Digital experience encompasses how users interact with your web applications, from initial page load to completing critical business actions. Optimizing digital experience directly impacts customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and business revenue through faster, more reliable, and more engaging user interactions.
The New Relic observability platform helps you measure, monitor, and improve digital experience through comprehensive frontend monitoring, performance analytics, and user journey optimization. This guide presents a three-level maturity model that takes you from reactive error response to proactive experience optimization.
What you'll learn
By following this digital experience maturity progression model, you'll:
- Establish reliable frontend monitoring to catch user-impacting issues
- Implement performance optimization based on Google's Core Web Vitals
- Create user-focused service level indicators that drive business value
- Build a comprehensive understanding of your customer's digital journey
Maturity progression model
The maturity progression model guides organizations through a structured journey from reactive issue response to proactive experience optimization and, ultimately, mastery of user-focused reliability management. Each level builds upon the previous one with specific practices and metrics designed to improve customer satisfaction and business outcomes.
Level 1: Reactive - "Fix what's broken"
Goal: Detect and resolve frontend issues that directly impact users.
At the reactive level, you're establishing the foundation for digital experience monitoring. You'll set up error tracking and alerting so your team knows immediately when users encounter problems with your applications.
Key practices:
- Monitor JavaScript errors that break user functionality
- Track server errors that create poor user experiences
- Establish alerting for critical frontend failures
- Build processes to triage and fix user-impacting issues
The following rules evaluate your reactive digital experience capabilities:
JavaScript Error Rate: Monitors browser-based JavaScript errors to ensure they're evaluated and resolved to maximize user experience quality.
Service Error Rate: Tracks server-side errors that impact users, ensuring they're acknowledged and resolved to maintain optimal user experience.
Level 2: Proactive - "Optimize performance"
Goal: Proactively improve user experience through performance optimization and monitoring.
Moving beyond reactive responses, you'll use performance data to understand user experience quality and optimize based on industry standards like Google's Core Web Vitals. This level focuses on preventing performance issues before they impact user satisfaction.
Key practices:
- Monitor Core Web Vitals to ensure fast, responsive experiences
- Implement performance budgets and optimization targets
- Use real user monitoring to understand actual user experience
- Optimize critical user journeys and conversion paths
The following rules evaluate your proactive digital experience optimization:
Core Web Vitals | LCP: Measures Largest Contentful Paint to ensure pages load quickly and provide immediate value to users.
Core Web Vitals | CLS: Evaluates Cumulative Layout Shift to ensure pages remain visually stable during loading.
Core Web Vitals | INP: Monitors Interaction to Next Paint to ensure pages respond quickly to user interactions.
Level 3: Mastery - "Deliver measurable business value"
Goal: Achieve consistent digital experience quality that directly supports business objectives and customer satisfaction.
At the mastery level, your digital experience practice delivers clear business value through reliable, high-performing user experiences. You'll establish service level indicators that connect technical performance to business outcomes.
Key practices:
- Define user experience SLIs that reflect business impact
- Maintain service level agreements for digital experience quality
- Demonstrate ROI from digital experience improvements
- Use experience data to drive product and business decisions
The following rule evaluates your digital experience mastery:
- Service Level Attainment: Measures consistent achievement of user experience service level objectives, with 95%+ success rates indicating high-quality digital experiences.
Digital experience practices
These observability practices are the actionable components of the maturity model, enabling you to realize measurable improvements in user satisfaction and business outcomes:
Quality foundation (QF)
Establish comprehensive monitoring and measurement of your customers' digital experience. This practice helps you:
- Understand current user experience quality across all touchpoints
- Identify the biggest opportunities for improvement
- Track progress toward experience optimization goals
Bottom-of-the-funnel analysis (BotFA)
Optimize conversion rates by focusing on critical user journey performance. This practice enables you to:
- Identify where users drop off in conversion processes
- Optimize checkout, signup, and other critical business flows
- Directly connect experience improvements to revenue impact
Service level management (SLM)
Create user experience service level indicators that align technical performance with business goals. This practice provides:
- Standardized language for discussing user experience quality
- Clear targets for experience optimization efforts
- Business-focused metrics that demonstrate ROI from experience improvements
Getting started
Ready to improve your digital experience? Here's how to begin based on your current capabilities:
Assess your current state
- Review your user experience monitoring: Do you know when users encounter errors or performance issues?
- Evaluate your performance metrics: Are you measuring what actually impacts user satisfaction?
- Check your response capabilities: Can your team quickly identify and fix user-impacting problems?
Choose your starting point
- New to frontend monitoring? Start with Level 1 error tracking and alerting
- Have basic monitoring? Jump to Level 2 Core Web Vitals optimization
- Mature monitoring practice? Focus on Level 3 service level management for digital experience
Recommended implementation order
- JavaScript Error Rate - Establish frontend error monitoring
- Service Error Rate - Track backend errors affecting users
- Core Web Vitals monitoring - Implement performance optimization
- Quality Foundation practices - Build comprehensive experience measurement
- Service Level Management - Connect experience to business outcomes
Measuring success
Track these key indicators to measure your digital experience maturity progress:
- Error reduction: Decreasing JavaScript and service error rates
- Performance improvement: Better Core Web Vitals scores (LCP, CLS, INP)
- User satisfaction: Higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates
- Business impact: Improved revenue metrics correlated with experience improvements
- Response efficiency: Faster detection and resolution of user-impacting issues
Next steps
The New Relic observability platform provides the tools and insights needed to excel at digital experience optimization. By following this maturity progression model and implementing the recommended practices, you can:
- Deliver faster, more reliable user experiences
- Reduce customer frustration and churn
- Increase conversion rates and business revenue
- Build competitive advantage through superior digital experiences
Explore New Relic's digital experience resources and guides to tailor your optimization journey according to your specific user needs and business objectives.