Real user monitoring

Real user monitoring (RUM) is a passive web monitoring technology that records all user interaction with a website. Monitoring actual user interaction with a website is important to website operators to determine if users are being served quickly, error free and if not which part of a business process is failing. Progressive companies are making an attempt to track customer behavior. Without reliable, interpretable data customer experience on the web is difficult to predict and hence evaluate the end user experience of the site. Customer experience is composed of complex interactions between the Web site itself and the thoughts, feelings, habits, expectations, and social references that the customer brings to the situation. Its the subjective reality of the customer and the customers perception and interpretation which needs to be analyzed. Software as a Service (SaaS) and Application Service Providers (ASP) use RUM to monitor and manage service quality delivered to their clients. Real user monitoring data is used to determine the actual service-level quality delivered to end-users and to detect errors or slowdowns on web sites. The data may also be used to determine if changes that are promulgated to sites has the desired effect or causes errors.

Organizations also use RUM to test website changes prior to deployment by monitoring for errors or slowdowns in the pre-deployment phase, they may also use it to test changes to production websites, or to anticipate behavioural changes in a website. For example a website may add an area where users would be likely to congregate before moving forward in a group (test takers logging into a website over twenty minutes and then simultaneously beginning a test for example), this is called rendezvous in test environments. Changes to websites such as these can be tested with RUM.