The Hidden Dangers of Web App Issues: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

The Silent Sufferers

When was the last time you encountered a mysterious JavaScript error, slow performance, or a vague UX issue while using a web app? Chances are, you didn’t stick around to report the problem. You’re not alone. Most users who experience issues simply leave or suffer in silence, leaving developers to deal with the aftermath.

The Flawed Approach to Error Reporting

Traditional error reporting tools can be overwhelming, capturing some useful information like stack traces, but often falling short in three key areas:

• Too Much Noise: Alerting systems can be too sensitive, generating a barrage of errors that obscure the real issues.
• Lack of Context: Without understanding the root cause or impact of an issue on users, it’s difficult to prioritize fixes.
• Narrow Focus: JavaScript errors dominate the spotlight, while other critical issues like network errors, UX problems, and slow performance are neglected.

A New Era of Issue Management

A modern approach to issue management revolutionizes the way you tackle web app problems. An easy-to-use dashboard visualizes your frontend application’s health, surfacing and tagging issues based on their impact on users. With a powerful rules engine, you can categorize issues automatically, ensuring that high-impact problems receive prompt attention.

// Example of a rules engine in action
const issueRules = {
  highImpact: (issue) => issue.affects > 10 && issue.severity === 'critical',
  lowImpact: (issue) => issue.affects < 5 && issue.severity === 'inor',
};

The Power of Visualization

A clear understanding of your application’s health over time is crucial. A Summary View showcases the percentage of user sessions affected by different issue types, enabling teams to set goals, prioritize fixes, and track progress.

Triage Made Easy

Below the Summary View, a list of active issues ranked by priority awaits. With a single click, you can access a pixel-perfect session replay video, accurately capturing the user’s experience. This context-rich information helps you evaluate the issue’s impact, ranging from negligible to catastrophic.

Rules Engine: The Key to Efficient Triage

Once you’ve assessed an issue, a rules engine lets you tag it, ensuring that similar issues are categorized automatically. This automation cuts through the noise, streamlining your workflow and guaranteeing that high-impact issues receive timely attention.

Timely Alerts, Without the Fatigue

A prioritized alerting system minimizes noise and maximizes impact, using a rules engine to ensure critical issues receive timely attention. Receive alerts through Slack, email, or Pagerduty, complete with a video replay to accelerate triage.

The Future of Frontend Development

As web apps become increasingly complex, traditional tooling is no longer sufficient. A unified platform for product and engineering teams to monitor and improve their applications is essential. This platform should combine issue management with metrics, insights, and session replay to provide a comprehensive solution.