A Simple Introduction To Digital Experience Monitoring

In the 2017 movie, The Circle, Mae Holland (played by Emma Watson) is ecstatic when she joins the tech and social media company, The Circle. As a new intern, she finds navigating through the tech conglomerate a bit overwhelming at first. However, after impressing the top brass of the company, she becomes the first employee to be a part of the SeeChange program, which offers viewers a window into her everyday personal and professional life. Once the program amasses a large global following, Mae gets recognized everywhere. This benefits her with better interactions and other perks. Additionally, the transparency of the program offers invaluable and unique insights into areas of improvement, especially from an end-user perspective.

The primary aim of businesses is to enhance their customers' experiences. However, the constantly changing landscape of the digital world proves to be a hurdle. At one point, there were only a handful of devices and browsers, so changes were easy to make and manage but with the explosion of options and demand for faster service now, it’s become tougher for businesses.

As the remote working and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) culture grows, organizations must provide software applications that can adapt to the complexity and uniqueness of users’ devices and situations. Therefore, organizations turn to Digital Experience Monitoring. Let’s explore what it’s all about!
 

What Is Digital Experience Monitoring?

Essentially, Digital Experience Monitoring boils down to ensuring end-users have a smooth, error-free and qualitative experience. This is done by allowing developers or IT teams to understand the end user’s perspective and experience (whether as a customer or an employee using the software) from the moment they open an application to the time they’re done. #EndToEnd

The objective is to have a real-time monitoring solution that organizations can deploy to resolve errors and concerns quickly, forecast and avoid problems before they become costly issues and enhance the overall digital experience for employees or customers.

Now the question is how did these sweet tools come about?
 

How Did Digital Experience Monitoring Come Into The Picture?

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) came to the forefront when Gartner mentioned the term in their research report titled Market Guide for Digital Experience Monitoring, released in 2019. Although monitoring digital experiences were in practice for decades before the development of Digital Experience Monitoring practices, it hasn’t taken such precedence until recently. At the point when the number of devices and browsers was just a few, companies just produced applications and hoped for the best, occasionally releasing bug-fix patches or just launching the next version.

Coming to the present day where users are spoilt for choice as far as browsers and devices go, developers have found themselves with the complex task of providing timely resolutions, and the tougher process of forecasting problem areas to rectify them before they happen. According to Kissmetrics, an Ecommerce site, businesses could end up losing up to $2.5 million a year just because of a one-second page delay.

Although it’s a relatively new concept, Digital Experience Monitoring evolves from a few processes that were in place before, primarily Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and End-User Experience Monitoring (EUEM). As a blend, Digital Experience Monitoring provides solutions for performance from the standpoint of user experience as well as technology.

So, that’s how it was born. Now we move on to how they work.
 

How Does Digital Experience Monitoring Work?

Some Digital Experience Monitoring platforms possess unique functions. However, all tools have the same goal: to collect and analyze data that can help improve end-user experience. What the tools do is collect data regarding the performance of software and hardware components, connectivity strength, resource handling and other parameters that affect the user experience. This is done to determine if applications and devices are functioning as they’re meant to and additionally to identify risk areas that can compromise system performance or overall output.

The tools also provide solutions to the problems found with diagnostic reports detailing the cause and effects thereof. The performance is measured, recorded and reported to developers and IT teams, which enables them to act on time, reducing and resolving usage problems.  

Essentially, Digital Experience Monitoring platforms offer insights into potential problems and risk areas before they become costly, to ultimately enhance the end-user experience.

These are achieved through different methods, which we shall explore now!
 

What Are The Types Of Digital Experience Monitoring?

There are a few different ways to measure performance to boost user experience. The most common types are:
 

• Synthetic Monitoring

  This includes an automated tool that simulates the behavior of end-users by taking paths real users would probably take. The performance data is synthetically created and creates avenues for quicker, more frequent and internal testing.

• Real User Monitoring

  Also referred to as RUM (Real User Monitoring), this method tracks performance based on real user statistics. This offers a comprehensive understanding of how real users experience the application and real-life parameters.

• Endpoint Monitoring​

  In this technique, all the devices on a network are monitored. This is extremely useful for companies that work with cloud computing and cloud-based applications. It helps detect and resolve threats too.

Good so far? Let’s quickly move on to why it’s a much-needed tool.
 

Why is Digital Experience Monitoring Important?

