Synthetic Monitoring: Frequently Asked Questions
One of the most important features in a comprehensive enterprise-grade web monitoring solution is synthetic monitoring. Below, we answer some frequently asked questions, so that you can clearly understand what this is, how it works, and why it’s essential vs. optional.
What is synthetic monitoring?
Simply put, synthetic monitoring is a method simulating the journeys that visitors take on a website, and then evaluating performance. The main purpose is to proactively identify errors or bottlenecks (so your team can fix them), including hard-to-find flaws that may be associated with variables such as browsers, devices, geography or network. Synthetic monitoring is also ideal for improving and optimizing performance (i.e., making transactions and workflows faster and simpler).
What are some critical insights that synthetic monitoring can reveal?
Synthetic monitoring can provide answers to core questions such as:
- How fast is our website response time at the moment?
- Are all our complex transactions (e.g., filling out forms, adding items to carts, etc.) functioning correctly and optimally?
- What areas of our website receive a limited amount of traffic, and is this normal and expected or a potential problem?
- If we are experiencing a failure or slowdown, where exactly is it?
How does synthetic monitoring work?
Essentially, there are three steps to setting up and implementing synthetic monitoring:
- Create scripts that simulate visitor interaction and behavior.
- Collect data gleaned from scripts.
- Analyze collected information so you can fix identified problems and optimize performance.
What is the difference between synthetic monitoring and journey monitoring?
They are the same thing, although generally the term synthetic monitoring is more common across leading web monitoring solutions.
How can synthetic monitoring help improve competitive advantage?
Synthetic monitoring is ideal for benchmarking performance against competitors. You can also use it to simulate traffic from different geographic locations to track APIs, SaaS products, etc. This can be especially helpful for identifying peak markets. And synthetic monitoring can help safeguard your business during times of anticipated traffic spikes (e.g., Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc.), by alerting you of any problems right away so you can make sure your website doesn’t miss a beat.
How can synthetic monitoring help improve third-party vendor compliance and performance?
You can use synthetic monitoring to help ensure that SaaS vendors are meeting their Service Level Agreement (SLA) commitments.
We are using, or thinking of using, real user monitoring. Is this sufficient?
In the distant past this was probably fine, but these days synthetic monitoring is far superior and widely recommended by experts. Here is why: real user monitoring (RUM) uses real collected user data instead of simulated data to evaluate website performance in-the-moment and over time.
In theory, this is good. But in practice, it’s problematic because there can be use cases and workflows that visitors may not trigger, but nevertheless represent performance pitfalls and other vulnerabilities. The scope of synthetic monitoring is much wider and deeper, and it’s not limited to what visitors may or may not have done in the past, or are doing at the current time. RUM is a lake, while synthetic monitoring is an ocean.
How can we learn more about synthetic monitoring?
Easy! Just sign up for a FREE TRIAL of AlertBot. There is no billing information required, no installation, and you’ll be set up in minutes. And there is even better news!
AlertBot’s celebrated multi-step synthetic monitoring script recorder is simple and easy to use. Just click record, interact with your website (e.g., fill out forms, add items to your cart, etc.), and then upload your completed script to dive deep into the granular workflow details. You will clearly see what’s working and what isn’t, as well as what should be improved to optimize visitor experience. There is NO programming required!
Start your FREE TRIAL of AlertBot now: click here.
