Best practices in synthetic monitoring

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, where customers have high expectations for website and application performance, synthetic monitoring has become a crucial aspect of modern-day website and application management. It involves the use of automated scripts or robots to simulate user interactions and monitor the performance and availability of a website or application. This type of monitoring is essential for businesses to ensure that their digital platforms are functioning optimally and providing a seamless user experience. However, to get the most out of synthetic monitoring, it is crucial for businesses to establish a robust monitoring plan to ensure the smooth functioning of their websites and web applications.

In this article, we will discuss some of the best practices in synthetic monitoring that can help businesses achieve optimal results, empowering you to refine your monitoring strategy and ensuring the smooth operation of your websites or web applications for a seamless end user experience and optimal business outcomes.

1. Define clear objectives and metrics

Identifying critical user interactions that the end users take through your web application, such as login processes, checkout flows, or API calls, tracking the key metrics that are essential for your business, and aligning them with your monitoring goals would be the first step in defining your objectives. Focus on simulating user transactions that have a direct impact on customer satisfaction, as this will enable swift identification and resolution of any issues, ultimately resulting in improved user experience, boosted profits, and smooth business operations. Clearly defining these objectives and metrics will allow you to set attainable targets and evaluate the success of your synthetic monitoring strategy.

2. Use realistic and diverse testing scenarios

Implement realistic and diverse testing scenarios as to how users might engage with your website to get an accurate picture of your website's performance. Create test scripts that mimic actual user behavior, including multi-step forms, dynamic content loading, and interactions across different locations, devices, and browsers to ensure that your website is performing consistently across all platforms. It is also essential to test different user flows and transactions in typical network conditions (like 3G, 4G, or 5G) to gauge real world experiences accurately and identify any potential issues that may arise during real user interactions.

3. Test from multiple geographical locations

Monitoring your website's performance from multiple locations is crucial to ensure that users from different regions are getting the same experience, especially for organizations with a global customer base that have a distributed infrastructure or use content delivery networks (CDNs) to serve their content. Deploy synthetic monitors across geographically distributed locations to help you simulate global user access, identify any regional performance issues, and take corrective measures to ensure consistent performance and a seamless user experience worldwide.

4. Set the right synthetic testing frequency

There are several factors involved in determining the optimal frequency for running synthetic monitoring tests. The criticality of the applications and features being monitored is paramount; more critical systems and business-essential functionalities should be tested more frequently . It is also important to balance the testing frequency with the potential load it places on the application infrastructure and the associated monitoring costs.

The testing frequency should also align with the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that the organization has in place for its applications. Understanding user activity patterns can also inform the optimal frequency, with more frequent testing potentially being beneficial during peak usage times. Ultimately, the optimal frequency represents a trade-off between the need for rapid issue detection and the potential overhead associated with very frequent testing. The desired Mean Time to Detection (MTTD) for issues should also significantly influence the testing frequency; a shorter desired MTTD will involve more frequent execution of synthetic tests.

5. Set proactive alerts and notifications

Configure appropriate alert thresholds and notifications whenever performance metrics deviate from predefined baselines to ensure timely detection and resolution of issues. These alerts can be configured to notify the relevant stakeholders, such as developers, IT teams, or business owners, when a predefined threshold is breached, helping businesses take immediate action and prevent any potential downtime or user experience issues.

To ensure alerts reach the right teams and are acted upon efficiently:

• Use multiple notification channels – Configure alerts via email, SMS, Slack, or incident management tools like PagerDuty or ManageEngine AlarmsOne.
• Establish escalation paths – Ensure critical issues are quickly addressed by the appropriate personnel.
• Automate incident response – Integrate synthetic monitoring with ticketing systems such as ServiceNow or ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus to streamline issue resolution.
• Reduce false positives – Configure alerts to trigger only when failures occur across multiple locations.
• Adjust alert sensitivity – Define different notification rules based on issue severity and impact.
• Use alerting profiles – Customize which issues trigger notifications and under what conditions.
• Implement maintenance windows – Suppress alerts during scheduled downtimes to prevent unnecessary notifications.

Additionally, it is recommended to prevent over-alerting by fine-tuning thresholds to prevent unwanted alert fatigues and to focus only on key actionable insights of your websites.

6. Combine with real user monitoring (RUM)

While synthetic monitoring is an effective way to proactively identify and resolve performance issues, it is equally important to monitor web interactions from actual users. Leveraging the dual force of synthetic monitoring with real user monitoring (RUM) can aid in providing comprehensive insights into your website's performance at a deeper level and helps to troubleshoot outages in advance before active users get to see them. RUM collects data from real user interactions, such as page views, clicks, and transactions, and combines it with synthetic monitoring data to give businesses a comprehensive understanding of their website's performance.

7. Monitor third-party dependencies

It is crucial to track the performance of third-party services, such as payment gateways or APIs, that your website utilizes to obtain a clear idea of the user experience at a broader scale. By proactively monitoring these external dependencies, you can troubleshoot any performance issues that may arise, which is particularly useful when your website appears to be functioning properly at the frontend level. This practice enables you to make informed decisions about whether to continue using these services or to explore alternative options. By doing so, you can ensure that these external dependencies do not compromise the overall user experience, helping you to maintain a high level of reliability and user satisfaction for your website.

8. Focus on high-priority applications

If you are new or have just started implementing synthetic monitoring for your company, then focusing on tracking the performance of websites/web applications that are crucial for your business operations would be a good start. Prioritize monitoring for high-value or high-impact applications where downtime or poor performance can significantly affect business operations, such as banking, trading, or healthcare, to ensure high availability and seamless end user experience, especially during peak business hours of the day.

9. Regularly review and update your monitoring strategy

The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and so are the technologies and tools used for synthetic monitoring. Therefore, regularly reviewing and updating your monitoring strategy is of utmost importance to ensure that it aligns with your business goals and keeps up with the latest industry trends. This could include adding new test scenarios, changing monitoring frequencies, or integrating new tools and technologies to improve the effectiveness of your synthetic monitoring. Keeping test scripts up-to-date with periodic web application changes can aid you in preventing false positives or failures that might arise from outdated workflows.

10. Test in multiple environments

Run synthetic tests in staging, development, and production environments to catch issues early in the development lifecycle. Simulate production-like conditions for more accurate results.

Begin your synthetic monitoring strategy with Applications Manager!

Take the first step towards optimizing your website and web application performance by incorporating the above synthetic monitoring best practices. With Applications Manager, you can gain comprehensive visibility into their functioning within your infrastructure. Alongside robust synthetic monitoring, our tool offers valuable insights into application performance, infrastructure health, and cloud app functionality. Quickly identify and resolve issues, streamline tasks through automation, and guarantee uninterrupted user satisfaction. Schedule a personalized demo or utilize our complimentary 30-day free trial to fully experience the extensive capabilities of our synthetic monitoring solution.