User Journey FAQ

SV-Monitor monitors website performance from the user's perspective, for every step of their journey across your website, whether they are making use of features, performing transactions or simply visiting single static pages. Dynamic User Journey testing is a key part of our unique services.

Dynamic User Journeys

When planning a Journey such as an Add to basket one - don't be tempted to specify that it should find the same product every time. This does not represent real user traffic, where different products are being found and selected for each unique visitor.

Even worse, on may sites that use clever caching mechanisms, choosing the same product every time means that the journey will be unrealistically fast, because it will be getting the content from the cache 100% of the time!

For more information read the First steps on your dynamic user journey article.

How to specify a Journey

Example of a Dynamic User Journey

An example of a Search based Journey might be:

'Add to Basket' search specification

Use the form below to document your journeys. AVOID the common misconception that a Journey is a list of URLs, that are hit in series. The guiding principle is to 'Do what your Users do' - so that the choice at eac step is one pulled out from the live page, not one chosen in advance. So use language as if discussing the journey with a normal user of your site.

At each step your users see a page and from the page they select a choice from what is offered within the page.

User Journey Form

Download the Excel (PC) User Journey Form - Please select 'save' when prompted.

Dynamic User Journey testing, that 'follows like real users do' the links and choices shown on the page, not fixed URLs, will provide the metrics of real world customer experience needed to maximise your web site.

More articles on Website User Journey Testing.

What are Dynamic User Journeys?

Dynamic User Journeys are paths that visitors typically take to navigate the core functions on your website. For example user registration, login, search, look-up-times, add-to-basket or view-my-bill. Based on the principle of: Do what my website visitors do

The Dynamic User Journey approach provides universal metrics which can be understood by all teams involved with your website.

Why is a simple siteuptime measurement of your homepage not enough? The keynote reason is because your site doesn't make money or meet visitors' needs on just the homepage! With journeys being measured on your site, you can have confidence that your metrics make sense in real user, business terms.

Dynamic User Journeys are then measured using cloud testing, using a SaaS approach from SciVisum's dynamic network of servers on the internet.

How to select your User Journeys

For best User Journey Testing, jointly agree on the key Journeys that visitors make across your website with marketing/business and technical teams - choose 5 or 6 of the most important.

• Which areas of the site bring in the highest revenue?
• Which cause the most complaints?
• Which journeys best fit with the company's KPIs?
• What are the most popular areas of the site and the most likely bottlenecks?
• When promotions/advertising campaigns run, which parts of the site deal with the majority of responses?

Select Journeys which will test the core functions of your website, for example user registration, login, search and add-to-basket. There's no need to monitor more than one journey that uses the same underlying functionality. Select Journey's which test different blocks of technology.

Put a measure on the level of service that you expect for each User Journey test. How long is the maximum acceptable download time? These are the ‘Cutoff’ time values you will set in the SciVisum User Journey Testing portal.

For more information read the First steps on your dynamic user journey article.