Monitor Your Website Like Batman Monitors Gotham City

This example works just as well when comparing to firefighters, police officers, and all sorts of first responders but, something about comparing a website to Gotham City and your team to Batman really just gets the brain juices pumping.

Let's Knock Out A Common Misconception

Though often shown spotting crime from atop a tall building, this is not how Gotham's Dark Knight usually detects crime. Instead, Batman pulls in data from hundreds of different sources and puts it through his super duper Bat Computer which then detects problems or potential problem areas for Batman to further look into. I could go on but, the point is that Batman may catch the occasional spontaneous purse snatcher while just hanging out on the roof of a skyscraper but that sort of luck only accounts for 1% of his work...in fact, in most cases, he's up on that particular building because he already has some inside information suggesting that area will have more crime than usual.

To draw a clear connection before I lose you: Batman knows that a famous singer is performing tonight and that this could attract more pick-pockets in the same way you as a website owner should know that Black Friday is around the corner and site traffic is going to increase.

Batman's Data Collectors

City Security Camera Grid
By tapping into the security feed of every gas station, bank, or street corner, Batman can see everything that's happening in his city and though it's a lot to watch real-time at once, it definitely helps him understand whats going on if he has an idea of where to look. For those of us in tech, our equivalent of the security camera grid would be a session replay tool.

Alarm Systems
If a power plant was overloaded and about to explode, Batman knows because he's got alerts configured for all of that and within seconds, he knows where he is going and why. In the IT world, this would be similar to CPU and memory usage alerts.

Police Bands
Even if a situation is 100% under control or no where near your area of concern, it's good to know what's going on. For Batman, keeping one ear on the police bands helps him make sure he's got the latest intel on a situation. For anyone managing complex enterprise environments, this is like having incident communications go out through Slack or even email. Knowing that your app is down at the same time that mine is helps us combine our knowledge and improve resolution times.

Satellite or Aerial Surveillance
When a few cameras won't do, batman's got satellites and drones he can dispatch to cover more ground. This can help him see what people are running to or from, what neighborhoods have not yet been impacted, and where the problem originated. Real-User Monitoring does this for us in cyberspace, allowing us to track each user's clicks, errors, and trends.

Bat Signal
I could compare Gotham to website for days and by now, hopefully you can too but, we can't end this article without covering the most iconic method in Batman's arsenal of crime detection tools: The Bat Signal. This giant spotlight on the top of the police headquarters is used by law enforcement and citizens alike to call for help. This is an example of direct user feedback! It's you asking your user's to email your support team or write you on Facebook and though you never want to rely on this too heavily, you can't ever overlook it because the customer's experience is the goal!