# 1. Introduction
### 1.1 What is FullSession?
Welcome to FullSession! This chapter gives you a high-level understanding of what FullSession is, how it works, and the vocabulary you'll see throughout the rest of the documentation. If you're new to FullSession, start here — the later chapters assume you're comfortable with the concepts introduced below.
FullSession is a **session-replay and product-analytics platform** that helps you understand how real people use your website. Instead of guessing why visitors drop off, abandon a cart, or fail to convert, you can *watch* their actual sessions, see exactly where they get stuck, and quantify those moments across thousands of users.
In a single platform, FullSession brings together:
* **Session replay** — pixel-perfect recordings of real user visits, complete with mouse movement, scrolls, clicks, taps, console errors, and network activity.
* **Heatmaps** — aggregated visualizations of where people click, how far they scroll, and which elements cause frustration.
* **Funnels** — multi-step conversion flows that show exactly where users drop off, with one-click access to the sessions behind each drop-off.
* **Segments** — saved groups of users defined by behavior, location, device, or any custom attribute you send.
* **Dashboards & insights** — customizable views built from your own metrics and widgets.
* **Feedback & surveys** — an in-page widget for collecting CSAT scores and qualitative responses.
* **Lift AI** — natural-language analysis that surfaces issues, builds segments from a prompt, and explains funnel drop-offs in plain English.
* **Alerts** — proactive notifications when something in your funnel, segment, or site behavior changes.
#### Who FullSession is for
FullSession is built for the people who care about the user experience on a website:
* **Product managers** — validate feature usage and prioritize what to build next.
* **UX & design teams** — see how visitors actually interact with new layouts.
* **Growth & conversion specialists** — diagnose funnel drop-offs and run experiments.
* **Customer support** — replay a specific user's session to debug an issue they reported.
* **QA teams** — reproduce hard-to-find bugs by watching the exact session where they happened.
* **Executives** — track high-level KPIs across all of your sites in one dashboard.
#### What problems does it solve?
| You want to know… | FullSession answers it with… |
| ----------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| *Why are users dropping off at checkout?* | Funnels + session replays of drop-offs |
| *Which buttons do people actually click?* | Click heatmaps |
| *Is anyone hitting that new feature?* | Custom events + insight cards |
| *What did the user do right before this error?* | Console & network panels inside the player |
| *How happy are visitors with this page?* | Embedded CSAT widget |
| *Are conversions getting worse this week?* | Alerts on segments and funnels |
***
### 1.2 How FullSession Works
FullSession has three stages: **capture → process → insights.** Once it's set up, the entire pipeline runs automatically — you only interact with the third stage.
#### Stage 1 — Capture
A small JavaScript snippet (the **tracker**) runs on every page of your site. As visitors browse, it records:
* DOM mutations needed to replay the page exactly
* Mouse movement, clicks, taps, and scrolls
* Page navigation and URL changes
* Console messages and JavaScript errors
* Network requests
* Custom events and user identity (if you choose to send them)
The tracker is asynchronous and designed to have no measurable impact on page performance. Sensitive content (passwords, credit-card fields, anything you mark) is **masked at capture time** — it never leaves the visitor's browser.
#### Stage 2 — Process
Captured data is streamed to the FullSession cloud, where it is:
1. **Indexed** so you can filter sessions by any attribute in milliseconds.
2. **Aggregated** into heatmaps, page statistics, segment counts, and funnel metrics.
3. **Analyzed** by Lift AI for emerging issues and conversion problems.
4. **Stored** for the retention period included with your plan.
You don't have to do anything here — processing happens within seconds of a session ending, and most sessions are watchable in near real-time.
#### Stage 3 — Insights
This is where you spend your time. From the FullSession web app you can:
* Watch any session in the **player**
* Build **funnels**, **segments**, and **dashboards**
* View **heatmaps** for any page
* Read **feedback & survey responses**
* Configure **alerts** that notify you when things change
***
### 1.3 Key Concepts & Glossary
These terms appear throughout the documentation. Knowing what each one means will make every other chapter easier to read.
#### Site
A **site** is a property you track in FullSession — typically one domain (e.g. `example.com`). You can have multiple sites under the same account, each with its own tracker, settings, sessions, and dashboards.
#### Visitor
A **visitor** is a unique person browsing your site. Visitors are anonymous by default. If you send identity information through the tracker (such as an email or user ID), they become **identified visitors** and are searchable by those traits.
#### Session
A **session** is one continuous visit by a single visitor. It begins when they land on your site and ends after a period of inactivity or when they leave. Every session has a recording you can play back.
#### Event
An **event** is any meaningful action recorded during a session — a click, a page view, a form submission, a console error, or a custom event you define (such as "Added to cart"). Events are what funnels, segments, and insight cards are built on.
