From error monitoring to conversion intelligence: Rethinking ecommerce analytics

[00:00:00] Christina Richardson: For success in ecommerce, you have to have a really good understanding of not only what's happening, but why it's happening, and then be able to action that in a way that's actually good to improve the customer experience.

[00:00:12] Kailin Noivo: Welcome to another episode of the Ecommerce Toolbox Expert's Perspective. Joining us today, we have some internal experts. So I'll let them introduce themselves, but we have two Noibu experts here today. So welcome, Anna and Tina.

[00:00:25] Christina Richardson: Thanks, Kailin. Hi.

[00:00:27] Kailin Noivo: Tina, why don't you kick us off with a brief introduction—your career from a high level, who you are, and your journey at Noibu?

[00:00:34] Christina Richardson: Sure. So I'm a product manager here at Noibu and I've worked in product and ecommerce for a while now. Previous to that I actually worked in UX and product research. It's the intersection of those two disciplines that I really love. I love learning about people's behavior and motivations, and the fact that I can use those insights to build useful products and solve real problems—that's what's really satisfying for me.

[00:01:02] Anna de Medeiros: I'm Anna. I'm a UX designer here. I've spent most of my career working on long-term product visions and thinking about how products can evolve to better suit the needs of users. Doing this research with Tina was really exciting because it allowed me to get a good glimpse of how things actually work for users day-to-day so we can incorporate that into how we grow and evolve.

[00:01:27] Kailin Noivo: Amazing. For those who are first-time listeners, I'll do a brief introduction. My name is Kailin, one of the co-founders and president of Noibu. Historically we've been known as an error monitoring company. Our first product line focused on prioritization and quantification of technical frontend issues. That's really where we bet the farm for multiple years.

About eighteen months ago we started doing research and thinking about how to expand from a point solution into a platform solution. That’s why we wanted to bring Tina and Anna on today, because a lot of this transition was driven by phenomenal research done by them.

[00:02:45] Kailin Noivo: Anna, from the product side, what sparked the realization that error monitoring might not actually be enough?

[00:02:45] Anna de Medeiros: I joined Noibu about a year ago, at a pivotal time when we were already starting to speak to users and understand how a point solution for error monitoring wasn’t enough to solve their everyday problems—which are focused on conversion.

Tina and I worked closely together and realized research was a critical next step to understand what actually happens in their daily workflows and decision making.

[00:03:38] Christina Richardson: It was really a team effort. What sparked it was observing how customers were using Noibu and talking to them about their broader goals.

Teams were reacting to the issues we surfaced, but they weren’t thinking about them as just bugs or technical problems. They were thinking about things like lost revenue or broken funnels.

Instead of asking “How many JavaScript errors do we have?”, they were asking things like “Why is checkout down 8%?”

Errors mattered—but they were just one piece of a much larger story.

[00:05:04] Kailin Noivo: That makes sense. We started realizing errors are really the base of the pyramid. Stability is table stakes—you need an error-free site to transact.

Then performance matters. Then conversion and growth.

[00:05:44] Anna de Medeiros: During user discovery we made sure to speak with people beyond our existing technical user base.

We talked with marketing teams, UX designers, product managers, merchandisers, and leaders who balance all these perspectives.

We also talked to people outside of Noibu so we could get unbiased perspectives on how teams optimize ecommerce performance.

[00:06:33] Anna de Medeiros: What stood out was just how fragmented ecommerce optimization feels for teams.

A conversion metric drops. Revenue changes. The signal shows up in a dashboard like Google Analytics.

But understanding why it’s happening requires multiple tools.

Marketing looks at campaigns. UX looks at session replays. Engineers look at technical errors. Then everyone tries to piece it together in a Slack thread.

It’s extremely difficult for teams to understand the true business impact.

[00:09:49] Christina Richardson: One of the biggest surprises was how analytics-driven but insight-poor many teams felt.

There’s no shortage of data. But clarity is missing.

To succeed in ecommerce you need to understand what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what action you should take to improve the experience.

But today getting to that outcome is very fragmented.

[00:12:07] Christina Richardson: The big shift came when we reframed Noibu as more than an error monitoring tool.

We started asking new questions.

What if Noibu could analyze everything happening across a site and the purchasing funnel?

Could we identify problems, explain why they’re happening, and suggest what to do next?

Error monitoring would remain important—but as one input into a broader intelligence system.

[00:13:54] Anna de Medeiros: We realized this wasn’t just about adding features.

We needed to think about building a system that supports teams working toward business goals.

So we created a concept car—a vision of what the future platform could look like. It helped align teams internally and gave us something we could test with design partners and customers.

[00:18:22] Christina Richardson: Research and discovery will always be ongoing.

Right now we're focused on understanding what insights are most valuable, how teams want them delivered, and how they act on them.

We’re also exploring the concept of trust—because teams need to trust insights enough to act on them, especially when revenue is involved.

Ultimately we want Noibu to feel like a conversion intelligence partner, not just another analytics tool.

[00:22:39] Christina Richardson: Everyone wants recommendations and automation, but those recommendations are only as good as the insights—and the insights are only as good as the data.

[00:23:02] Anna de Medeiros: It’s also about teams working together.

There should be a future where teams don’t spend hours creating reports and trying to figure out what’s happening.

Instead, they should be able to get to insight faster and create impact faster.

[00:25:23] Christina Richardson: Thanks for having us.

[00:25:26] Outro: The Ecommerce Toolbox Expert Perspectives is brought to you by Noibu. To learn more about how Noibu helps ecommerce teams debug their sites and recover lost revenue, visit noibu.com.