A clearer way to review checkout.

01 / Field guide

Choose the right starting point

Frictions records eligible, consented WooCommerce checkout visits on your own WordPress hosting. Free supplies the recorder and complete protected player. Pro adds an organized review workflow.

Follow the chapters you need. The installation-sharing choice, marketing signup, shopper consent and Pro activation are separate decisions. None is a substitute for another.

All screenshots in this guide show the actual plugin with fictional demonstration data. They are examples, not customer results. Your configured checkout, WordPress roles and retained evidence may look different.

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02 / Field guide

Requirements and supported checkout

Before installation

• Check PHP, WordPress and WooCommerce versions with your host or in WordPress Site Health.
• Confirm backups and scheduled cleanup work. Keep enough database capacity beyond the plugin’s own accounting budget.
• Use a staging copy to test your theme, gateway, consent banner, caching and security configuration.
• Use the actual configured WooCommerce checkout path over HTTPS.

Do not enable recording to work around an unsupported or unresolved setup check.

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03 / Field guide

Install Free and configure the workspace

1. Install the packages

   Back up your store. Download Free 1.1.2, then use Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin in WordPress to install and activate it. If you use Pro, install and activate the separate Pro 1.1.2 package next.

2. Follow the setup screen

   Normal individual activation opens Frictions in full-focus mode. Use Back to WordPress to leave, or Exit full screen to restore the surrounding administration. Capture starts disabled. Free needs no Frictions account, installation-sharing permission or marketing signup. A sample replay shows the protected view; it is not a recording from your store.

3. Choose storage and retention

   The defaults are 7 days and 256 MiB. You can choose 1–365 days and 16–10,240 MiB in Settings. Choose values your hosting can support.

4. Connect consent, then enable recording

   Complete and test the integration below. Confirm its setup, review the sample and deliberately choose Enable recording. Enabling recording does not grant shopper consent.

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04 / Field guide

Optional installation sharing and emails

Both choices start unchecked and can be skipped. Revisit the communication controls in Frictions Settings. Stop installation sharing there; use the newsletter preferences or unsubscribe link to control confirmed emails. Read the data details.

Stopping a choice

Stop sharing or email in Settings → Communication. The plugin stops local sharing first and attempts withdrawal with the service. If withdrawal is unconfirmed, retry it. Newsletter preferences and unsubscribe links remain available.

Uninstall removes the local connection but does not contact the service. Stop remote choices before uninstalling. Purchase and account messages are independent of marketing choices. Read the current data and retention details.

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05 / Field guide

Connect and test shopper consent

function syncFrictionsConsent(analyticsAllowed) {
  const granted = analyticsAllowed === true;
  window.FrictionsConsent = { granted };
  window.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent('frictions:consent', {
    detail: { granted }
  }));
}

Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track prevent capture for every integration. Administrators and non-production environments are excluded by default. Protected replay excludes entered values, payment frames and arbitrary page content; it does not replace your store’s privacy notice or consent assessment.

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06 / Field guide

Verify your first real recording

1. Start in Frictions

   Choose Verify a real recording in Settings or recording status. Resolve any setup checks shown before continuing.

2. Prepare a shopper window

   Open a fresh private browser window, stay logged out of WordPress and add one product to your cart. Return to Frictions and select My shopper cart is ready.

3. Open your private check link

   Copy the generated link into that same shopper window. Select Run this check in its checkout panel and make your normal analytics consent choice. The link expires in ten minutes.

4. Wait for the recording

   Keep checkout open until Frictions shows Recording received, then open the verified recording. “Consent reported” alone does not confirm an upload.

The result confirms stored data from that exact shopper window. It does not certify every checkout combination. End the check when finished; if its link expires or the page reloads, begin a new check.

Acceptance, refusal and withdrawal

After confirming a consented recording, test refusal and withdrawal separately in fresh shopper windows. A privacy signal, unsupported checkout or excluded administrator visit should not become a recording merely because the store’s recording switch is on.

The private check link is temporary and belongs to the initiating administrator and site. Do not share it publicly or include it in support screenshots.

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07 / Field guide

Find the recording you need

Open Recordings. Start with one useful filter rather than narrowing everything at once. The list supports date, device, browser, checkout, outcome, issue, duration and watch-status filtering.