#### Element
An **element** is anything you can point at on the page — a button, link, image, form field, or container. FullSession lets you target elements by CSS selector to build heatmaps, watched-element reports, and custom events.
#### Tag
A **tag** is a label attached to a session, so you can find or group sessions later. Some tags are **predefined** (e.g. "rage click", "error"), and some are **custom** — added manually or automatically based on rules you set.
#### Segment
A **segment** is a saved group of visitors or sessions matching a set of conditions ("Mobile users from Germany who reached the checkout page"). Segments power filtered dashboards, funnels, alerts, and AI analysis.
#### Funnel
A **funnel** is a sequence of steps you want users to complete (for example: *View product → Add to cart → Checkout → Purchase*). FullSession shows the conversion rate between each step and the sessions where users dropped off.
#### Heatmap
A **heatmap** is an aggregated visualization of behavior on a single page — where people clicked, how far they scrolled, or which elements they interacted with most.
#### Dashboard
A **dashboard** is a customizable page made up of **widgets** — charts, counters, lists, and other visualizations powered by your data. FullSession ships with role-based templates (Executive, Growth, Engineering, Product, Digital Ops) and you can build your own from scratch.
#### Insight Card
An **insight card** is a single widget on a dashboard. Each card shows one metric (such as "Average session duration this week vs. last week"). You build dashboards by combining cards.
#### Alert
An **alert** is a rule that watches a metric, segment, or funnel and notifies you when something changes — a conversion rate drops, an error spikes, or a goal is met.
#### Lift AI
**Lift AI** is FullSession's built-in assistant. It can analyze funnels, generate segments from a natural-language description, and surface user-experience issues automatically.
***
### 1.4 Plans & Feature Availability
FullSession is available on several plans, each unlocking a different set of features and capacity (sessions per month, data retention, team seats, etc.).
#### Plan tiers at a glance
| Plan | Best for | Highlights |
| ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Free** | Individuals and small sites trying FullSession | Limited monthly sessions, core replay, heatmaps, feedback |
| **Growth** | Teams doing day-to-day analysis | Funnels, event tracking, alerts, UTM tracking, integrations |
| **Professional** | Established product & growth teams | Everything in Growth, plus Lift AI, dashboards & charts, longer retention |
| **Enterprise** | Organizations with security & compliance needs | SSO (SAML), RBAC & custom roles, audit logs, dedicated support, custom limits |
> **Note** — exact session quotas, retention periods, and pricing are listed on the \[FullSession pricing page]. Always check the pricing page for the most current details, as plans evolve over time.
#### Feature availability by plan
Throughout this documentation, features that are not on every plan are marked with a tag:
* `Growth` — available on Growth and higher
* `Professional` — available on Professional and higher
* `Enterprise` — available on Enterprise only
For example, **funnels** and **alerts** are `Growth` features, **Lift AI** and **dashboards** are `Professional+`, and **SSO**, **custom roles**, and **audit logs** are `Enterprise`. In the app, locked areas show a badge naming the first plan that includes them and an **Upgrade plan** link. A full feature-by-plan table lives in \[Chapter 17, section 17.1].\
\
 
#### Upgrading or changing plans
You can change plans at any time from **Settings → Subscription**. Upgrades *and* downgrades take effect immediately and start a fresh billing cycle — FullSession doesn't prorate the remainder of the old one. See \[Chapter 17 — Billing & Subscriptions] for the full walkthrough.
#### What happens if you exceed your quota?
If you hit your monthly session limit, FullSession will continue to display your existing data but will **pause new recording** until the next cycle or until you upgrade. Track how close you are on the usage bar under **Settings → Subscription**, and per site in the site picker in the top bar (\[Chapter 17, section 17.6]).
***
> **Next up:** \[Chapter 2 — Getting Started] walks you through creating your account, adding your first site, installing the tracker, and watching your first session.
# 2. Getting Started
This chapter is your fast path from "I just signed up" to "I'm watching real sessions on my site." You can complete every step here in about 15 minutes. If you ever get stuck, jump to \[Chapter 23 — Troubleshooting & FAQ].
***
### 2.1 Creating Your Account
To start using FullSession, you'll need an account. There are three ways to create one:
1. **Email + password** — the most common option for individuals and small teams.
2. **Sign in with Google** — uses your existing Google identity.
3. **Single Sign-On (SSO)** — for organizations on the Enterprise plan that have already configured SAML or Auth0. See \[Chapter 18 — SSO].
#### Step-by-step
1. Go to **app.fullsession.io** and click **Sign Up**.
2. Enter your work email and a password (or click **Continue with Google**).
3. Check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the verification link.
4. Fill in a few onboarding questions — your name, company, role, and what you want to use FullSession for. These answers shape the dashboard templates suggested to you later.
