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A Quick Introduction To Front End Observability

We’ve all been there. You click on a link, and it takes ages to load. Or, even worse, the whole page is broken. Instead of meeting your expectations, you’re greeted with a 404 error. Pages like this often crop up when a website is experiencing performance issues or there’s an error within the code. Either way, it’s not a great look for the business. Not only do these errors turn users away, but they also hurt the site's SEO performance. Front end observability can help you discover and fix issues before they affect your users. 

This blog will explore the importance of frontend observability, how it differs from monitoring, and how you can implement observability techniques with the help of frontend monitoring tools.

One of those tools is Alerty's front-end monitoring solution. With our observability-focused approach, you can gain insights into your terms, fix issues before they affect users, and understand how your applications perform from the end users' perspective.

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Table of Contents

What Is Front End Observability?

team in a joint effort - Front End Observability

Frontend observability is like having a window into how users experience your web applications in real-time. It allows developers to monitor, track, and analyze what's happening in the user's browser, from page load times:

  • To user interactions 
  • Any errors that occur

Essentially, it's all about monitoring the performance and user experience of your front end, the part of your application that people actually see and interact with.

Frontend Visibility

When you're working on a website or an app, many things can impact how well it performs for users, network speed, device type, and even specific browser quirks. Frontend observability tools give you the visibility to understand where bottlenecks or issues might be happening. You can:

  • Collect metrics like page load times
  • Track how long specific actions take (like clicking a button or loading a form)
  • Catch any JavaScript errors that pop up.

One key part of frontend observability is real-user monitoring (RUM). This involves tracking how actual users are:

  • Interacting with your site in real-time
  • Providing insights into what’s working well and where things might be going wrong

Problem-Solving

You might notice that users on a particular browser are having trouble loading a page or that a certain action is consistently slow. With this information, you can quickly fix issues, improving the overall user experience.

It’s not just about catching problems, though. Frontend observability also helps with optimization, such as understanding how changes to your code affect performance or how different user groups interact with your application. Ultimately, it’s about ensuring the user experience is smooth, fast, and error-free, giving you the tools to fix issues before they become big problems for your users.

Security Focus

The 2023 Observability Forecast by New Relic found that nearly half (49%) of the 1,700 respondents cited an increased focus on security, governance, risk, and compliance as the top strategy or trend driving the need for observability. 

Other top drivers included:

  • The integration of business apps into workflows (38%)
  • The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies (38%)
  • The development of cloud-native application architectures (38%)
  • Migration to a multi-cloud environment (37%)
  • An increased focus on customer experience management (35%)

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How Does Front End Observability Work?

man focused on work - Front End Observability

Frontend observability helps developers understand how their applications run in the real world. It allows you to:

  • Monitor performance
  • Track errors
  • Visualize user experiences

To implement frontend observability, developers instrument their applications with tools that can gather this data. They might use libraries or services like Alerty or Sentry to track errors and performance metrics. When a user interacts with the app, like clicking a button or submitting a form, these tools capture that interaction and log it along with relevant metrics. 

Troubleshooting Tools

If something goes wrong, developers can look at the logs to see what happened, check the metrics to assess performance, and analyze traces to understand how the request flowed through the system.

The Importance of High Cardinality

One of the challenges in frontend observability is the high cardinality of data. Each user's experience can be unique, influenced by their:

  • Browser version
  • Network conditions
  • Installed extensions

This variability means that developers need to collect a lot of detailed data to diagnose issues effectively. Tools like Honeycomb are designed to help with this by allowing deep querying of user interactions and application states.

Frontend Observability Tools

Frontend observability empowers developers to better understand their applications, not just when things go wrong but also to enhance the overall user experience. Catch issues before they affect your users with Alerty's free APM solution today!

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Why Is Front End Observability Important?

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One of the primary goals of frontend observability is to improve the user experience. By monitoring how users interact with an application, developers can identify pain points and areas for improvement. This means that if users are experiencing slow load times or encountering errors, observability tools can help pinpoint the issues quickly. 

The result? A smoother, more enjoyable user experience, which can lead to increased conversion rates and brand loyalty.

Proactive Issue Detection: Get Ahead of Problems Before They Escalate

Frontend observability allows teams to adopt a proactive approach to troubleshooting. Instead of waiting for users to report problems, developers can monitor performance metrics in real time. This means they can catch issues before they escalate, reducing downtime and improving overall application reliability. 

With observability, teams can analyze trends and patterns in user behavior, anticipating potential problems and addressing them before they impact users.

Better Decision-Making: Strategic Planning Powered by Data

With comprehensive observability, organizations can make informed, data-driven decisions. By having visibility into how their applications perform and how users interact with them, teams can allocate resources more effectively and prioritize improvements based on actual user needs. This insight is invaluable for strategic planning and optimizing investments in:

  • Technology 
  • Development efforts

Faster Troubleshooting: Resolve Issues Quickly to Reduce Impact

Observability tools provide the context to diagnose problems quickly when issues arise. By correlating metrics, logs, and traces, developers can understand not just what went wrong but why it happened. 