1. Choose the relevant observed issue or outcome.
2. Check the date range in the store’s timezone.
3. Open a representative recording and inspect the surrounding events.
4. Mark it watched after your review, or bookmark it for another look.
5. Clear filters if the list is unexpectedly empty.

Free includes the complete protected player, watched state, bookmarks and observed issue counts. Order shortcuts appear only where an eligible local association exists. No order observed is not proof of a lost sale.

What stays available

Retention and deletion apply to bookmarked and watched recordings too. A bookmark is a way to find a retained recording; it is not an archive. Expired, deleted or withdrawn recordings cannot be opened.

Two different filters

Recording-list filters select individual recordings. Pro investigation groups summarize retained eligible shopper evidence independently of those ordinary list filters. The investigation queue has its own owner, status and new-evidence filters.

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08 / Field guide

Read a protected replay

The player reconstructs approved geometry, safe labels and event timing. It is a structural replay, not a video or a pixel-perfect copy of your storefront.

• Play or seek through the timeline to understand the sequence.
• Use the event list to find observed errors, checkout changes and confirmed outcomes.
• Inspect the moments before and after the event, not only the highlighted instant.
• Keep observations separate from your explanation of what happened.

What the replay excludes

Entered field values, payment frames, product content, arbitrary original page text, images and remote assets are excluded. A payment provider’s off-site page is outside the recorder’s checkout boundary.

Use the evidence carefully

An event can help you choose a hypothesis to test. It does not reveal the shopper’s thoughts, prove why they left, or show your whole-store conversion rate. A trusted local order association may supply an order shortcut or outcome; missing association is not an inferred failure.

In Pro, Team notes and Developer brief are available within a replay. In Free, clearly labelled examples explain those tools without saving real Pro work.

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09 / Field guide

Activate Pro on this site

1. Keep Free installed

   Install matching Free and Pro packages, in that order. Pro extends the recorder and workspace already supplied by Free.

2. Find your key

   Open your purchase account, select the purchase and copy its licence key. Never include your key in support screenshots or public messages.

3. Connect this site

   Pro activation opens its licence page. Paste your key and choose Connect licence. A new installation needs one successful activation with a valid licence before Pro tools open. Check the registered site and updates/support status, then continue to Frictions. You can continue with Free while activation is unresolved. The connection does not subscribe you to marketing.

4. Manage changes

   If your site allowance is full, release an unused registration from your account. After successful activation, local Pro tools keep working on that site while offline or after updates and support expire. Ordinary retention and deletion still apply. A copied site needs its own activation. Clearing the local connection locks Pro tools immediately without deleting retained data. A release made in your account takes effect when this site next checks its licence. Existing 0.4.0 connections should use Check licence now once after upgrading to obtain the current signed activation proof.

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10 / Field guide

Explore Pro without interrupting Free

Free remains a complete recorder and player. Saved views and Investigations can appear as labelled Pro previews in navigation; a replay can show Team notes and Developer brief previews.

Each example explains the task and shows genuine Pro screens with fictional data. Get Pro leads to the purchase options. Try Pro live opens a separate fictional demonstration workspace.

Keep your task

An explicit feature-specific Get Pro click can remember the selected task locally in this browser for up to seven days. After installing and activating Pro, Continue offers the matching tool. If the recording has expired or been deleted, choose another retained recording.

Viewing a preview does not remember purchase intent, activate Pro, enable capture or subscribe you to email. The saved task contains only the relevant tool, filters, recording reference and replay position; it does not send replay contents, notes or an email address to the pricing site.

Choose a quieter workspace

Dismiss individual suggestions and hide or restore Pro preview navigation in discovery preferences. These choices are local to this browser, your WordPress account and this store. Restrictive browser storage can prevent them from persisting.

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11 / Field guide

Save, edit and share useful views

Apply useful recording filters, then save a named view in Pro. Saved views are shared with authorized site staff; they are not private personal folders and do not copy or extend the life of a recording.

1. Set filters in Recordings and check the resulting list.
2. Save the view with a brief, recognizable name such as “Mobile validation errors”.
3. Return from Saved views to apply the stored filters.
4. Open View details to rename it, replace its filters with the current filters, or duplicate it.
5. Review the displayed filters before committing a change.

