Real user monitoring (RUM) involves monitoring that can capture and analyze website users’ transactions on that site. It is an excellent way to determine user experience, such as transaction paths and load time. And it is one of the most important aspects of application performance management.

What it Does

RUM is a type of passive web monitoring, since these services run in the system’s background, observing interactions. A common tool used in this process is Pingdom Real User Monitoring for the business. The process can track functionality, responsiveness, and availability. It relies on processes that collect data right from the end user’s browser, and it works because of the JavaScript on every page. The script is able to gather the data from each person that visits the page, transferring the data back to you. When you are working with this process, data visualization is useful since it collects information from many users across a wide range of metrics. Being able to use area graphs and bar charts can make it easier to process the information and see what is going on.

Examples of RUM

This is used for monitoring websites and applications to check for problems that other methods of testing would not discover. For example, bank software might monitor its end-user portal to look for login problems or other issues. And a blog owner might run background monitoring to determine when pages take the longest to load. For example, during peak times, pages might timeout more, and that can cause the site to rank lower on search engines.

The Benefits

One of the main benefits of monitoring users is to determine the way they are using your app or website. And you can obtain useful metrics, such as a page’s load time. It is not hard to identify problems or prioritize issues with RUM either since you can replay users’ sessions while looking at the transaction paths. The process also helps you measure certain targets since you can track real visits to the page. That way, you can find issues at both the page and network level. If there are issues near the lower levels, they are often difficult to spot.

Best Practices

There are a few best practices to follow, which will ensure you are getting the most out of the process. For example, it is best to consider specific objectives and track them. That way, you can align your needs with company goals in order to succeed. For instance, perhaps you want to see more conversions. You could create a goal of increasing them from 12 percent to 16 percent.

It is important to relate the performance and information you gather to the business. Begin with your goals, and then allow the process to flow down to the way your systems meet your goals. Think of RUM as a dashboard that allows you to check your progress on a regular basis. You can also use this method to keep an eye on your website’s current speed. If the site loads faster, you are more likely to keep customers engaged and rank higher on search engine results pages. The same is true of mobile apps.