists each recording with actions to edit, view, stop, or delete it. A recording ends automatically once it reaches its configured number of sessions; stopping it early is permanent (the collected sessions remain viewable). To be emailed when a recording finishes collecting data, enable the notification under Administration → Personal → Settings.

What’s Captured

Session recordings capture:

• Mouse movements — Where the cursor travels
• Clicks and taps — What visitors interact with
• Scrolling, window resizes, and mobile zoom
• Form interactions — Field focus and changes to radio buttons, checkboxes, and selects (text content masked by default)
• Page changes — Pop-ups appearing or other dynamic page updates
• Page navigation — Each page view in the visit

Activity on a single page is recorded for up to 15 minutes by default.

Privacy and Compliance

Masking Defaults

• Form input is masked by default — text fields and textareas are recorded as masked content, and keystroke capture is entirely off unless you enable it per recording
• Always masked, regardless of settings — password fields, email and tel inputs, hidden fields, fields whose names suggest sensitive data (credit card, CVV, and similar), and any typed sequence that looks like a card number or email address
• Even with keystroke capture enabled, input appears as asterisks (************) unless a field is explicitly unmasked

Masking Page Content

Mask any element — not just form fields — by adding the data-matomo-mask attribute:

<div data-matomo-mask>
  Appointment details for the signed-in patient
</div>

Masking happens in the visitor’s browser before any data is sent, so masked content never reaches Ghost Metrics.

To deliberately record a specific harmless field in plain text (with keystroke capture enabled), add data-matomo-unmask to it. Permanently masked field types can’t be unmasked.

Consent Considerations

Recordings are pseudonymized rather than fully anonymized — they show individual behavior. Depending on your jurisdiction and privacy policy, session recording may require visitor consent (several EU regulators treat it as consent-requiring). Ghost Metrics can integrate recording with your consent flow — see support for guidance, and involve your compliance team when enabling recordings on pages used by patients.

Access Controls

• Access to recordings is controlled by user permissions; anonymous users can never replay recordings
• Data retention for recordings follows your data retention policy — contact support to adjust it

Viewing Recordings

1. Navigate to Session Recordings and select your recording
2. Browse the list of recorded sessions
3. Hover a session and click the play button to watch

Recording List

Each recorded session shows when it was recorded, time spent, the visitor’s viewport resolution, location, device, operating system, and browser. Hover a row to open the full Visitor Profile, or to delete that individual session. You can apply any of your segments to the list — for example, only sessions from mobile visitors, or only visitors who converted a goal.

Playback Controls

While watching a recording you can pause, change the replay speed, and skip the pauses in a session automatically. Keyboard shortcuts make review fast:

• Space / k — Pause and resume
• ← / → — Jump backward/forward 5 seconds
• j / l — Jump backward/forward 10 seconds
• n / p — Next / previous page view in the session
• a — Toggle auto-play of the next page view
• b — Toggle skipping pauses
• s — Change replay speed

Finding the Right Sessions

Use segments to focus your viewing:

• By behavior — Sessions that visited specific pages, triggered events, or completed goals
• By visitor attributes — Device type, browser, location, new vs returning
• By outcome — Converters vs non-converters, bounced sessions

You can also scope what gets recorded in the first place with each recording’s target-page rules, minimum session time, and activity requirement.

Use Cases

Understand Conversion Paths

1. Segment recorded sessions by a completed goal
2. Watch several successful sessions
3. Identify common patterns
4. Understand what drives conversions

Debug Usability Issues

When users report problems:

1. Create a recording targeting the problematic page
2. Watch sessions on that page
3. Look for points of confusion
4. Identify unexpected behavior

Investigate High Bounce Pages

For pages with high bounce rates:

1. Target the problem page
2. Watch short sessions
3. See where visitors lose interest
4. Understand why they leave

Validate Form Design

For important forms:

1. Target the form page
2. Watch form interactions
3. Note where users hesitate
4. Identify confusing fields

Understand Mobile Experience

Compare mobile vs desktop:

1. Segment by mobile devices
2. Watch mobile sessions
3. Identify mobile-specific issues
4. Check touch interactions

What to Look For

Signs of Confusion

• Rage clicks — Repeated clicking on the same element
• Random clicking — Clicking on non-interactive elements
• Back-and-forth — Repeatedly navigating between pages
• Long pauses — Extended time without action

Navigation Patterns

• How visitors find information
• Which menu items they use
• Whether they use search
• How they move between pages

Form Behavior

• Which fields take longest
• Where users go back to edit
• Fields that cause abandonment
• Overall form completion flow

Best Practices

Watch with Purpose

Don’t watch recordings randomly. Have specific questions:

• Why do visitors leave this page?
• How do users interact with this form?
• What’s the journey to conversion?

Look for Patterns

One session is an anecdote. Watch multiple sessions to find patterns:

• Watch 10–20 sessions for a given page/flow
• Note recurring behaviors
• Focus on patterns, not outliers

Segment Your Viewing

Compare different visitor groups:

• Converters vs non-converters
• Mobile vs desktop
• New vs returning visitors

Combine with Other Data

Use recordings alongside:

• Heatmaps — See aggregate patterns first, then dive into individual sessions
• Funnel reports — Identify drop-off points, then watch sessions at those points
• Form analytics — See which fields have issues, then watch form interactions

Limitations

• Only sessions recorded after a recording configuration exists are available — there’s no retroactive capture
• With a sample rate below 100%, only that share of eligible sessions is recorded
• Activity on a single page is captured for up to 15 minutes by default
• Some dynamic or third-party content may not replay exactly as the visitor saw it
• Recording works in web browsers only (not native mobile apps)

Next Steps

• Heatmaps — See aggregate click and scroll patterns
• Form Analytics — Detailed form interaction data
• Funnels — Track conversion paths