If another person changes the view

Updates and deletion check the displayed revision. A stale edit cannot silently overwrite a newer one. Your draft remains visible; copy anything you want to keep, refresh the saved list, and review the current view before trying again.

Up to 100 saved views are available per site. Clear obsolete views when necessary. Removing a saved view does not delete the recordings it would have selected.

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12 / Field guide

Work through the investigation queue

Investigations groups recurring observed issues across retained eligible shopper recordings. Open a representative example near the observed event, inspect its surrounding context and choose a practical next step.

1. Open Investigations → My review queue.
2. Choose Mine, Unassigned or All.
3. Narrow by workflow status or new evidence, then choose the useful sort order.
4. Open an investigation and inspect the representative evidence.
5. Assign the next step or update your manual review status.

Queue filtering and sorting do not change an assignment or mark evidence reviewed. Evidence-review state and manual workflow status are separate. New evidence can arrive after a group was reviewed.

These are team assessments. Monitoring does not certify a fix, and assigning a person does not send an assignment email.

In 1.1.2, the evidence scan allows capture writes to proceed while the report loads. Before showing the result, Frictions checks privacy, expiry and current access again. If evidence changes repeatedly, reload when asked rather than relying on stale results.

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13 / Field guide

Add team notes and ownership

In a retained replay, open Team notes and add concise context at the useful moment. Explain what you observed and what should be checked next.

Fictional example: “At 00:18 the postcode validation message appears after the field is out of view. Check whether the error summary receives focus on this checkout.” This describes evidence and a test; it does not assert why a shopper left.

• Notes show their author and date and are visible to authorized site staff.
• Authors with current management access can edit their own notes. Conflicting edits are not silently overwritten.
• Managers can delete notes and assign an investigation to eligible current-site staff.
• Use up to 2,000 Unicode characters per note, with at most 100 notes per recording.
• Keep shopper identities, payment information, credentials and licence keys out of notes.

Notes count against the selected local recording storage budget. Deleting a note releases its accounted storage. Replay expiry or deletion removes associated notes, including while Pro is inactive. A note does not preserve a replay.

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14 / Field guide

Compare evidence around a checkout change

Use comparisons to decide what to review next. They compare currently retained eligible recordings in equal time windows, with coarse device filtering. They are not an A/B test or a whole-store conversion report.

1. In Investigations, add a short label and the time of your checkout change.
2. Read the displayed browser timezone and exact UTC timestamp.
3. If daylight saving repeats an hour, choose the intended occurrence.
4. Select the saved change, period and device group.
5. Read the eligible recording denominator and issue counts for each period together.

A recent change has an incomplete after period. Retention may leave either period incomplete. Deleted, expired, revoked, test, excluded and never-captured visits are not represented.

Fewer observations do not prove that the change fixed the issue or increased sales. Compare your own known checkout change with other evidence and a deliberate test.

Keep labels useful

Use a short, non-sensitive label such as “Postcode error focus adjusted”. A label is manual team context, not proof that a deployment happened. Up to 100 change markers stay until a manager deletes them or Pro is uninstalled. They do not retain recordings or extend expiry.

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15 / Field guide

Prepare a developer brief

1. Open the retained replay and choose Developer brief.
2. Select the key moment and surrounding range.
3. Describe the observed behavior, expected behavior and investigation steps.
4. Generate the brief and review the event facts separately from your interpretation.
5. Copy plain text or Markdown, download Markdown or JSON, or choose Print / Save as PDF.

A useful brief

Say what you saw, what you expected, and how a developer can try to reproduce it on a safe test checkout. Include the relevant time range; avoid claiming a cause the replay cannot establish.

Copying, printing and sharing

If clipboard access is blocked, selectable fallback text lets you copy manually. Printing uses your browser’s dialog; Frictions cannot confirm that you saved a PDF. Editing your draft hides the previous generated output until you generate it again.

The editor does not save draft brief text. Copy what you need before leaving. Replay links still require authorized WordPress access; there are no public bearer replay links or invited public clips.

Review every export for shopper details and secrets before sharing. Downloaded or emailed copies stay with their recipients and do not expire automatically or disappear when the original recording is deleted.

