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RUM Sessions

Analyze user journeys, session duration, and engagement patterns to understand how users navigate through your application.

RUM Session Analysis Dashboard

The Sessions tab in Real User Monitoring provides detailed insights into user behavior patterns, session duration, and navigation paths. Understand how users interact with your application and identify drop-off points or problematic user flows.

Understanding Sessions and Views

What is a Session?

A session represents user activity recorded in a single browser tab. Key characteristics:

  • Tab-based: Each browser tab creates a separate session, even for the same user
  • Maximum duration: Sessions automatically end after 4 hours. If a user is actively browsing when the 4-hour limit is reached, a new session will automatically begin
  • No user correlation: Currently, there’s no way to tie multiple sessions to the same individual user
  • Independent tracking: Multiple tabs from the same user are tracked as completely separate sessions

What is a View?

A view represents a page load within a session. Important details:

  • Page navigation: Only actual page navigation creates new views. Query parameter changes (e.g., from /products?category=shoes to /products?category=shirts) do not create new views
  • Time tracking limitation: Time spent on a page is currently capped at 30 seconds by default. This can be configured using the flushIntervalMs attribute in the SDK configuration, though this is not recommended for most use cases. See the Configuration section for more details
  • Duration vs session length: You may see a 5-minute session with only 30 seconds of tracked time on a single page due to this limitation

Accessing Session Analysis

  1. Navigate to Real User Monitoring in Last9
  2. Click the Sessions tab
  3. Choose your application, environment, and version from the top filters
  4. Set your desired time range using the date picker

Session Overview Table

The main interface displays a comprehensive list of user sessions with key metrics:

  • Session Start Time: When the user session began
  • Session ID: Unique identifier for tracking individual sessions
  • Duration: Total time spent in the session
  • Views: Number of pages viewed during the session
  • Views with Errors: Count of pageviews that experienced errors
  • First Path: Entry point for the user session
  • Last Path: Exit point where the user left your application

This table helps you identify:

  • Long-duration sessions indicating engaged users
  • Short sessions that might indicate bounce or technical issues
  • Error-prone sessions that need investigation
  • Common entry and exit patterns

Individual Session Details

Click on any session to view detailed information about the user’s journey:

Session Metadata

Each session provides detailed context:

  • Browser: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.
  • Operating System: macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android
  • IP Address: User’s network location (for debugging purposes)
  • Session Duration: Total time from first to last page view

Page View Timeline

See the complete user journey with:

  • Timestamp: Exact time of each page view
  • Errors: Number of errors encountered on each page
  • Event Type: View events and navigation patterns

The session detail view provides two filtering tabs for analyzing the timeline:

  • All Views: Shows every page view in the session, including both successful and error views (indicated by the number badge showing total views) Session Detail View
  • Views with Errors: Filters to show only the page views that experienced errors (indicated by the number badge showing error count), helping you focus on problematic interactions Session Detail View

View Details Panel

Click on any view within a session to see:

View Information:

  • View ID: Unique identifier for this specific pageview
  • Time Spent: Duration on this specific page
  • Query Parameters: URL parameters that might affect behavior

Page Attributes:

  • Host: Domain where the page was viewed
  • Path: Specific page URL path

Browser Attributes:

  • Width/Height: Screen resolution details
  • Name/Version: Browser identification
  • Platform: Operating system
  • Touch Enabled: Whether device supports touch
  • Network Type: Connection type (4g, WiFi, etc.)
  • User Agent: Complete browser identification string

Web Vitals:

  • TTFB: Time to First Byte performance
  • LCP: Largest Contentful Paint timing
  • FCP: First Contentful Paint measurement
  • CLS: Cumulative Layout Shift score

Use the search functionality to filter sessions by:

Path Filtering:

  • Sessions that visited specific pages
  • Entry or exit path patterns
  • Navigation through particular flows

Attribute Filtering:

  • Browser or device type
  • Network conditions
  • Geographic regions (via IP)
  • Session duration ranges
  • Error counts

Time-Based Filtering:

  • Sessions within specific time windows
  • Peak usage periods
  • Post-deployment sessions
  • Maintenance window impacts

Best Practices

  • Track Critical User Journeys: Monitor important conversion flows and business-critical paths
  • Investigate High-Error Sessions: Sessions with multiple errors often reveal systemic issues
  • Analyze Bounce Patterns: Short sessions with single page views might indicate problems
  • Monitor Engagement Metrics: Track average session duration and pages per session trends
  • Correlate with Performance: Compare session quality with Web Vitals performance
  • Regular Pattern Review: Check session patterns weekly for unusual behavior or trends
  • User Experience Validation: Use session data to validate UX design decisions

Troubleshooting

Please get in touch with us on Discord or Email if you have any questions.