5. Choose a plan to start with. You can begin on the **Free** plan and upgrade at any time. See \[Chapter 17 — Billing & Subscriptions].
> **Tip** — if your company already uses FullSession, ask a teammate with admin access to **invite you** instead of signing up fresh. That way you'll be added to the existing organization with the right permissions. See section 2.5 below.
***
### 2.2 Setting Up Your First Site
A **site** in FullSession represents one web property you want to track — usually a single domain. Your account can hold **many sites**, and they all share one account-level **Customer ID** (more on that in section 2.3 and \[Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker]).
#### Add the site
1. From the home screen, click **Add Site** (or **Set up your first site** in the onboarding wizard).
2. Enter:
* **Site name** — a friendly label, e.g. *"Acme Production"*.
* **Site URL** — the domain you want to track, e.g. `https://www.acme.com`.
* **Industry / category** *(optional)* — used to suggest dashboards and benchmarks.
* **Time zone** — used when displaying dates and time-based reports.
3. Click **Create site**.
The **Site URL** matters for more than display: FullSession routes each recorded session to the correct site by matching the session's origin domain against your saved site URLs. So make sure the URL is accurate (mind `www` vs. non-`www` and `http` vs. `https`).
Your account's **Customer ID** is what the tracker snippet carries — it's shared across every site you add, not generated per site. You're now ready to install it.
#### Multi-domain notes
If your product spans multiple domains or subdomains (e.g. `app.acme.com` and `www.acme.com`), you can:
* Add each domain as its **own site** and install the **same snippet** (same Customer ID) on each — FullSession files each domain's sessions under its matching site automatically, or
* Treat closely related subdomains as **one site** if you'd rather see their data combined.
See \[Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker] for the full multi-domain walkthrough.
***
### 2.3 Installing the Tracker (Overview)
The tracker is a small JavaScript snippet that, once placed on your site, begins capturing sessions automatically. There are two common installation paths:
| Method | Best for | Effort |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | --------- |
| **Direct snippet** | Sites where you can edit the HTML / template | 2 minutes |
| **Google Tag Manager** | Marketing-managed sites, no engineering required | 3 minutes |
*(There are also an npm package and native Android/iOS SDKs — see \[Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker].)*
#### Option A — Direct snippet
1. On the installation panel, open the **Script** tab and click **Copy** (always copy from here so your Customer ID and the correct CDN URL are embedded). The snippet looks like this:
```html
```
2. Paste it inside the `` of every page on your site, as high as possible. Most CMSs and frameworks have a single "site header" template where you can paste this once.
3. Publish your site.
The same snippet (carrying the same `YOUR_CUSTOMER_ID`) goes on **every** domain in your account.
#### Option B — Google Tag Manager (GTM)
1. On the installation panel, choose **GTM**. You can let FullSession connect to your GTM account and create the tag automatically, or do it manually:
2. In GTM, create a new **Custom HTML** tag named **Fullsession Tracking Script**.
3. Paste the snippet into the tag body.
4. Set the trigger to fire on **All Pages** (a page-view trigger).
5. **Save**, then **Submit & Publish** the container.
> **Note** — full installation details, including the npm package, mobile SDKs, single-page apps, and multi-domain routing, live in \[Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker]. This section is the express version.
***
### 2.4 Verifying Installation
After installing the tracker, FullSession checks that it's actually loading and reaching your account. Verification is a live handshake — the tracker posts a **`FUS_LOADED`** signal back to FullSession when it initializes — not just a check that the snippet text is present.
#### Automatic verification
Open your site in another tab and browse for \~30 seconds, then return to the installation panel. The status will move from **Waiting for data** to **Verified** once the tracker's `FUS_LOADED` handshake is received (verification waits about 8 seconds for the signal before falling back to checking for recorded sessions).
#### Manual verification
If the panel doesn't reach **Verified** within a couple of minutes, run these checks:
| Check | How to do it |
| ----------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Snippet is on the page** | View page source and search for `FUS` or `RTSessions` |
| **Snippet runs without errors** | Open browser DevTools → Console; look for tracker errors |
| **Network calls reach FullSession** | DevTools → Network → filter by `fullsession`; you should see the `RTSessions.js` load and outbound requests to `emitter.fullsession.io` |
| **Customer ID is correct** | Verification only succeeds when the snippet's Customer ID matches your account — re-copy from the Script tab if unsure |
| **GTM container is published** | In GTM, confirm the version containing the tag has been published, not just saved |
#### Watch a live test session
The best end-to-end test is to record yourself:
1. Open your site in a fresh **incognito/private window** (so you're treated as a new visitor).
2. Click around for \~30 seconds — visit a few pages, scroll, click a button.
3. Close the tab.
4. Return to FullSession and open **Sessions**. Within \~1 minute, your test session should appear at the top of the list.
