User Monitoring
Synthetic and real-user monitoring are both necessary to deliver the full picture.
Synthetic monitoring, which monitors website availability and performance by generating synthetic-user traffic from cloud resources in various geographies, can provide a measure of peace of mind. Companies know their websites, mobile sites and applications are available and can understand load times for users across a wide range of geographies. However, synthetic monitoring does not tell the whole story, because it does not show what users are doing – and what they're experiencing – within the site or application, especially in examples of infrequent actions or paths.
Real-user monitoring can supplement this view by helping companies understand their customers' most common landing pages and conversion paths, and what parts of their sites must be prioritized for optimization. However, it can be a mistake to rely on real-user monitoring alone, as it doesn't provide the most comprehensive, accurate picture of web page and application response time. Case in point: If a website or application takes a few extra seconds to load, some real users will likely abandon it, thereby not having their experience "counted." A worse case is that relying on real-user monitoring to detect performance problems means waiting until customers are frustrated to investigate the issue. By uncovering issues early — before their impact becomes damaging — synthetic monitoring can keep them from degrading the customer experience.
So combining synthetic with real-user monitoring is the best way for organizations to truly understand availability and performance, and identify areas for optimizations – both in terms of user geographies and website real estate.