The business environment is becoming increasingly competitive. Companies must be agile in order to differentiate their products and services from other brands. This differentiation is often achieved through better user engagement strategies that improve the reliability and availability of web services and applications.
While most businesses are familiar with the basics of managing customers’ digital experience, few recognize the essential ingredients of long-term success: performance monitoring & optimization.
To get the most from your digital technologies, you need to have a clear view of your IT infrastructure as well as how it supports your customers’ needs. Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM), solutions that help companies manage these priorities, bridge the gap between reliability and system performance with positive end-user experiences.
End-user experience monitoring platforms are not all created equal. It’s therefore important to be aware of what to look out for when choosing the right DEM platform. We will discuss below the importance of digital experiences strategies and performance monitoring initiatives.
What is the Best Way to Define Digital Experience?
Although the meaning of “digital experience” can be different for each company, the basic definition is the same. Digital experience (or end-user experience) refers to the collection of digital interactions between businesses and customers. It also describes the impression made during those interactions.
Digital experiences come in many shapes and lengths. They can also be short or long-lasting. A digital experience could be as simple as a customer visiting your website or mobile app. Or it could involve deep system integrations or regular subscriptions. Whatever the size of your digital touchpoint, it has an impact on various aspects of the customer’s digital experience.
Your job as a business is to identify the key elements of each encounter and ensure they are optimized to create seamless user experiences across your entire business network.
Also read: 6 UX Keys to Optimize Before You Start the Customer Journey
What is Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) and Why do You Need It?
Digital experience monitoring (DEM), is a process that allows organizations to set up a number of tools and processes that will help them monitor the performance and delivery of their services and applications. DEM is a critical part of improving customer experiences. It helps organizations identify underlying issues “before they impact” the customer’s digital journey.
Many companies see their websites as an essential component in creating memorable brand experiences for their customers. Organizations have invested in responsive, mobile-friendly designs to provide value to customers and make it easy for them to access their websites from anywhere. Design and usability are just two elements that make a great digital experience.
Take into account the complexity and requirements involved in loading one page of your company website.
- Internet Service Providers and Mobile Network Access
- Content Delivery Networks (CDN).
- Domain Name Systems (DNS).
- Hosting Services and ISPs
- Website Coding and OS Architecture
There are many factors that can affect the delivery of your services and applications. It is important to monitor all elements. You can’t fix problems that you don’t see and measure. This transparency is what digital experience monitoring does. It gives businesses the insight they need to fix performance issues before they affect the user and, eventually, the brand.
Understanding the DEM Architecture
Real-time data is required to optimize website and application performance. These parameters can include accessibility to products or services, reachability, the latency of the server, design accuracy, execution, reliability, and reliability. Understanding and measuring these key parameters begins by deploying a key component in user experience management–application performance monitoring (APM).
APM is a software-based monitoring program that detects and diagnoses website performance issues and application disruptions. APM analyzes your infrastructure and measures hardware resources and allocations. It also monitors code-level issues and server requests, transactions, and performance bottlenecks.
APM can be useful in diagnosing problems in your code and recognizing inefficiencies in your infrastructure. However, it doesn’t provide the level of transparency that you need to fully understand the user experience. It is necessary to integrate a comprehensive digital experience monitoring system that covers all aspects of your digital footprint.
The DEM architecture is built around the three core components performance monitoring and optimization.
- Data collection – Also known as “data ingestion”, this process collects data at multiple endpoints or network devices using simulated user interactions.
- Data Storage – All data are stored in non-relational databases management systems (DBMS) and correlated to allow for accurate modeling and analysis.
- Data Analysis – AI-driven software components run a predictive analysis using data collected from simulated user interactions. Network pings are used to identify patterns and trends that can be used to provide actionable insights for administrators.
To support each layer of DEM architecture, there are two main technologies used to measure real-time and long-term application performance–synthetic and real user monitoring.
Synthetic Monitoring
Synthetic transaction management (STM) is also known as synthetic monitoring. It uses scripted recordings to simulate the user’s actions and proactively monitors their journey. Synthetic monitoring allows you to manage all aspects of your testing. You can create customized scenarios based on user location, frequency, and application requirements.
Synthetic monitoring can be used to measure the performance of websites and applications. Synthetic monitoring can be used to gauge the performance of your websites and applications. For example, you may be able to create multiple scenarios that show what happens when a customer adds an item to their cart, places an order, or closes their session. Synthetic monitoring can also be used to predict whether your website or app can handle higher client loads during peak season or promotional periods.
Also read: Top Software Development Trends for 2022
Real User Monitoring
Real user monitoring, unlike synthetic monitoring, is passive monitoring that tracks real user activity and measures actual website performance. Real user monitoring (or RUM) uses JavaScript tags. It monitors and tracks user interactions and measures important KPIs like geographic locations, server response time, and the device they used to connect. RUM is an important aspect of application performance monitoring because it provides real performance data that can be used to benchmark your systems against industry standards and competitors.
Combining synthetic (active) and actual user (passive), monitoring helps organizations to better understand their users, while also ensuring that their systems are calibrated for all aspects of the digital experience.
How to choose the Best DEM Solution
Although the core components of most digital experience monitoring systems are identical, there are many differences in how they work and what their functionality is. While basic monitoring solutions can capture some aspects of the customer journey, they are not able to detect outages or performance trends and notify administrators immediately.
Costs and implementation are also important. Your DEM solution must be flexible and tailored to meet your business requirements, depending on how complex your website is or the application infrastructure. You also need to consider the cost of synthetic monitoring and RUM. It is important that you find a solution that allows for flexibility and scalability. You can adjust your spending according to your data usage and reporting needs. This will ensure that you don’t pay for features and services your business doesn’t require.
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