This month we chatted with Andrejs Antonovs, Senior Project Manager at Vaimo, to find out how he and his team use Shoppimon while developing and managing cutting-edge sites for some of the world’s leading online retailers.
How does Shoppimon fit into your work routine?
As a Project Manager at a global digital commerce agency I manage multiple projects simultaneously. So, it’s vital that I have tools that give me a quick overview of site KPIs. And Shoppimon is one of solutions I use most – alongside other analytics, performance monitoring, and BI systems.
On a daily basis immediate notifications make sure I’m the first to know when site issues impact critical user journeys. While Shoppimon’s Weekly Reports, for example, give me confidence in a site’s stability over the last seven days.
Can you share some of the types of issues Shoppimon has helped you and your team fix?
Shoppimon has helped us with many different types of issues, and resulted in changes to both our internal and external work processes. Below are a few examples of issues the system has helped us catch:
- Issues with an integration process causing a client’s Top Sellers to appear out of stock
- Following the installation of a new module on a brand’s Australia based website, Shoppimon identified a related ongoing slowdown in their UK website
- Front end errors due to conflicts between Data Storage services
- Intermittent slowdowns, caused by calls to a 3rd party API suffering from performance issues
- An error on a live production website, caused by a deployment to staging. In this example, the two environments shared a server, and required a restart following deployment
- Unexpected slowdowns due to 3rd-party scripts, such as marketing tracking tools, advertising or analytics
As an agency, how does using Shoppimon make managing your clients’ websites easier?
We have goals in place for each of our client’s websites regarding performance and stability. And we’ve found that Shoppimon is a great tool to verify that those goals are achieved.
But equally important, on a daily basis we know Shoppimon tests our sites every 5 minutes, around the clock. That gives us peace of mind, and frees the team up to focus on other tasks both urgent and ongoing, so we can consistently deliver award winning online shopping experiences for our clients worldwide.
What Shoppimon feature can’t you live without?
There are a bunch of different features that I use all the time:
- Key user journey monitoring, particularly for checkout and registration
- Performance reports with error notifications
- Screenshots of error occurrences
- Using the Scenario Editor for custom user journey creation, including: bypassing age gates, interacting with a Mini Cart overlay, etc.
- Ongoing performance reports that include First Response Time, Interactive Time and Full Load Time
- And, of course… Live Chat support
Any recommendations for e-commerce managers with multiple sites not yet automating their monitoring?
End-customer satisfaction is critical in e-commerce. In order to provide the highest quality shopping experience, you have to be able to detect issues as they appear, and one of the ways to achieve that is by using automated monitoring solutions and tools for your website. I always recommend investing time and money in these solutions to our clients, and consistently receive positive feedback from them as well as their end users. So if you haven’t done it yet, it’s time to seriously consider it.
About Vaimo
Founded in 2008, Vaimo is the global leader in delivering award-winning digital storefronts, omni-channel solutions and mobile apps. Our only focus is to drive digital commerce success for our brand, retail and manufacturer clients. With 15 global offices across EMEA and APAC and over 350 employees, we provide an international presence that allows us cultivate close, long-term relationships with our clients. With a focus on driving digital innovation our services cover the full-spectrum of your Commerce needs ranging from strategy, design, development, optimisation, cloud services, all the way to wherever your Commerce initiatives reach. We deliver solutions around B2B, B2C, Omni-Channel, PIM, Order Management and Business Intelligence. Visit their website.
