Why the end-user experience is crucial to achieving business success

This last decade has seen abundant changes in the way businesses operate. Digital transformation is no longer a new term, however, is still relevant. It has resulted in virtual establishments superseding the popularity of brick and mortar setups, becoming the prime choice of business operations.

In spite of multiple external factors accelerating digital adoption, customers have always been the driving force behind this shift. An article by McKinsey on consumer behavior, "The great consumer shift: 10 charts that show how US shopping behavior is changing," signaled a 15-30% increase in online purchases with 75% of consumers showing new shopping behaviors since the onset of COVID-19. Adding to this, a study by AWS in 2020, "The Trillion Dollar UX Problem: A Comprehensive Guide to the ROI of UX," revealed that 88% of customers would never return to a website if the usability was poor.

Though organizations have been redrawing their strategies to put their best foot forward in the digital arena, they often fall short of ensuring a consistent end-user experience through comprehensive monitoring. The results could snowball to impact the businesses in several unseen ways.

Getting into the mind of customers

Before we get into the whys and hows of the end-user experience, let's look at a typical customer journey. User journeys are step-by-step decisions that a user takes to complete a transaction online, during which each subsequent decision is preceded by the outcome of the previous step—like a cascade.

For example, when a customer attempts to purchase something on an e-commerce website, any impediment such as a page response delay or payment gateway failure almost always drives them away to a competitor. Even if after a page delay, the rare tolerant customer stays on to sign up, any crash or delay in the ensuing steps will eventually make them give up.

Since users have to navigate multiple outcomes in their user journeys, businesses have to think them through and tie all threads together to ensure an optimal, always-on end-user experience. And to achieve that, you need a comprehensive monitoring strategy.

Real user monitoring

Real user monitoring (RUM) provides real-time insights into a website or application's performance as it happens from the customer's perspective. Often used interchangeably with end-user-experience monitoring, it gathers data from various actions performed by the end-user on the application and provides a comprehensive view of all customer actions on your website or application. It detects issues such as slow-performing transactions and JavaScript code errors with granular details and helps IT teams troubleshoot effectively without affecting more customers.

Why is RUM crucial for your business success?

Even though the concept of end-user-experience monitoring has been around for a while, the approach has gained prominence and seen exponential growth these past few years. Changes in end-user expectations, the need to provide better end-user experiences, and the adoption of newer concepts such as AIOps have caused the RUM market to explode in terms of customer demand and, subsequently, its adoption.

With the mobile-first economy growing, it isn't sufficient for IT teams to monitor just the backend performance, but also ensure that variables in the front-end, across a multitude of devices, form factors, browsers, networks, internet service providers, and geographical locations, are being monitored with razor-sharp accuracy to ensure the best possible user interface and user experience for all customers.

It is relatively simple to integrate RUM with an existing website or application by including a JavaScript snippet that captures and relays relevant data. In today's remote and hybrid work culture, RUM extends beyond profits and helps businesses sustain their operations by ensuring an optimal employee experience for their distributed workforce to stay productive.

Creating a perfect union with synthetic monitoring and APM

While end-user-experience monitoring tools produce a flurry of real data from various customer touchpoints, it is only retrospective. Some instances, however, require a more proactive strategy. Synthetic monitoring produces synthetic data by creating simulations of real-user behavior. This is particularly helpful to developers during an application's pre-launch phase when there is an absence of real customer data. The obtained synthetic data can be used to establish the uptimes and performance of critical business transactions.

Monitoring teams may often consider adopting one over another. In reality, synthetic monitoring and RUM are complementary in nature and such combined insights from past errors and user behavior patterns help create a seamless digital experience.

Similarly, using both application performance monitoring (APM) and RUM tools creates synergy rather than conflict. RUM plays a central role in creating a compelling APM strategy by providing a user's first-hand experience, while APM helps measure application performance on the server-side and provides suggestions on how to improve the application's performance: a win-win strategy.

Going above and beyond

With increased digitalization in every stream of business, there is a heightened need for real-user monitoring. Businesses with unique requirements need more than a cookie-cutter approach of standardized monitoring options and have to chalk out an exhaustive list of touchpoints to be monitored from multiple geographies and variable touchpoints.

Site24x7's RUM tool comes packed with features that help you proactively monitor your application's performance and orchestrate a variety of unique user journeys. The key features of Site24x7's RUM tool are:

1. Active observability powered by AI.
2. IT automations to troubleshoot issues with minimal manual intervention.
3. A comprehensive overview of user metrics and the ability to measure application performance across geographies.

According to Forrester's Principal Analyst Mike Gualtieri in his blog "Leaving customer experience to chance hurts companies," businesses can increase website conversions by up to 400% by providing a great online experience for customers backed by RUM. Site24x7's RUM tool helps businesses put themselves in the end-user's shoes and gain insights into the customer experience. This helps businesses deliver exactly what it takes to iron out inefficiencies and ensure top-notch performance that will cement long-term partnerships with customers.

Want to give our tool a try? Sign up for a free trial.