ABCs of Implementing Digital Experience Monitoring for your Enterprise

What is Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM)? Is it important for your business? Do you have a plan for it? How do you effectively plan for monitoring digital experiences?

My blog will help you understand the phases of web monitoring, the new techniques, tools, and strategies that should naturally be implemented by DevOps and IT Ops teams.

What is Digital Experience Monitoring? Why should you have it?

This is an emerging technology that goes beyond application performance monitoring (APM) and end user experience monitoring (EUEM).

Gartner defines Digital Experience Monitoring as an availability and performance monitoring discipline which supports the optimization of operational experience and behaviour of a digital agent, or a machine, as it interacts with enterprise applications and services. It provides business-critical analysis and understanding of how your application's performance impacts user experience and your bottom line.

It is seen that the DEM brings proven benefits to most modern enterprises. They are providing multi-faceted digital experiences that give customers high-quality experience and assistance in growing the business too.

In fact, "By 2020, 30% of global enterprises will have strategically implemented DEM technologies or services, up from fewer than 5% today," explains Will Cappelli, Gartner VP and author of Gartner's Innovation Insight for Digital Experience Monitoring research.

Businesses cannot overlook digital transformation the DEM strategy in today's highly digital ecosystem must be all encompassing. Below are essential elements why enterprises need to plan and move from APM to DEM.

The Internet of Things

Humans are the primary consumer of applications. But we should not ignore that for some applications machines may be the primary consumer of information. Monitoring machine to machine transactions is as important as the human to machine interactions to avoid damage to your brand and customer satisfaction.

Mobile is everywhere; everything is mobile

Many businesses ignore mobile applications. If you measure the performance of the application and receive a small number of mobile visitors, do you think that the monitoring can be left alone? Ignoring mobile applications is not at all a good strategy. Do not come to the conclusion and discount the mobile until you have all the necessary information.

It is not only monitoring performance of the application from mobile devices and providers that is necessary, but also monitoring APIs delivering content to the mobile app. API is a pillar of the mobile app ecosystem. Mobile apps rely on APIs to communicate with back-end infrastructure. Making sure these APIs are returning valid information (with no errors or delays) is a critical component of a DEM strategy.

Going 'agile'

When we talk about the Agile method, it implies an iterative and incremental method of management. Continuous testing is happening during the cycle which means that there are regular checkups to see that the product is working during the development. We never know what can cause risk. Even with testing, code releases can cause unexpected performance degradation. Being notified about these enables the organization to make changes if needed and to make the team aware if there are any issues.

Companies are including real-time user monitoring as a part of their DEM strategy as testing of every permutation of browser, device and the network provider is not possible.

User expects more than just a page load time

Page loading time is obviously an important part of any website’s user experience. But there has been a shift in terms of how well an application performs. All that matter is how the user perceived the loading of the page. Users only care about when they can interact with the page and not why they can't see the elements that are not loading. Measurements such as Speed Index, Critical Resources Index and Perceptual Speed Index have emerged to attempt to measure the perceived page load time.

Include protocols

The success of the application development depends on team communications, and the success of communication depends on protocols. There can’t simply be a single protocol in any application. What protocols matter to your organization and are they all being monitored? Solutions that only monitor HTTP can leave gaps in your monitoring strategy. Key business applications should be monitored using FTP, WebSockets, etc.

More information, more customers

Information is the only constant thing that is being served and shared. Devices such as phones, laptops are constantly notifying you of new messages, mails, tech updates, etc. We are being deluged with the amount of information we consume but it doesn't stop us from expecting more. Enterprises that don't provide immediate information may result in loss of customers.

Maintain your competitive edge

To solidify your place in your industry and to continue to grow, you must have a strong competitive edge, something that truly sets you apart from others in your field. If you fail to keep up with demands of digital consumers it may leave your company behind. You can find valuable performance insights in application performance data and user behavior with a DEM strategy.
The customers’ expectations are ever changing and they only measure that matters. They want all your online tools and communication channels to work flawlessly. Whether you’re undergoing your own digital transformation or consolidating an existing strategy, they want the best!

This is why in order to keep your customers loyal to your brand, you must bridge the gap with IT and start putting your customers first. Implement a digital experience monitoring strategy today.

ABCs of Implementing Digital Experience Monitoring for your Enterprise

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