Improving digital experienceswith measurements that matter

WHITE PAPER

Gaining a Complete View of Online Performance

2Gaining a Complete View of Online Performance: Improving digital experiences with measurements that matter

Why measure performance?

Online users won’t wait around for a site to respond in today’s rapidly

moving digital world. More than half of mobile site visits end if a page

takes longer than three seconds to load, according to research from

Google. With only a few seconds to make a good impression, that

leaves little room for error.

There are many factors that contribute to the digital experience. Some

are easy to detect and fix, while others are intermittent and elusive. To

understand the impact of performance on user experience, you need

to measure it from many angles. No single monitoring solution can

tell you everything about your online performance, but with the right

combination of measurements, you’ll be able to deliver the rich and

responsive experiences today’s users have come to expect on all of

their devices, anywhere.

Stay ahead of the curveJust like the digital experiences they measure, your performance

monitoring tools should never be static. With the well-established

relationship between fast web pages and better business results,

new insights can help you continually improve online performance

to exceed growing user expectations.

From identifying the gap between when a page looks ready and when it responds, to automatically

finding and fixing slow-downs, new capabilities help you fine-tune performance like never before.

Performance monitoring can now deliver deep insights into real user experience and business

impact, increase speed and reduce errors in DevOps, and effortlessly enhance page quality

with adaptive and automatic improvements. But to take advantage of these benefits, you need a

complete view of online performance.

End-to-end performance monitoringFor an accurate assessment of how your websites and apps perform, you must measure them end

to end. Back-end monitoring ensures the systems under your control are in top shape. Front-end

monitoring provides insight on user experience, allowing you to troubleshoot performance problems

before they impact real users, as well as when they do.

All monitoring solutions are the same.

While many solutions tout end-to-end monitoring, they are likely to miss hard-to-find front-end problems without specialized traditional and perceived RUM metrics and synthetic monitoring.

PERFORMANCE MONITORINGMYTHS#1

3Gaining a Complete View of Online Performance: Improving digital experiences with measurements that matter

Back-End Time

Combining strengths of back-end and front-end synthetic and real user performance

monitoring solutions will provide the most accurate view of user experience.

The leading methods for measuring web performance include:

• Application performance management (APM)

• Synthetic monitoring

• Real user monitoring (RUM)

Each of these methods provides a valuable piece of the performance puzzle. Depending on which you

use, you might only have a partial view of online performance. Put them together, and you’ll gain the

insight you need to engage and delight users, keeping pace with their ever-changing digital lifestyles.

Server Network Browser User

Network Time Page Load Time Interactivity

+ Do you really know when the page is ready for use?

+ Are deferred elements blocking interactivity?

+ Will CPU limitations impact mobile performance?

Back End

APM

Traditional RUM

RUM with Perceived Performance

Back-End Time

4Gaining a Complete View of Online Performance: Improving digital experiences with measurements that matter

Application performance management (APM) Keep back-end systems running smoothly

The first step to understanding online performance is to look inside. APM allows you to monitor the

back end of application performance — server, network, software, and storage details. APM can help

you identify technical problems causing delays and errors, such as a broken piece of code, an offline

server, a load balancer misconfiguration, or bandwidth constraints.

APM allows you to make sure that the software you push out to the web is ready to perform — with the

right hardware to back it up — and keeps your websites and applications in good condition. If you’re

doing business online, you’re probably already putting APM into practice. APM is critical for monitoring

back-end systems and can give you some insight on front-end performance, too — but there’s more

work to be done to vie for users in today’s competitive online environment.

Synthetic monitoring Simulate, compare, and tune performance

You’ve got the back end monitored and optimized, but front-end issues can be more difficult to find

and fix. Synthetic monitoring replicates user actions under simulated conditions, providing a baseline

for online performance and delivering regular health checks by measuring response and load times, as

well as page assets and size. Commonly used for measuring both website availability and the service

level agreements (SLAs) of key technology partners, synthetic monitoring can also be used to check for

and alert you to outages.

