TeaLeaf debuts customer experience dashboard

TeaLeaf this week introduced a dashboard application that the company says will enable users of its flagship application performance-management product better understand why customers abandon online applications and Web sites.

The dashboard application, TeaLeaf cxView, offers IT and business managers a portal through which they can monitor application performance from the user or customer perspective and pose what-if scenarios to improve performance going forward, the company says. The product, which works with TeaLeaf CX, provides business-impact dashboards that track in real-time performance indicators.

In addition, the company upgraded CX to perform event analysis in real time. The product also lets IT managers replay the experience a customer or user had with an application via any browser or Flex and Flash applications.

"Our customers have problems with conversion and drop-off rates on their sites and want to use TeaLeaf to understand why abandonment of a particular page or application is high," says John Dawes, vice president of product management at TeaLeaf. "This can go beyond availability and performance metrics to understand what the patience of the end user will endure."

Application and site abandonment can equal big money to some online businesses. For instance, in the case of online retailers, TeaLeaf says that 40% of users switch to a competitor or abandon the online purchase entirely if they hit a snag with an online application or Web site transaction. The company also reports that 4.5% of all transactions are affected by performance or other issues, which roughly translates to $9 billion in transaction affected in 2006. And TeaLeaf says one unknown issue can equal the financial impact of one week of downtime.

The information collected and analyzed by TeaLeaf products could help IT managers more quickly pinpoint the source of problems and fix them to prevent further financial or performance impact, industry watchers say.