This capability is significant in complex systems where multiple components interact. The faster teams can resolve issues, the less impact there is on users and the business.

Increased Team Efficiency: Foster Collaboration Across Teams

Observability fosters collaboration across teams. When everyone has access to the same data and insights, it becomes easier to:

  • Troubleshoot 
  • Resolve issues collectively

This shared understanding can lead to improved communication and faster resolution times, ultimately enhancing the following:

  • Team efficiency 
  • Productivity

Supporting Innovation: Empower Teams to Experiment and Iterate

Frontend observability encourages a culture of innovation. By providing insights into user behavior and application performance, teams are empowered to experiment and iterate on:

  • Features 
  • Functionalities

This can lead to developing new capabilities that better meet user needs and drive business growth.

10 Best Front End Observability Tools

woman using best tools - Front End Observability

1. Alerty: Cloud Monitoring Made Simple

 Alerty is a cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups, offering:

  • Application performance monitoring
  • Database monitoring
  • Incident management

It supports technologies like NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js, helping developers identify and fix issues. 

  • Alerty monitors databases such as Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS
  • Tracking key metrics like CPU usage and memory consumption
  • It features quick incident management and Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize user experience
  • Its universal service monitoring covers dependencies like Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel 

Alerty uses AI to simplify setup, providing a cost-effective solution compared to competitors. It is designed for ease of use, allowing quick setup, and integrates with tools like Sentry, making it ideal for developers and small teams needing efficient, affordable monitoring. 

Catch issues before they affect your users with Alerty's free APM solution today!

2. Grafana: Open Source Monitoring Redefined

Grafana is an open-source visualization and analytics tool that integrates with various data sources. It allows users to create dynamic dashboards for visualizing metrics and logs, facilitating the effective monitoring of application performance and user interactions. 

3. Datadog: Unified Monitoring for Cloud-Scale Apps

Datadog combines monitoring and analytics for cloud-scale applications. It offers features like APM, log management, and RUM, allowing developers to track performance metrics and troubleshoot issues efficiently. Its unified platform helps correlate data across various services.

4. Sentry: Open Source Error Tracking and Performance Monitoring

Sentry focuses on error tracking and performance monitoring for web applications. It captures real-time errors, providing detailed context to help developers diagnose and fix issues quickly, thereby enhancing the overall user experience.

5. Honeycomb: Observability for Complex Systems

Honeycomb is designed for observability in complex systems, offering powerful querying capabilities to analyze user interactions and backend performance. It helps teams understand how different parts of their applications interact, enabling better performance optimization.

6. LogRocket: Session Replay for Monitoring and Troubleshooting

LogRocket records:

  • User sessions and captures logs
  • Network requests
  • Errors

This tool allows developers to replay sessions to understand user behavior and diagnose issues effectively, providing insights into the user experience.

7. Raygun: Monitoring for Performance and Errors

Raygun provides error, crash, and performance monitoring for web applications. It offers insights into user experiences and helps developers identify and fix issues quickly, ensuring a smoother application performance.

8. Elastic APM: Part of the Elastic Stack

As part of the Elastic Stack, Elastic APM provides performance monitoring and real-time insights into application performance and user interactions. It integrates seamlessly with Elasticsearch, allowing for:

  • Powerful data analysis 
  • Visualization

9. AppDynamics: Business Performance Monitoring

AppDynamics offers APM and business performance monitoring, enabling teams to visualize:

  • Application performance 
  • User experiences

It provides insights into how application performance impacts business outcomes, helping organizations make informed decisions.

10. New Relic: Comprehensive Observability Solution

New Relic provides a comprehensive observability platform that includes:

It enables teams to understand application performance and user experience in real-time, making identifying and resolving issues easier.

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What Are The Three Levels Of Observability?

levels of js monitoring - Front End Observability

1. Metrics: The Data Points of Front End Observability

Metrics are numerical data points that reflect the performance of a system over time. They can include various statistics such as:

  • Response times
  • Error rates
  • Resource utilization (CPU, memory, etc.)

Performance Metrics

Metrics allow teams to monitor the overall health and performance of applications and infrastructure, enabling quick identification of:

  • Performance bottlenecks 
  • Anomalies

They are typically visualized in dashboards and can trigger alerts when thresholds are crossed, facilitating proactive management of system issues.

Web Vitals

A group of tech wizards from Google, alongside the web community, initiated a guideline for core web vitals for websites. Web vital metrics were designed to offer a standardized approach to measuring and quantifying the user experience. Let’s discuss a few commonly used web vitals.

  • TTFB: Time to the first byte indicates how quickly a browser receives a first byte from the server. The number should be below 500ms.
  • LCP: Largest Contentful Paint. Have you ever clicked on a link and waited for an eternity for something to show up? That’s where LCP steps in. It clocks how fast the main stuff on a page appears. Aim for an LCP of under 2.5 seconds to be in the good books.
  • FID: First Input Delay. Imagine trying to click a button, and it feels like the webpage is napping. FID times how quickly a page responds to your first interaction. Should strictly be below 100ms, because no one like the delays after interactions.
  • CLS: Cumulative Layout Shift keeps track of surprise layout changes while your page loads. CLS should be less than 0.1.