Because you can set up synthetic monitoring for any publicly accessible website, it serves as a useful

tool to benchmark your site against competitors or previous versions of your own site. Additionally, you

can use synthetic monitoring to simulate traffic to test pages or critical user funnels in pre-production

or staging environments. This allows you to identify potential slowdowns before they impact users

and quickly analyze, diagnose, and fix problems that you find in production. Pre-production testing

and A/B testing deliver important intelligence about performance changes and are effective ways to

incorporate performance analysis into your DevOps pipeline.

5Gaining a Complete View of Online Performance: Improving digital experiences with measurements that matter

However, performance snapshots from synthetic monitoring are periodic and limited to the schedule

you set and scripts you develop. While synthetic monitoring is great for catching persistent or known

problems, it isn’t much help for intermittent or unexpected issues. Plus, you can’t measure what you

don’t know.

Real user monitoring (RUM) Understanding real user experiences

While synthetic testing provides snippets of front-end performance data, RUM constantly

monitors traffic moving through your pages. Delivering a broad view of real user experiences,

RUM detects incidents that might occur outside of synthetic monitoring periods or for activities

you can’t anticipate.

Traditional RUM metrics include user paths and time spent on each page, as well as where and how

users access content — on a mixture of devices, browsers, locations, and networks. This information

helps you prioritize optimizations, because your slowest page might not be the most important.

RUM also identifies how first- and third-party scripts affect page load, user experience, and

business results.

RUM allows you to define key performance indicator (KPI) thresholds so you can measure and

receive alerts against them. These baseline performance metrics help you not only detect when

your site is down, but also when a problem is affecting business objectives, or just deviates from

normal performance or traffic levels. These insights extend all the way down to the resource level

to help you determine the impact of a single script, a web font, or an image on your conversion

rate and revenue— and what you gain by accelerating or removing it.

Once you understand real user behavior on your site, you can refine synthetic monitoring to be

more effective. RUM data helps you adjust synthetic monitoring to create more realistic user paths,

volumes, and actions. Unlike synthetic testing, RUM reflects only your online properties, with no

diagnostics or performance optimization. That’s why these two methods of front-end monitoring

make a perfect pair.

6Gaining a Complete View of Online Performance: Improving digital experiences with measurements that matter

Perceived performance RUM A new dimension of user experience

With the growing popularity of mobile devices, and the shrinking margin of error for online

experiences (remember the three-second rule), a new dimension of user experience has emerged.

The latest RUM innovation goes beyond reporting traditional page timing milestones to include

perceived user experience metrics.

Perceived user experience — the moment when users expect to interact with your page — is the

magic mirror for identifying the experiences your customers are actually having. These metrics

detect how visual rendering and interactivity influence behavior. Instead of just measuring the time

it takes for a page to load, time-to-visually-ready indicates when the page looks fully loaded to the

user (even if it isn’t). If there’s a gap here, your site might be inducing click rage — especially true

for mobile, where consumers have twice as many interactions with brands than anywhere else,

according to Google research.

Actual user interaction (key, click, scroll)

Application is actually ready

Application looks ready

Page load time What you’ve been optimizing for

Customer experience focus Is there a gap in your understanding of performance?

Perceived performance metrics help you close the gap between when a page looks

complete (orange) and when it is responsive (light blue) to improve user experiences.

7Gaining a Complete View of Online Performance: Improving digital experiences with measurements that matter

Google benchmarks also show as the number of elements — text,

titles, images — on a page goes from 400 to 6,000, the probability

of conversion drops 95%. Now, RUM page construction metrics

provide insight on how the elements that make up the page

impact business results. Page load time is a sum of its parts, and

complexity can strain the rendering of pages on devices. Combat

page complexity and weight issues without stripping the most

compelling interactive features by understanding exactly which

elements bog down the page, and optimizing or removing them.

Finally, delivery strategy is a key component in online performance.

To make the most of your content delivery network (CDN) — the go-to

solution for accelerating performance — delivery or “middle mile” RUM

metrics allow you to measure how your content is being distributed to

users. These new metrics open up the CDN black box to evaluate and

adjust optimization strategies.

