Okay, so I'm a customer of the firm that did the ad campaign on the right, and a big fan of the cartoon character on the left. But this photo is a good entree into today's post, because I'm going to explain how installing a RUM beacon on your site is so easy, even a caveman could do it.

RUM (aka real user monitoring) is all the rage these days. It gives you unprecedented insight into the real-time behavior of 100% of your users. It teaches you how people use your site, how site changes affect user behavior, and how this user behavior affects your business.

Pretty great, right? But if we all agrees that real user data is critical to the business, then why isn't everyone on board with RUM?

I've been out to several prospects and customers -- not to mention prospects who became customers -- since SOASTA announced our entry into the RUM market with mPulse. I consistently hear the same question from IT operations teams:

"How do we install it?"

I tell them: "It's simple. We just put a snippet of non-blocking Javascript into your web page header for the web pages/page groups that you'd like to receive RUM data from."

Long pause for effect. Quizzical looks follow.

Then the comments/questions start:

• "You know we have a CAB, right?" (NOTE: For those of you not fortunate enough to know what this is, a "CAB" is the Configuration Advisory Board, aka Change Advisory Board, that "approves" any change that will reach the ultimate goal: production.)
• "You know any changes to our web pages have to be approved in advance by our architect, right?"
• "We have a security team that looks closely at any header tagging requests, and they haven't approved anything since the malware broach in 1999."

This is why I've created a series of videos to show you just how easy it is to tag your website or app. Each video runs approximately two minutes. It'll take you more time to read this post and watch a video than it will to have your website or app firing mPulse beacons and providing you with the best user data in the industry.

SOASTA mPulse offers multiple ways to easily tag your website or application. These videos cover the most popular ways that our customers are doing it today.

Getting started with mPulse on your website/app

mPulse tagging with JavaScript

mPulse tagging using Tealium

mPulse tagging using Google Tag Manager

See? So easy, even a caveman could do it.

Related posts:

• Performance Monitoring 101: A beginner’s guide to understanding synthetic and real user monitoring
• Hey WordPress users, want some RUM with that?
• What if you knew how fast was fast enough? You can, with mPulse’s “what-if” analysis