> **Common gotcha** — if you're testing while signed in to FullSession in the same browser, your session may be excluded by the "ignore internal users" settings. Use a private window. See \[Chapter 4 — Identifying Users].
***
### 2.5 Inviting Your Team
FullSession is built for collaboration — the more your team uses it, the more value you get from it. Inviting teammates takes a minute.
#### Send invitations
1. Open **Settings → Team** (or **People**).
2. Click **Invite member**.
3. Enter the teammate's email address.
4. Choose a **role** for them — this controls what they can see and change:
* **Admin** — full access, including billing and team management.
* **Member** — can use all product features (sessions, dashboards, funnels, etc.) but can't change billing or invite others.
* **Viewer** — read-only access to dashboards, sessions, and reports.
* **Custom roles** *(Pro+)* — define your own permission sets. See \[Chapter 16 — Team & Account Management].
5. Click **Send invite**.
#### What invitees see
The teammate receives an email with a link to accept the invite. Once accepted:
* They create their own password (or sign in with Google / SSO).
* They land directly on your organization's dashboard.
* They appear in **Settings → Team** with a status of **Active**.
#### Managing existing members
From **Settings → Team** you can:
* Change a member's role
* Resend a pending invite
* Remove a member from the organization
* See when each member last signed in
***
### 2.6 A 5-Minute Tour of the App
Now that the tracker is running, here's a quick orientation to the parts of the app you'll use most. Each item links to a later chapter where it's covered in depth.
\
#### The left navigation
| Icon | Section | What it does | Read more |
| ---- | -------------- | -------------------------------------- | --------- |
| ▶ | **Sessions** | Watch recordings of real visits | Ch. 5–6 |
| 📊 | **Dashboards** | Customizable charts and KPIs | Ch. 9 |
| 🔥 | **Heatmaps** | Click, scroll, and element heatmaps | Ch. 8 |
| 🪜 | **Funnels** | Multi-step conversion analysis | Ch. 12 |
| 👥 | **Segments** | Saved groups of users / sessions | Ch. 11 |
| 💡 | **Insights** | Cards and metrics built from your data | Ch. 10 |
| 💬 | **Feedback** | Survey responses and CSAT scores | Ch. 13 |
| 🔔 | **Alerts** | Notifications when things change | Ch. 15 |
| ⚙ | **Settings** | Sites, team, integrations, billing | Ch. 16–19 |
#### The top bar
* **Site switcher** *(top-left)* — change which site you're viewing.
* **Date range picker** — applied globally across most views.
* **Global search** — jump to a session, dashboard, segment, or funnel by name.
* **🔔 Notifications** — alert triggers, mentions, and system messages.
* **Profile menu** — your account settings, theme toggle, sign out.
#### What to try first
Now that you've completed setup, a good 5-minute tour looks like this:
1. **Sessions → click any session** — get a feel for the player. Hit play, scrub the timeline, open the **Errors** and **Network** panels.
2. **Dashboards → pick a template** — choose the role-based template that matches you (Growth, Product, etc.) and watch widgets populate.
3. **Heatmaps → pick a page** — see where visitors click most.
4. **Funnels → create a 2-step funnel** — pick *Home → Pricing* (or any two pages) just to see the flow.
5. **Settings → Recording Rules** — review what pages are being recorded and adjust if needed. See \[Chapter 7 — Recording Rules & Element Tracking].
> **You're set!** From here, every other chapter dives into one area of the app. If you want a guided suggestion, head to **Chapter 5 — Sessions** next — sessions are the foundation of everything else in FullSession.
***
> **Next up:** \[Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker] covers the full installation details — the `
```
The **same snippet goes on every domain** in your account. You do not customize it per site — the Customer ID is identical everywhere, and FullSession handles the per-site routing on its end.
#### Anatomy of the snippet
You don't need to understand the internals to install it, but knowing what each part does helps when troubleshooting:
| Line | What it does |
| --------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `window.FUS_IS_IN_IFRAME = (window.top != window.self);` | Detects whether the page is running inside an iframe. The tracker uses this to behave correctly when your site is embedded. |
| `(function (m, n, t, l, x, p, o) { … })(...)` | A self-executing function (IIFE) that injects the recorder script without blocking your page. |
| `window["_fus_host"] = l;` | Stores the FullSession host (`"fullsession.io"`). |
| `window["_fus_id"] = x;` | Stores **your Customer ID** — the value passed in as `'YOUR_CUSTOMER_ID'`. This is what ties recordings to your account. |
| `o = n.createElement("script"); o.async = true;` | Creates a new `
