As a writer at HubSpot, I have unfiltered access to some of the most experienced UX researchers in the industry. I also have 11 tabs about end-user experience monitoring open for research.
If you’re in IT and/or new to the world of user-experience design, this article will give you a good idea of what end-user experience monitoring is and how to use it as a powerful tool to support your IT operations team.
What is End-User Experience Monitoring?
End-user experience monitoring, or EUEM, is the practice of tracking the experience of people using a product, application, website, or service. EUEM allows IT professionals to quickly identify and prioritize IT fixes before they create major ramifications.
Sometimes, companies will also run basic synthetic monitoring to boost website performance. Synthetic monitoring, in a nutshell, uses software to simulate user interactions at different levels.
Use the following jump links to navigate the article or keep scrolling:
- How does EUEM work?
- Common End-User Experience Monitoring Metrics
- End-User Experience Monitoring Tools
How does EUEM work?
EUEM lets IT professionals see how users interact with the end product and what pain points they might be experiencing. Tracking page load time, network latency, resource download speed, and more can help give insights into overall website performance.
EUEM is best used for teams with applications or services in the digital experience industry. Since you’re mostly monitoring how people directly interact with your website or application, you’ll want to monitor EUEM when you have a team to address any potential issues.
Let’s imagine that you’re running an application for a fast-food restaurant with a rewards program for frequent customers. Because user experience is so important, this is a situation where an end-user experience monitoring tool would be invaluable.
Say a customer has had a long day at work and has been looking forward to using one of their rewards to get a free chalupa but keeps running into an issue that stops them from reaching the checkout section. Now, let’s say that hundreds of customers are experiencing similar issues, and the support team can’t reproduce the issue on its own.
The support team can quickly use an end-user experience monitoring tool, like Cisco AppDynamics, to capture real-time data on customer interactions with the application. They can then use that data to identify technical issues that could be causing the issue and work toward a solution as soon as possible. Chalupas for everyone.
Common End-User Experience Monitoring Metrics
To monitor the end-user experience, UX teams will consider several metrics that reflect the user experience, including:
1. Response Rate
Andrew Meinert, a Director of Systems Operations at HubSpot, says that HubSpot uses response rates to measure the expected performance from our pages. A response time is the speed at which a server can respond to a request, like scrolling through the page or clicking on an internal link. High response times can indicate inefficiencies in server structure.
2. Page Load Time
This metric is self-explanatory: How long does it take for a web page to load fully? Page load speed is important for conversions: a B2B site that loads in 1 second has a five-times higher conversion rate than a site that loads in 10 seconds.
3. Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate can indicate several potential problems, but they all boil down to a lack of engagement. Maybe your website isn’t mobile-friendly, so people leave after seeing a poorly constructed site for their phones. Maybe something is causing your website to crash. Maybe the content doesn’t match the keyword you’re ranking for. Whatever the problem may be, this is a key metric to keep in mind when monitoring your end-user experience.
4. Network Latency
Sometimes, your users could experience performance issues that aren’t your website or application’s fault. Network latency helps identify performance issues that are out of your control.
5. Gateway Performance
Sometimes, a busy internet or cloud storage gateway can lead to performance issues and slow load times.
Performance metrics aren’t the only thing you should be monitoring for end-user experience.
What other metrics should you monitor for end-user experience?
Outside of your own performance metrics, the best EUEM tools let you monitor other factors that could affect the end-user experience. Here are some of those factors.
1. Web Application Data
Are your end-users using Google Chrome, Firefox, or Edge? The web application you’re using can greatly affect performance, which is why many EUEM tools support this for monitoring purposes.
2. Regional Data
This one is a no-brainer. If your servers are mostly located in one region, like the United States, people outside that region will have more difficulty than those within the region.
Knowing these factors can help you understand what issues your customers are potentially dealing with when accessing your website. Equipping your IT team with this knowledge will help them solve customer issues more efficiently.
3. Device Type
Depending on whether a user accesses your page or application through a desktop or mobile device, they could have a very different experience. For example, if your mobile users have a high bounce rate but your desktop users don’t, this likely means you’re having an issue with your mobile site.
End-User Experience Monitoring Tools
Choosing the right EUEM tool simply comes down to your organization’s needs. I asked Andrew which tools we at the HubSpot team use to monitor the end-user experience. Aside from the obvious Content Hub, Andrew said: “We leverage Catchpoint for transactional monitoring and logic monitor for basic synthetic monitoring.” I’ll go into all these tools in detail, as well as Cisco AppDynamics, one of the most popular tools for end-user experience monitoring.
1. Content Hub
Best For: All-around website platform
Content Hub is the only option on this list to let you build/host a website while giving you access to end-user experience monitoring tools. This is the best platform to run your company’s website without missing a beat.
2. Cisco AppDynamics
Best For: All-around performance monitoring
Cisco AppDynamics is one of the most popular EUEM monitoring tools because of how powerful it is. You get access to monitor any performance metric that you’d want. Here are some examples from Cisco's website: error rates, CPU usage, response times, request rates, uptime, and much more.
3. CatchPoint
Best For: Transactional Monitoring
As mentioned previously, HubSpotters use this tool for transactional monitoring. This means monitoring customer transactions to get a full picture of the customer experience. Catchpoint is a good tool in general to use as a preventative measure. It can be a little more difficult to set up since you have to build the transactional steps manually, but it’s effective at closely mirroring the user experience.
4. Logic Monitor
Best For: Basic Synthetic Monitoring + AI insights
As mentioned above, HubSpotters use Logic Monitor for basic synthetic monitoring, essentially using the tool as a reliable way to tell if a service is up or down. Logic Monitor also has nice AI integration from its website: “Advanced machine learning techniques automatically identify features in the alert data to correlate the disparate alerts into connected insights based on time, resources involved, environment, and other significant features of the enriched alert data.”
Implementing End-User Experience Monitoring
It’s time to take your newfound knowledge into action and start implementing end-user experience monitoring into your own IT operations workflow. Depending on where you are in your business, decide which of the tools I mentioned above works best for you. From there, it’s all about setting up and delivering.