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16 / Field guide

Choose optional issue alerts and summaries

Pro notifications start disabled and use your store’s configured WordPress mail transport. They are separate from Frictions marketing signup and from manual investigation assignments.

1. Check your WordPress account email.
2. Verify that your store’s mail transport and scheduled tasks work.
3. Read the notification choice and explicitly enable only what you want.
4. Check the result and your delivery setup. A send attempt alone does not prove inbox arrival.
5. Disable notifications in Frictions settings to stop future sends.

Messages go to your own WordPress account email. They do not attach replay streams, team notes or developer briefs. Your mail provider may process recipient, subject, message and delivery metadata. Already delivered copies belong to recipients and their providers.

If a late mail handoff has an uncertain outcome, do not assume a retry is safe or that delivery succeeded. Resolve the store’s mail and scheduling problem before repeating the action.

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17 / Field guide

Retention, storage, privacy and deletion

Know the bounds

Defaults are seven days and 256 MiB. Configurable ranges are 1–365 days and 16–10,240 MiB. Each recording also has a 4 MiB uncompressed payload bound, one-hour active lifetime and 30-minute inactivity limit.

The plugin compresses chunks; it does not encrypt your WordPress database or backups. People with sufficient database or hosting access may access stored data. Secure those systems and limit staff access.

Shopper consent withdrawal stops capture and requests deletion of that visit. The request must reach your store. Privacy export or erasure failures must be resolved and retried; an error is not proof of completed deletion.

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18 / Field guide

Update safely and manage site moves

Updating from 0.4.2? That release could pause recording during an upgrade. Versions 0.4.3 and later preserve the current recording and setup choices. Check Recording status after updating; resume only if you intend to record and consent is configured. An update does not turn paused recording on.

1. Back up your database and plugin files. Download Free 1.1.2 and matching Pro 1.1.2, if you use it. Let any active Frictions save or maintenance request finish before replacement.
2. Upload and replace Free first, then Pro, without uninstalling either plugin. Use the replacement option offered by WordPress.
3. Confirm both show 1.1.2, review diagnostics and retained data, and test the consent and first-recording flow. The storage update preserves existing choices; it does not start paused recording.

Connect your Pro licence for eligible Pro updates. Your purchase account also provides matching manual downloads. Update Free first, then Pro, and keep both versions matched. After successful first activation, local Pro tools continue when updates and support expire or the service is unavailable. Normal retention and deletion still apply; Release or Clear locks Pro tools without deleting retained data.

Get the current packages Read release notes

Moving a Pro installation

Release an unused registered site from Pro licence or your account, then activate the new host or subdirectory with an eligible key. A copied installation cannot silently reuse another site’s activation. HTTP-to-HTTPS upgrades keep the same site identity.

Clearing local credentials does not release the remote registration. Uninstalling does not cancel a subscription. Manage those actions in your purchase account.

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19 / Field guide

Troubleshooting and support

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20 / Field guide

Release checks and practical limits

The 20,000-recording check

Selected MariaDB and MySQL fixtures each held 20,000 small, directly seeded recordings and 100,000 issue events. Median native capture time during an investigation report improved from approximately 1.8–3.4 seconds to 14–26 milliseconds. The report itself still took roughly two seconds. With 112 distinct assignees, one final authorization phase briefly delayed capture by up to 0.23 seconds.

These are bounded shared-host samples, not 20,000 browser visits, sustained throughput, arbitrary replay sizes or a hosting-capacity promise. The sample does not establish the performance of every notification or write endpoint.

Keep the distinction clear

Free’s official Plugin Check static and runtime checks passed with no errors or warnings. Private Pro’s runtime checks passed; its static checks retain the private-updater directory restriction and a warning for the existing mail handoff guard. Pro is supplied separately through an eligible account, not as the WordPress.org submission.

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21 / Field guide

Quick reference and glossary

Useful destinations

• Current Free download
• Eligible Pro downloads and licence account
• Fictional live demo
• Current online setup guide
• Support
• Privacy and data
• Purchase terms

Use your account email and order reference for purchase support. Never send administrator passwords, licence keys, payment details, shopper recordings or private check links.

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