2. Logs: The Detailed Records of Front End Observability

Logs are detailed records of events that occur within a system. They provide context around actions taken by applications and users, capturing information about:

  • Errors
  • TransactionsSystem behavior

Logs are essential for diagnosing issues because they can reveal the sequence of events leading up to a problem, unlike metrics, which aggregate data points, logs offer a granular view, allowing teams to perform deep dives into specific incidents to understand their root causes.

3. Traces: The Pathway of Requests Through a System

Traces track the path of requests as they flow through various distributed system components. They provide visibility into the interactions between services, showing:

  • How requests are processed 
  • Where delays may occur

Distributed tracing is particularly valuable in microservices architectures, where a single user request may involve multiple services. By analyzing traces, teams can identify performance bottlenecks and optimize the overall request flow, enhancing application performance and user experience.

Integration of the Three Pillars: Correlating Metrics, Logs, and Traces for Front End Observability 

The real power of observability comes from integrating these three pillars. By correlating metrics, logs, and traces, teams can comprehensively understand system behavior. If a metric indicates a performance drop, logs can provide context about what happened during that time, and traces can show the affected request paths. 

This holistic view enables faster diagnosis and resolution of issues, ultimately leading to:

  • Improved system reliability 
  • User satisfaction

What Is End-to-End Observability?

a small team meeting - Front End Observability

End-to-end observability focuses on monitoring and analyzing an entire system, providing visibility into all components and their interactions from start to finish. 

It is particularly crucial in complex environments, such as those utilizing microservices and cloud-native architectures, where understanding the flow of data and requests across various services is essential for:

  • Maintaining performance 
  • Reliability

Key Aspects of End-to-End Observability Holistic View

End-to-end observability aims to provide a unified view of an application’s performance and health by collecting data from various sources, including:

This comprehensive approach allows organizations to see how different components of their systems interact and impact each other, facilitating:

  • Troubleshooting 
  • Optimization

Proactive Monitoring

By continuously collecting and analyzing real-time data, end-to-end observability enables teams to detect anomalies, bottlenecks, or potential performance issues before they affect users. This approach is crucial for:

  • Maintaining a seamless user experience 
  • Ensuring system reliability

Root Cause Analysis

When incidents occur, end-to-end observability helps teams quickly identify the root cause by correlating data from different sources. This capability is critical for:

  • Resolving issues efficiently 
  • Minimizing downtime

Traceability

End-to-end observability often includes end-to-end traceability, which tracks the flow of requests and transactions across the system. This feature allows organizations to visualize a request's complete journey, making it easier to identify:

  • Latency issues 
  • Service dependencies

Data Correlation and Contextualization

Effective observability goes beyond merely collecting data; it involves correlating and contextualizing it to provide meaningful insights. This means that teams can understand not just what is happening in the system, but why it is happening, allowing for more informed decision-making.

What Is Wavefront Observability?

team working on Front End Observability

Wavefront observability, also known as VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront, is a robust cloud-based monitoring and analytics tool designed to give organizations deep insights into their systems' performance. 

Think of it as a way to keep a close eye on how your applications, servers, and other infrastructure components are doing in real-time, using data that’s already being collected from various sources like:

  • AWS
  • JMX
  • CollectD

Data Analysis

Wavefront is particularly useful for handling large volumes of time-series data—basically, data that tracks changes over time, like CPU usage or network traffic.

Wavefront enables users not just to visualize data through charts but also to:

  • Run mathematical operations
  • Identify anomalies
  • Track key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Set up alerts when something looks off

Problem Prevention

It’s like having a constant health monitor for your systems, helping to detect problems before they become major issues.

Now, when you pair Wavefront with Grafana, which is another widely used observability platform, you get the best of both worlds. Grafana allows you to pull in data from Wavefront and other sources, like Prometheus or InfluxDB, and visualize it all in one place.

Unified View

This single-pane view makes tracking system health much easier because you don’t need to jump between different tools or dashboards. With Grafana’s flexibility, you can mix data from other sources into one dashboard, perform calculations on the spot, and track everything in real time without needing to move or duplicate your data.

For teams using Amazon Managed Grafana, the integration with Wavefront takes things even further. You can query and visualize data from Wavefront directly inside Grafana, making it an efficient way to monitor your infrastructure’s performance without the hassle of moving data around. 

Data Flexibility

Grafana’s ability to transform and compute data on the user level reduces the need for heavy data preparation, allowing for faster insights.

Whether you're trying to monitor your cloud services, run complex computations, or just get a quick overview of your systems' performance, Wavefront combined with Grafana offers a flexible, scalable observability solution.

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Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's Free APM Solution

Alerty takes a fresh approach to front end observability, focusing on the needs of developers and early-stage startups. Its affordable pricing, streamlined setup and user-friendly design help take the stress out of monitoring. 

Instead of bombarding users with confusing data, Alerty uses AI to simplify observability. For instance, its free application performance monitoring (APM) solution automatically identifies the issues slowing down your Next.js application and helps you fix them quickly.

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