Putting it all together You’ve got the measurements — now take action

Once you have all the right measurements using APM, synthetic

monitoring, and RUM with traditional as well as perceived

performance metrics, you need to make that data actionable. Let’s

focus on front-end monitoring since 80% to 90% of end-user response

time is spent there, according to the Performance Golden Rule.

Using RUM data as a starting point, you’ll be able to determine

the revenue opportunities for improved performance. Advanced

RUM dashboards help you calculate what you stand to gain from

each performance optimization through “what if” scenarios. If you

speed up a page or remove an element, what will it do to revenue?

This capability allows you to understand, justify, and communicate

performance priorities by quantifying recommendations, making it

easier for business decision-makers to understand and support.

By creating a list of fixes based on the best return on investment (ROI),

you can prioritize where to start making changes. And don’t neglect

evaluating the impact of third-party scripts — slow-downs or errors

could negate their value by driving away users.

Synthetic monitoring already measures user performance.

Yes, but it only simulates user performance. For insight into how real users are experiencing your site, and to design more accurate synthetic measurements, you need to supplement synthetic with RUM.

PERFORMANCE MONITORINGMYTHS#2

From perceived experience metrics, you can see when users expect

a page to be interactive and when it is responsive. Are JavaScript

deferrals or CPU limitations causing a delay between when the

page looks ready and when it actually is ready? For example, if your

JavaScript is too heavy, your page might still be loading when the

action button looks ready to press — users try, but can’t interact with

your site. By closing this gap, you will engage users more quickly and

avoid unnecessary frustration.

Once you’ve fixed the performance problems deemed most critical,

you should simulate traffic to confirm that the changes worked.

Synthetic monitoring allows you to observe business-critical flows

and benchmark other sites to check for competitive performance.

You can maintain those levels by creating guardrails for regressions

— if responsiveness slips below a certain threshold, address it

quickly before it affects users. With RUM and synthetic monitoring

together, you can also design intelligent alerts that notify you not

only of an outage, but also if you’re missing KPIs — helping you

resolve problems that impact your business, while minimizing

distractions from false positives.

User experience lifecycle management

• Which pages to monitor • What variables to test • How fast pages should be • What to prioritize for optimization • Performance enhancement business outcome

• Which pages to optimize • How to fix performance problems • Performance during DevOps process • Contrast to previous versions of competition • Website availability

Used together, RUM and synthetic monitoring allow you to find and fix front-end

performance problems to deliver superior user experiences.

I just need the data to identify performance issues.

Data alone can’t provide actionable guidance to quickly find and fix bottlenecks. A RUM tool surfaces insight from all of your online traffic to help you discover and resolve performance problems quickly.

PERFORMANCE MONITORINGMYTHS#3

mPulse tells you

Rigor tells you

9Gaining a Complete View of Online Performance: Improving digital experiences with measurements that matter

Continuous digital performance management Find and fix performance slowdowns

Monitoring performance is the first step in an ongoing process of managing user experience. Continuous

digital performance management finds and fixes problems to improve experiences and maximize online

revenue. With a complete digital performance management offering, Akamai delivers real user insight to

prioritize where to act, integrated tools to optimize performance, and scalable testing to simulate realistic

scenarios for the confidence that your applications will meet user expectations.

Identify slowdowns

A combination of APM, synthetic, and real user monitoring will identify and remove barriers to

delivering superior digital experiences. Since the front end is responsible for the majority of user

response time, layering specialized front-end monitoring capabilities on top of APM delivers a

complete picture of online performance.

Through a partnership with Rigor, Akamai offers a complete front-end monitoring solution. Rigor

synthetic provides step-by-step guidance to resolve performance bottlenecks throughout a modern

DevOps pipeline. Rigor uses in-browser simulations to measure digital performance from a user

perspective. Because Rigor synthetic monitoring is external, you can leverage its monitoring networks

to test and benchmark against other sites.

According to HTTP Archive, 40% of websites

contain between 75% and 99% third-party content.

These scripts are a part of your web experience

that is outside of your direct control. Third parties

provide important services such as analytics,

personalization, social engagement, or advertising

revenue, but how do you manage the potentially

negative impacts of third-party scripts should they

become slow or unresponsive?

