Preventing revenue loss through proactive error resolution: Ariat's monitoring journey with Noibu

Established in 1993 and headquartered in California, Ariat is a pioneering brand in performance footwear, apparel, and accessories, with a strong emphasis on innovation and technology. In addition to its extensive physical presence with stores in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Mexico, Ariat's website serves customers worldwide.

Given its robust online footprint, ensuring the delivery of high-quality ecommerce experiences remains a top priority for the brand. Since June 2023, Ariat has been collaborating with Noibu to streamline its error detection and resolution processes.

In our commitment to gaining insight into our customers' experiences, we recently had the opportunity to interview Todd Purcell, Senior Director of Ecommerce Engineering at Ariat, to explore his team's journey with Noibu.  

In this case study, we talk with Todd about integrating Noibu, the reasons for choosing Noibu over similar tools, a comparative analysis of Noibu against other solutions in the same category, and their experience with Noibu thus far.

Ariat's introduction to Noibu

Although Todd and his team were not actively seeking an ecommerce monitoring solution, they were enticed by the potential Noibu offered. Noibu's capability of assigning a dollar value to development bugs captured Todd's interest, prompting him to request a platform demonstration .

Todd's initial impressions of Noibu

At that time, there were opportunities related to replicating and assigning real world impacts to development bugs. Noibu's introduction coincided with identifying the need for surfacing these opportunities, leading Todd to explore the tool's potential for identifying and addressing reported bugs. Another essential objective for Todd when introduced to Noibu was focusing on identifying and prioritizing opportunities within the customer journey.

Why Ariat chose Noibu

The effortless sales process

Todd commended the welcoming and empathetic approach of Noibu's sales team during their introduction to the platform.

“Your sales team was very respectful. One of the things that initially stood out about Noibu was their friendly attitude throughout the sales process. I also appreciated the proof-of-concept trial period, during which Noibu's tag was deployed on our site, allowing us to assess the tool's findings before committing.”

A comprehensive onboarding and training program

Todd also noted the seamless nature of Noibu's training program and how easily his Quality Assurance (QA) team adapted to the platform. Since implementing Noibu, Todd and his team have been confident in their ability to yield tangible results and a return on investment (ROI) from their ecommerce monitoring endeavors.

Ease of installation

A significant requirement for Todd's team when considering an error monitoring tool was the ease of installation. Noibu's tag installation was accomplished effortlessly and swiftly, alleviating their initial apprehensions.

How Ariat's ecommerce team detected errors prior to Noibu

Before partnering with Noibu, Todd's team employed various methods to detect development bugs, including:

• Customer service representatives flagging issues
• Site monitoring and alerting tools
• Digital experience platforms providing session recordings of users on ariat.com
• An automated test suite and QA engineers monitoring new releases.
  

However, these methods did not provide quantifiable metrics for identifying and prioritize unknown development bugs.

Error detection and Resolution Workflow with Noibu

Noibu significantly enhanced Todd's team's ability to detect and learn about previously unknown opportunities. With Noibu, they set up notifications to alert them via messaging tools whenever a site issue arose. They even designated a QA engineer to monitor alerts from the platform. Ariat's development bug detection and resolution process with Noibu is now streamlined and automated so that development bugs are detected by Noibu and are integrated into the automation testing process to prevent their recurrence as new features and site changes are rolled out.

Ariat + Noibu: Key achievements

Ariat's ecommerce team proactively detects and resolves development bugs while quantifying the opportunity for increased revenue by prioritizing and addressing the items raised by the platform. This proactive approach has been one of Ariat's most significant successes with Noibu.

"Our most notable achievement with Noibu has been uncovering issues that werepreviously unknown. Additionally, we've been able to demonstrate the financialbenefits of resolving errors in terms of annualized revenue saved. The platform and its training have been highly beneficial, and we've successfully installed, learned, andgenerated ROI."

Another significant achievement for Todd's team is their ability to filter data. By sifting through the noise, Noibu provides instant notifications for every bug that appears on the site, even those not encountered by customers yet.

"With Noibu, we've traced certain errors to third parties. In such cases, Noibu's notifications have allowed us to swiftly engage with designated support teams for prompt resolution."

Comparison with digital experience platforms

Having employed both digital experience platforms (DXPs) and Noibu to enhance site usability and functionality, Todd has observed which approach delivers substantial results and actionable insights.

According to Todd, DXPs often fail to detect actual bugs due to the overwhelming volume of data to analyze. This leads to difficulties in identifying impactful issues and obtaining actionable solutions.  

"We use a well-known DXP, which is suitable for assessing the customer experience but falls short in helping us identify errors. The abundance of sessions makes it nearly impossible to pinpoint issues. Noibu, on the other hand, provides instant notifications, technical details, and financial impact data for each error, which is an unprecedented feature in my extensive ecommerce career."

Analyzing the financial impact of website issues has been instrumental in enabling Todd's team to prioritize them effectively, expedite their resolution, and adopt a more strategic approach to ecommerce monitoring.

"The alignment of errors with profit has been a game-changer for me. Noibu's ability to quantify the financial impact of errors is unparalleled. Knowing which errors result in revenue loss and whether they warrant inclusion in a release or hotfix has been exceptionally valuable."

Future prospects for Ariat + Noibu

Todd anticipates that Noibu will lead to significant resource savings that would otherwise be spent on error investigation and reproduction. With a robust feature roadmap in place, Todd's team can rely on Noibu to flag errors before they impact customers, ensuring the quality of upcoming releases. Ariat's success with Noibu underscores the importance of correlating issues with revenue, enabling ecommerce teams to realize revenue opportunities and optimize resource allocation in addressing bugs.