We no longer go to our bank to make a transfer, as we simply access the electronic banking service of our bank where we can carry out most of the usual procedures. All this has managed to open a large market for online services, from e-banking to e-commerce, and has forced to change the business model of many companies, where they already have online sales, a great source from income.
In order to offer these services online, it requires an increasingly complex infrastructure i.e. web fronts, databases, payment gateways, etc. With the traditional traffic and uptime monitoring, we know the state of our equipment, but can we say that even without detecting problems in our infrastructure, we are offering a good service to our users?
With this simple question arises the need to monitor from the point of view of a user, in addition to the traditional traffic and uptime monitoring. There are two different ways to perform user experience monitoring. In this article, we will focus on web monitoring;
Monitoring User Experience with Synthetic Transaction
This solution is based on the creation of fictitious users who always perform the same actions periodically, collecting metrics of availability, time, etc. In the web environment are used applications that automate the browser, and perform the actions configured in a script as a user would i.e. fill in forms, actions on the web, validation of content, etc. A robot will be in charge of running these scripts periodically. It allows to detect failures of performance or falls, notifying those responsible and reducing reaction time. With the synthetic transaction, we will always have a controlled monitoring environment with repeatable conditions.
Real User Monitoring
This solution is based on analyzing the data of all the users who access our services. These allow us to have an overview of all the transactions carried out. By having a more diverse sample window, we can process the data obtained according to various parameters such as operating system, location, browser, etc. As with synthetic transaction, it will allow us to detect in real time performance failures and unavailability. By having a greater number of samples, we can identify if the problems are only for a certain location, a certain browser, etc. This type of monitoring can be done in two different ways, either by inserting a JavaScript in our web application or by placing specific products that capture the traffic directed to our web application.