Akamai’s mPulse allows you to see what’s

happening across all scripts, on all pages, all of the

time, and model scenarios to preview the impact

of a script on page load and conversion. With

these insights, you can determine if the benefits

of a third party exceed any potential performance

hit and determine if a third-party slowdown is

infrequent or persistent.

Akamai’s Script Manager uses RUM data for

insight into slow or unresponsive JavaScript.

Armed with this data, Script Manager

automatically takes action to block or defer

JavaScript execution so that it won’t interrupt

user experiences.

SCRIPT MANAGEMENT

Manage the impact of what you can’t control

Determinerevenueopportunity for performance

Prioritize focus areas that provide the best ROI

P L A N C O N T I N U O U S LY M O N I T O R , D I A G N O S E , O P T I M I Z E

Benchmark against thecompetition

Establish your performance baseline

Protect against performance regression in DevOps

Be alerted to performance issues in real time

V A L I D AT E

Quantify the ROI of your performance investments

R I G O R

m P U L S Em P U L S E

Akamai mPulse RUM provides advanced insights

into how performance is impacting actual user

experiences and conversions. Backed by the

world’s largest and most reliable cloud delivery

platform, mPulse provides perceived user

experience, page construction, and CDN metrics,

as well as integration with powerful performance

optimization capabilities. For example, mPulse can

not only identify problematic third-party scripts,

but Akamai can also automatically track and defer

scripts that exceed performance thresholds.

Optimize performance Akamai optimizations help overcome limitations

in network connections, third-party services, and

underperforming devices. The Akamai Intelligent

Edge Platform caches assets at the edge to

enable personalized experiences without server

calls taxing back-end infrastructure — providing

uninterrupted availability, even during an outage.

Akamai Ion Adaptive Acceleration uses real user

data to speed up web and mobile experiences

automatically — preemptively pushing resources

or connecting to third parties, before they are

requested by the browser.

Ion’s advanced mobile web optimization routines

accelerate page rendering by analyzing devices

and expediting requests for resources contained in

device viewports, increasing the download speed

of the visible page.

Akamai’s technology responds to users as

quickly as possible — allowing the browser to

download important resources such as JavaScript,

Cascading Style Sheets, and key images. To

engage users more quickly, Akamai Image

Manager automatically adjusts image size, quality,

and format.

Validate improvements

Once performance is optimized, it’s critical

to validate it. Simulating user traffic and

monitoring real user experiences will verify

if optimizations are working. For ongoing

quality control, you can automate optimization

with mPulse and integrate testing into

continuous integration processes with Rigor.

To prepare for peaks, Akamai CloudTest load

testing allows you to test at scale.

mPulse and Rigor help you plan, optimize, and validate performance for user

experience lifecycle management.

Akamai secures and delivers digital experiences for the world’s largest companies. Akamai’s intelligent edge platform surrounds everything, from the enterprise to the cloud, so customers and their businesses can be fast, smart, and secure. Top brands globally rely on Akamai to help them realize competitive advantage through agile solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud architectures. Akamai keeps decisions, apps, and experiences closer to users than anyone — and attacks and threats far away. Akamai’s portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, enterprise access, and video delivery solutions is supported by unmatched customer service, analytics, and 24/7/365 monitoring. To learn why the world’s top brands trust Akamai, visit akamai.com, blogs.akamai.com, or @Akamai on Twitter. You can find our global contact information at akamai.com/locations. Published 07/19.

Measure what matters todayIn today’s fast-paced marketplace, you must capture opportunities before they disappear.

The sooner you identify slowdowns and errors, the more quickly you can deliver the engaging digital

experiences users demand — and reap the rewards for your business.

To always improve digital experience and gain a competitive edge, you must continuously manage

digital performance with end-to-end performance monitoring. If you aren’t integrating the latest RUM

insights into your performance monitoring strategy, try Akamai mPulse today at Akamai.com/trympulse

to start gathering measurements that matter.

Monitor Real User Performance Ready to get a complete view of online performance?

Visit Akamai.com/trympulse to start gathering measurements that matter.

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