The preview
Beside the Hook builder, a live picture shows what your question describes, drawn in the same shapes as session replay. It answers one question before you spend a credit: is this the session I mean?
What it is, and what it is not
- It fills in as you build. The more you describe, the more detailed it gets.
- It shows the question, not the answer. It does not change when you run, it uses no credits, and it never reads visitor data.
- It is faint at rest. It pulses once each time you edit, and the shapes that changed glow. With reduced motion turned on in your system, nothing moves.
- On a narrow screen it sits under the builder instead of beside it.
Reading the shapes
| Shape | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Dashed white plate | Any page, not chosen yet. The label says how many pages it could be ("12+"). Hover to list them. |
| Solid plate with an address | A specific page. |
| Yellow frame | Converted here. |
| Orange frame | A form was abandoned here. |
| Cyan border | The session is still open. |
| Purple bar | Time away from the site, labelled with the time. |
| Light green band | Share of the page seen. Dashed edge means at least; solid means exactly or at most. |
| Dark green band | Seen more than once (seen 2x+, or scrolled back up). |
| Hatched area | Never seen. |
| Green, blue and red bulbs | Where they entered, the furthest point they reached, and where they left. |
| Faint plate with ? | May or may not exist, because of a range. |
| + | There may be more, because the count has no upper limit. |
| Cyan ring | The page view your hook returns, inside its session. |
| Red diagonal lines | Excluded: matching rows must NOT look like this. |
| Red corner on a plate | That page must not be something. |
The same legend is in the corner of the preview as What the shapes mean.
When a picture appears
| Your hook returns | You see |
|---|---|
| sessions | A session figure, always. An empty session hook shows one page, maybe more. |
| page views | A big single page for the page's own conditions, plus its session when your hook involves the session. |
| pages, form activity, form fields | A page with a form. |
| form submissions (leads) | A session figure, but only when you describe the session (its session, converted, or the submitted-on page). A plain filter like name contains hanna draws nothing. |
| visitors | One picture per session you describe. Visitor fields alone draw nothing. |
| away periods | A session with the described away period. |
A page view "involves its session" when you use its session, session converted, is the landing page, is the exit page, page number in the session, or the next or previous pages.
Conditions that have no shape (dates, campaign, country, session length) appear as plain text chips under the picture, so nothing you wrote is hidden.
Ranges and counts
| You write | You see |
|---|---|
| Exactly 4 pages | 4 plates. |
| Between 2 and 5 pages | 2 solid plates and up to 3 faint ones, labelled "2 to 5 pages". |
| At least 3 pages | 3 plates and a +. |
| Has a page view of /blogs | A /blogs plate and a + (it is one of possibly more). |
Alternatives, exclusions and sub-hooks
- match any (OR) draws one picture per option, titled "option 1 of 2".
- exclude (NOT) draws an extra picture crossed with red diagonal lines, titled "Not this".
- Sub-hooks get their own smaller pictures under "Sub-hooks, flowing in through tunnels", saying which value they flow into.
Sequences
The next page, the previous page, the pages after it and the pages before it are drawn in order, with captions such as "next page" and "later". See Journeys.
When it says nothing matches
If what you described cannot match anything, the preview says so. For example, "at most 1 page" together with "at least 2 pages of /a" reads "this part matches nothing". Fix the contradiction before you run.
Want to know why a shape appears, or why one does not? See How the preview works.