What is Synthetic Monitoring?

• Synthetic Monitoring Definition

  Synthetic Monitoring Definition

  Synthetic monitoring, also known as active monitoring, runs automated scripts that simulate the real user actions or behavior to identify and fix the website availability, performance, and functionality issues before end users notice them.
• Types of synthetic monitoring

  Types of synthetic monitoring

  Before we shed light on the types of synthetic, or active, monitoring, you must understand what it is. Synthetic monitoring helps you monitor and maintain the overall health and performance of a web application by running simulated tests. Modern synthetic monitors act as emulated users or remote servers that frequently interact with your websites, APIs, or servers to test their performance and availability from different parts of the world. Such emulated users or remote servers mimic actual users’ behavior while testing a particular web application. With this type of monitoring, you can test a web app before its release, minimize abandonment rates, and enhance the end-user experience. You can track your site 24/7 and receive timely alerts for performance and other issues before they reach end users. Combined with real user monitoring, you can get an accurate and full picture of your users’ experience.

  Active monitoring has three categories: uptime monitoring, transaction monitoring, and page speed monitoring. Most application monitors fall into these three categories.

  Uptime monitoring is the most basic form of monitoring and helps examine whether a website, application, or server is accessible.
  Page speed monitoring is part of a web performance monitoring strategy and helps you track performance issues affecting the user experience and page load speeds, such as slow responding CDNs and third-party content errors.

  Transaction monitoring aims to identify and fix errors in business-critical transactions, such as cart checkout, on a website by running simulated tests.
• Uptime monitoring

  Uptime monitoring

  Uptime monitoring, also known as availability monitoring, helps track the accessibility and responsiveness of a web application. Uptime monitors often use basic ping tests or GET requests to confirm the reachability of a website. Advanced availability monitors, such as synthetic monitors, can also check site accessibility from different global regions, which is critical for a business from a revenue standpoint. In addition, availability monitoring tools can perform root cause analysis, helping you pinpoint the exact causes of site incidents and minimize error-resolution time. You can also configure alerts for site downtime or other critical issues using such monitors.
• Transaction monitoring

  Transaction monitoring

  Transaction monitoring makes synthetic monitors even more effective by allowing you to verify almost every user interaction on your website or app, whether complex or simple, to ensure bug-free site functionality. For example, you can set up a simulated test to validate the form submission process on your website. Running a computer-driven fabricated test will help trace and fix form submission-related problems before end users encounter them. Similarly, you can create test scripts for other transactions, such as signup, login, and cart checkout, to ensure critical paths or workflows in an application are error-free. You can run such simulated tests at frequent intervals from different parts of the world using synthetic transaction monitoring.
• Page speed monitoring

  Page speed monitoring

  Nowadays, customers relate slow loading times with an application being unavailable. Google even penalizes websites with poor loading times by downgrading their SERP positions. Web performance monitoring can help track website page speed and response times across different geolocations, browsers, and devices. You can monitor the load times of every element on the page through advanced visualizations, such as waterfall charts and filmstrip screenshots. This helps you identify which parts of a website need optimization to improve site performance. You can assess the impact of recent changes on page load times with historical performance data and comprehensive visualizations using synthetic monitors. You can also group similar pages that are part of a single process, such as cart checkout, to monitor their aggregated performance using such tools.
• Synthetic monitoring tools

  Synthetic monitoring tools

  Monitor site performance globally: Synthetic monitors can check your site availability and performance from different global regions; this is handy if your target audience belongs to a specific area. For instance, if your preferred customers reside in the North American region, then synthetic monitors can help maintain 99.99% site uptime and fast load times in the area by continuously monitoring localized speed, performance, and other issues.

  Reliable, timely alerts: With synthetic monitors, you can receive prompt alerts via SMS, email, or third-party tools when site performance drops below expected benchmark levels. You can set up such notifications on an individual or team basis to ensure quick remediation of site problems.

  Advanced visualizations and reporting: Modern synthetic monitors can offer informative reports and data visualization features, such as film strip screenshots, to help you identify the main problem areas causing site slowdown. You can also share these site performance reports with customers and business partners to meet the defined SLAs.

  Simulate real user interactions: With synthetic monitors, you can capture business-critical interactions on your website, from signup to cart checkout, via a web recorder. You can convert these actions into test scripts to identify flaws in site functionality before users report them. Alternatively, you can create manual scripts using built-in editor tools of synthetic monitors for testing purposes.

  Analyze historical data and performance trends: Synthetic monitors can help analyze historical data to compare site performance over time, including availability, response times, and bounce rate. In addition, examining the impact of website changes or updates on performance is more straightforward with such insightful data.