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User Journey monitoring provides a measure of website performance from
the user's perspective - whether making use of features, performing multi-page
transactions or simply visiting single static pages. The performance graphs
and error analysis provided by User Journey monitoring will enable you
to pinpoint the key problem areas more effectively and to sort out those
bottlenecks as they occur. Moreover, the data is something that all departments
can understand and share. And as mentioned, left, the call centre will
be far more knowledgeable when dealing with customer enquiries.
In summary, once the business/ marketing team decide on the core User
Journeys through the site, the process brings a new clarity to discussions
- providing hard facts about performance.
So what's the best way to approach a User Journey monitoring programme?
SciVisum recommend that you measure the agreed journeys 24/7, and have
the real-time and summary graphs available to all interested parties.
Here are the first six steps you might take in User Journey monitoring.
1. Define key journeys
Document the multi-page User Journeys that visitors to the site follow.
You don't need every possible journey; choose say the five that you feel
are most important. For example a menswear Add-to-Basket journey might
start with Menswear/ Trousers/Jeans/Select size and colour.
2. Define quality of service
For each journey, try to put some measure on quality. How long is the
maximum acceptable time? What is the maximum page-delivery failure rate
that you will accept?
3. Service level agreements (SLAs)
Once the User Journey has been defined, it can form the basis of an agreement
with third parties on the service levels they might deliver. Forget any
previous measures such as homepage delivery time or server uptime. An
SLA might be phrased in the form of:
"99% of the time the User Journey should complete in less than 15
seconds, and there should be less than 0.5% errors.
In addition, the SLA can also specify worst-case performance, e.g:
“For the worst 1%, the journey should complete in less than 30 seconds
and have an error rate of less than 3%, for ¾ of the time."
4. Monitoring programme
Set up a monitoring programme. Rather than tying up in-house resources,
consider using an independent third-party. Also, that way the Marketing
and IT teams won't be able to quibble over the numbers.
After the first month, review together any performance issues that the
monitoring has highlighted and aim for the technical team to reduce any
bottlenecks early on.
Don't try to improve everything. Aim for the best return on investment
from quick improvements.
5. Real-world metrics
Both before and after the next marketing campaign use the monitoring metrics
to decide if the performance is within the agreed service levels. If not,
then estimate what effect this might have on visitor drop-outs and overall
campaign effectiveness.
Ideally, the metrics after each campaign will show that the web performance
is within acceptable bounds. If there's any disappointment in conversion
rates from a campaign, then the root causes must be sought elsewhere than
in the web technology systems.
6. Set peak visitor throughputs
If you’re considering load testing you will also need to consider
how many visitors the site should be able to support at the same time?
You might decide it's ten checkout journeys per second, 30 add-to-basket
journeys, five registrations and two check-my-order status journeys per
second.
A clearer understanding
In our Aug/Sep 2005 issue we reported the results of a survey that suggested
that Marketing and IT teams need to talk more. While 73% of Marketing
Executives had had website failures, 26% of them never involve the IT
Department in new campaigns. 47% had no idea how many visitors abandoned
their sites mid-transaction and half were unable to discover the cause
from their IT Departments believing that it was too complicated or that
any explanation might be inconclusive. Nearly two thirds did not know
how many user transactions their website could support. User Journey Monitoring
can provide a clearer understanding for all concerned.
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