GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation is an act that came into force in May 2018.
I’ll explain GDPR to the best of my knowledge later down in this post, but here’s a quick summary of it.
GDPR is a law that gives you more control over the data (about you) that companies collect. It regulates how they obtain the data, store it, use it, and delete it.
I’ll link a couple of articles discussing this at the end of the article.
But as a business owner who has traffic coming from European countries, you might be thinking to yourself, “Am I still able to track my users?’
And the simple answer is yes; you can still use session recordings; GDPR shouldn’t impact you that much.
But you now have to be much more open with your users about what you do with their data.
Let me give you an example…
Lately, did you notice those cookie banners that give you the freedom of opting out of marketing and analytics cookies?
Source: GitHub
These bars weren’t that readily available back in 2010, were they? No!
They’ve been implemented as a part of the overall move to giving the users the power to do what they want with their data.
It doesn’t hurt you to be compliant with GDPR; you can mostly use the same analytical tools as before.
You just need to be careful that you review each and every tool to check if it’s GDPR compliant or not because the EU doesn’t really mess around when it comes to enforcing its rules!
It sounds scary, I know. Believe me. It’s not.
Now let’s talk about GDPR a bit.
What’s GDPR?
This is just a quick disclaimer; this isn’t legal advice; we wrote this article to inform our users about GDPR and how they could be more comfortable with it, and how is FIgPii compliant also.
Please check this link if you want to learn more about GDPR.
Okay, so what exactly is GDPR?
GDPR is a law set by the EU to help protect its citizens’ data and to give them more privacy and control over what websites, companies, etc., collect, store, use, and secure these collected data.
Check the banner I attached in my introduction; you’ll get what I mean.
GDPR makes it harder for companies to track you over the internet while also giving the users more power to allow or deny their data collection.
Not all data fall under the GDPR, only what GDPR identifies as Personal Data.
What does personal data mean?
This is how the GDPR website phrases it; simply put its names, email address, location info, gender, etc.
So If you happen to record any of these data on your website, if you have a registration system like the one we have, you should look into being GDPR compliant.
As for data protection which is the main topic we’re talking about within this blog, I’ll go over the 7 data protection principles enlisted by the EU.
- Any processing of a citizen’s data must be lawful, fair, and transparent to the data subject.
- You should only process data for the legitimate purposes specified to the user when you collect it.
- You should collect and process the absolute minimal data necessary for specified purposes.
- You must keep personal data accurate and up to date.
- You may only store personally identifying data for as long as necessary for the specified purpose.
- Ensuring appropriate security, integrity, and confidentiality (e.g. by using encryption) is a must.
- The data controller is responsible for demonstrating GDPR compliance with all of these principles.
These are the major 7 data protection principles that you must adhere to at any cost.
Session Replays & GDPR?
Thankfully, with FigPii being GDPR compliant as a session recording tool, so are you!
Just link to the privacy page, and you’re set to go.
I hear the “hmm, okay?”
I’ll walk you through why you are in the clear if you’re using FigPii (and – or other tools that are GDPR compliant).
FigPii is a UBA (User Behavior Analytics) software that is compliant with GDPR.
That doesn’t mean that you can use non-compliant tools and claim that you aren’t responsible.
To avoid troubles, you need to know if the tool you’re using is compliant or not.
Why Use A Session Replay Tool?
Session recordings help you identify key conversion opportunities easily.
As the name suggests, session recordings capture visitor sessions on your website – letting you see how your visitors engage with your website.
When you think about it, they can help you identify the difference between how you want visitors to interact with your site, and how they actually do.
You know your website all too well, but that doesn’t mean your visitor know it as much too.
Things like navigation, website copy, value proposition can be key conversion opportunities if you do them right.
And if you look at the screenshot below from our dashboard, you’ll see a ton of useful information.
Here’s what FigPii’s dashboard shows for its users.
Date: So you know when your user came to your website in case you’ve been running a paid campaign that sends traffic to your website.
Device: It might come as a surprise, but people respond differently to the same things they see on the phone vs. desktop.
Having that thought in mind, you can find major opportunities when looking at phone versus desktop sessions.
Country: sometimes, your best clients can come up from the same demographical segment.
Like you might start a product that you think would see like crazy in NA, but you find that it’s killing it on.
Pages: Knowing the flow your visitors take will make your life much easier; it’ll make optimizing your website such a breeze.
Imagine if a user reads a blog, finds a CTA at the end, converts after reading.
Awesome right? Yes.
What’s more awesome is that you can visually track the funnel that your user took.
Lastly…
User events: Using this information, you can track if your user is engaged enough or not.
You can see if he switches to another tab, resizes the window, how frequent he clicks off, etc.
Things like this help you easily identify web elements that are blocking conversions on your site.
Here’s what you’ll see when you watch a session replay by one of your visitors or users.
As you can see, you’ll be able to see how their mouse moves on your website, what they click, and how do they navigate your website.
Such info is extremely crucial if you’re interested in doing conversion rate optimization for your website.
Should I Stop Using Session Replays If I Want to be GDPR Compliant?
The short answer is No; The Long answer is also No.
Why should you? You’re doing nothing wrong here.
I get it, but I’m tracking the users on my website.
But here’s the thing, you don’t record any personal information that could get you into trouble.
You’re tracking anonymous sessions of people who come to your website without knowing who they’re.
FigPii also blocks you from seeing any data the user inputs and displays **** instead of characters.
So you can’t identify any user by looking at their session.
Yes, you can identify a lot of things from the session, but you can’t identify any visitors’ personal data.
And to be perfectly in the clear, let’s go through what a session recording looks like on our platform.
Some data about the visitor can become handy later on.
But as you can see from the screenshot in the upper right corner, numbers are hidden.
Because phone numbers are personal data and we can’t just hide phone numbers, we decided to hide numbers.
So on and so forth, we protect user data at all costs.
So you shouldn’t be afraid at all, we get what you might feel a bit fearful, but hopefully, by now, you know that session recording isn’t an issue you need to worry about.
Conclusion
You’ve made it to the end; hopefully, you feel better now about using session recording without fearing sanctions caused by the GDPR.
And to reassure you, let’s go over briefly what we’ve gone over in this blog.
Is session recording okay with GDPR? Yes, it is.
Doesn’t it conflict with GDPR? Well, I can speak only for FigPii here; since we’re GDPR compliant, then no, it doesn’t conflict.
We protect the visitors’ personal data.
And so you don’t have to worry about anything if you would like to track session recordings and optimize your website using them.
There are many reasons why you should use a session recording tool for your business.
- They Help uncover key conversion opportunities.
- They help identify bugs in the UI
- They help visualize users’ flow on your website
- And much more.
If you’re looking for a session recording tool that’s GDPR compliant, then FigPii is definitely for you.
We also provide session recording and heatmaps, online polls, A/B testing, and CRO recommendations.
With a 14-days free trial, you can’t go wrong; give it a try and see for yourself the missed opportunities that have been slipping under your radar.