Digital Experience Monitoring makes IT teams and developers more efficient and effective in their work in adapting to individual user needs. Along with that, it offers the following functions:
 

• Centralized Process

  Rather than running diagnostics across various devices one at a time or as a batch or having to visit multiple locations to gather data, Digital Experience Monitoring allows developers to record, report and analyze data from multiple devices and browsers at one central point.

• Technical Clarity

  With the use of Digital Experience Monitoring, organizations get better clarity of their IT infrastructure and software applications and where it stands in terms of performance, upgradation, threats and problem areas. This includes key stats such as CPU usage, memory usage, device hardware and software information, application performance and a lot more.

• Pin-point Problems

  Using a process that can analyze, calculate and record every step of the way with actual execution makes it easier to find and fix problems wherever they may lie software or hardware.

• Objective Data

  Developers get reliable and measured data of all platforms included in the delivery system, through a simplified and ordered process. Flagged concern areas are supported by quantifiable values based on performance.

• Track And Measure Impact

  The tools enable tracking of results and performance of applied changes. Additionally, non-resolvent changes or changes that create new errors get quick solutions.

• Quicker Turnaround

  Bugs and errors in applications are inevitable, especially given the wide range of devices all assembled with unique hardware and software. The problem arises when developers can’t resolve them in time. This leads to a loss of productivity. Digital Experience Monitoring enables faster resolution times as well as forecasting abilities.

Are you clear about the importance? Should be, the image above painted a picture worth 275 words (yep, that’s the count). So, let’s check out what benefits it has to offer you.
 

What Are The Benefits of Digital Experience Monitoring?

Digital Experience Monitoring offers organizations a quick and cost-efficient way to provide a seamless digital experience to end-users as well as forecast and plan solutions. Its key benefits include:
 

• Better User Experiences

  Developers can understand where end-users face problems and where the application needs enhancements. Organizations are adopting work cultures which consist of employees working from places outside the office, leading to vastly diverse experiences. By gathering and crunching data from multiple devices and browsers based on such circumstances, developers are better prepared to offer smooth digital experiences.

• Prioritizing Processes

  Despite being micro in nature, Digital Experience Monitoring offers organizations macro solutions as well. As it gathers individual user experience statistics, it can combine the data to offer an overview of the digital infrastructure, its performance, efficiency and most common problems. This enables the IT teams to plan solutions based on severity.

• Productivity And Savings

  These tools boost productivity and help to save time, resources and effort. Over a longer period, these savings can add up to a large amount. The quicker resolution of errors and timely response also brings with it better employee performance, enhanced customer satisfaction and stronger investor confidence.

• Relaxed IT Department

  Software developers and IT teams can divert their time and energy into other ongoing projects that need their attention or projects that are due to be launched. Additionally, the burden on them is reduced, facilitating better overall performance for the business.

In the end, an end user’s experience is what’s going to make or break a product and positive reviews are your best friend. Applications and browsers are constantly evolving (as they should) and with that, so are Digital Experience Monitoring platforms. Let’s see where they’re going, yes?
 

What Does The Future Of Digital Experience Monitoring Look Like?

As the complexities concerning software applications and devices grow, so does the requirement for better techniques to enhance and ensure quality delivery. With the growth of IoT (Internet of Things) devices and smart objects, enhancing the end-users’ experience is more complex and crucial than before. A key technology that has been introduced in Digital Experience Monitoring is Sessions Recordings. This offers a detailed step-by-step journey of end-users, capturing their viewpoint from the moment they start to the moment they finish.

According to Gartner’s Market Guide for DEM, by 2025, 70% of digital business initiatives will rely on the performance of digital experience, as compared to around 15% as of today. Another report suggests that the Digital Experience Monitoring market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 15.9% from 2022 to 2028, while the market size for it is projected to reach $5.9 billion by 2028 as compared to its stand in 2021 which was $2.1 billion. In short, there will be a massive adoption of this technology in the near future!
 

So, What Have We Learned?

 
Just like how in The Circle, people who interact with Mae Holland are presented with the opportunity to understand her daily experience, companies seek the same. Despite being a relatively new field, Digital Experience Monitoring has been a necessary one for a long time. Although monitoring and enhancing end-user digital experiences have been a discipline for a long time, the processes carried out under Digital Experience Monitoring itself are a new practice. With the increase in devices, browsers, IoT devices, smart objects and other items that use software applications, as well as the expectation and demand for faster service, developers and IT teams require Digital Experience Monitoring to better understand and ultimately enhance the end-user experience.