• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, January 23, 2014

The thing about real-time marketing is that the marketer must be always-on if they want to keep up with consumers stride for stride. But what if you miss something?

Analytics will give you a snapshot of what you missed, but SessionCam takes it one step further: actual replays.

SessionCam is a UK-based replay technology provider. It records consumer activity on a Web site and recently added the ability to record mobile Web activity.

The below video shows you how the technology works (watch from :40 through 1:15). The replay captures finger swipes, double clicks, screen resizes, etc.

Marketers could actually visit and experience their own Web pages themselves, but this type of technology could have uses in terms of gauging how consumers are interacting with a page.

A SessionCam representative told me via email that the technology “only tracks visitors on the specific Web pages that contain the SessionCam JavaScript tag, and it is not possible to track visitors once they have left the site.”

The rep added that data, such as payment and password information, is masked -- which means it’s “neither captured nor stored by SessionCam.”

While that’s all well and good, here’s a potential privacy issue: The rep said that it’s always recommended “that the use of SessionCam is covered within the Web site operator's online privacy policy, which can be viewed by consumers during any visit to the Web site.”

Did you catch it? The term “recommended” stuck out to me.

Potential consumer privacy issues aside, there is also the possibility that this technology would be nothing more than a gimmick for marketers. Watching replays of a consumer’s visit to a site would be monotonous and time consuming, to put it mildly.

But as previously mentioned, I could see it being useful in certain situations. It gives marketers something to look at other than data sets filled with numbers. Sometimes, the answer to a problem is right in front of us, but we are busy looking the wrong way.