Features used: Dashboards, Real User Monitoring (Core Web Vitals) and Synthetic speed testing and monitoring.
Time: 20 min.
Dashboards are made to suit different needs, making it easy to keep an eye on website errors and speed, and quickly understand how they affect your business.
Here you can learn more about Dashboards and how to setup your first Dashboards.
Common use cases for KPI monitoring
Below you can find a few examples of different types of Dashboards, representing some common use cases for KPI monitoring.
Error monitoring
Creating a Dashboards for ongoing website error monitoring helps you spot patterns, catch issues early, and make informed decisions to improve user experience and minimize disruptions to your online operations.
Set up
1. Set up your error segments by navigating to the Segments module.
Here are a couple of examples of simple error segments using the Error condition that you could create:
- A segment of users who have visited any page and experienced any JS error.
- A segment of users who have visited a specific page (e.g. Cart) and experienced a specific JS error.
2. Set up the regular Dashboards. Click 'Dashboards' on the manu menu and pick the 'Regular Dashboards' option.
3. Start with Site Wide Line Graphs looking at Number of Sessions and Percentage of Sessions with an Error. You can create a separate widget for JS Error and API Error.
4. Next, create widgets at a Page Level so you can measure the Errors and Percentage of Sessions with Error across key pages on your site.
5. Optional. Plot and compare the trend for different errors on a line graph.
6. Optional. Add single value widgets for each error segment to show the total number of sessions during your time period.
Example of a Dashboards configured for monitoring 404 errors
A site-wide line graph tracking the number of visits to a 404 page, along with page-level single-value widgets displaying the number of visits (Overall, Desktop, Mobile), exit rate (Overall, Desktop, Mobile), bounce rate (Overall, Desktop, Mobile), number of visits from various acquisition sources (Direct, Email, PPC, SEO), and the conversion rate for visitors viewing or not viewing a 404 page (Mobile, Desktop).
4. Optional. Create alerts from the Alerts module or using the shortcuts in Dashboards to receive emails when there is unusual behavior.
Here you can learn more about setting up alerts and Dashboards for monitoring errors.
Core Web Vitals monitoring
Setting up a dedicated Dashboards to continuously monitor key web-performance KPIs across your site can help you maintain a consistent and user-friendly website by addressing issues that affect user satisfaction and search engine rankings.
Set up
1. Start by creating your Worskpace by going to Dashboards module. Click on ‘+ New Dashboards’ and select 'Fully customisable'.
2. In the Dashboards parameters, choose “Intersect”.
3. Start setting up the web vitals widgets by using a ‘Page group view’ widget to set up a widget group for each Web Vital. Dedicate each widget group to a Web Vital.
4. Use the “Page group preview” widget. You can upload an image instead of choosing a page group.
5. Add a single value widget. Choose the metric in the list, all devices, all users. We usually recommend to monitor the 75th percentile
6. Add a “Line chart” widget with the 75th percentile for the same metric, all pages, all devices.
7. To add a new Web Vital, simply duplicate the group. You will then be able to modify the widgets to point to another metric.
8. Analyze the following metrics, focusing primarily on the 75th percentile:
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- First Input Delay (FID)
Example of a Dashboards configured for monitoring the performance core web vitals on Mobile vs Desktop
Single value widget tracking LCP performance (75th percentile), Line chart on LCP performance (75th percentile) over time, Single value widget tracking CLS performance (75th percentile), Line chart on CLS performance (75th percentile) over time.
Web-performance of landing page (RUM)
Having a dedicated Dashboards can help you understand what experience users are having when landing on your website and its correlation with key performance KPIs.
Set up
1. Start by creating your Worskpace by going to Dashboards module. Click on ‘+ New Dashboards’ and select 'Fully customisable'.
2. Open the Dashboards settings, click 'Intersect' and click 'Apply'.
3. Start setting up the web vitals widgets by using a ‘Page group view’ widget to set up a widget group for each Web Vital.
4. Once you have created the group, you can then add the relevant widgets by using single value or line chart widgets.
5. Create various segments according to the web-performance KPI you are tracking and compare them on:
- Number of visits
- Bounce rate
- Exit rate
- Conversion rate
- Attraction rate
Example of a Dashboards configured for landing page web-performance
Site-wide single-value widgets displaying the percentage of visits for segments with varying levels of LCP on the entry page ('Good', 'Needs improvement', 'Poor', 'All visitors'), site-wide single-value widgets showing the bounce rate for segments with different levels of LCP on entry page ('Good', 'Needs improvement', 'Poor'), line charts comparing the percentage of sessions and bounce rate trends over time for the same LCP segments on the entry page ('Good', 'Needs improvement', 'Poor')
Learn more about web vitals monitoring with Dashboards
Benchmark your web-performance (Synthetic)
By using the Speed Analysis Lab, you can easily compare your web performance to similar websites and identify areas where improvement may be needed.
Set up
1. Select Speed Analysis Lab on the the main menu.
2. Once you have executed multiple tests, go to the 'Reports' tab to see the full list of reports.
3. Check the box of the reports you'd like to compare (you can check up to 12), click 'Compare' and look at the following:
- Performance summary between the compared pages to identify which page is performing better.
- Bar charts - timings. Look how your performance metrics compare with those of your competitors. Is any specific metric notably different?
- Bar charts - weight. Compare the image weights between the two pages. Is one type of image significantly heavier than the other?
- Video comparison. Watch the video comparison to visually assess the differences in web page performance without the need to analyze metrics.
Example of a comparison report for two versions of an A/B test conducted in two locations
The test conducted on the UK site has a lower structural analysis score at 59% compared to the one conducted on the 'USA-East' site. Additionally, it has more flagged issues (17 vs. 15) and improvements (16 vs. 14)
Compare a page of your website against your competitors
If you want to compare the performance of one of your key pages against you competitors, compare two different URLs to generate a comparison report.
1. To do so navigate to the Comparison tab, in the 'Page A URL' field paste the URL of your website's page (e.g, Homepage) and enter your second URL (the one your competitors Homepage) in the 'Page B URL' field.
5. Choose between mobile or desktop tests and select the location from which the two tests have to be executed. Click 'Compare' and look at the following:
- Performance summary between the compared pages to identify which page is performing better.
- Bar charts - timings. Look how your performance metrics compare with those of your competitors. Is any specific metric notably different?
- Bar charts - weight. Compare the image weights between the two pages. Is one type of image significantly heavier than the other?
- Video comparison. Watch the video comparison to visually assess the differences in web page performance without the need to analyze metrics.
Learn more about the Speed Analysis Report and how to interpret the different KPIs.
Go Further
Explore the following CS University courses to learn more about Speed Analysis Lap or Speed Analysis Real User Monitoring (RUM)