Noibu detects two types of errors: HTTP errors and JavaScript errors. This process guide focusses on how to triage, investigate, and resolve an HTTP error. Even though these types of errors are client-related, it is often useful to know which error code a user is encountering to determine if the potential issue can be fixed by server configuration.
Follow the steps below to resolve an HTTP error:
Stage 1: Triaging
Before setting your developers loose to investigate the error, determine the error's impact. While it's a good idea to investigate all errors eventually, the most harmful errors should be prioritized. Conversely, errors that have little effect on conversion rates and cause little Annualized Revenue Loss (ARL) should be deprioritized. When triaging HTTP errors, consider the following:
- Is the error still happening? Open the issue's Issue Management tab, scroll to do the Details section, and look at the Last Seen date. An error that hasn't been seen for several weeks should be deprioritized.
[issue-details] - How frequently does the error occur? Open the Overview tab and scroll to the Statistics section. This section breaks down the issue's prevalence and impact over several timeframes.
[issue-statistics]
- Please note that the same error can occur multiple times in a single session, so the User Sessions metric is often lower than the Occurrences metric.
- Please note that the same error can occur multiple times in a single session, so the User Sessions metric is often lower than the Occurrences metric.
- What percentage of sessions are impacted by the error? Scroll up to the Funnel Impact session and review how many sessions are impacted by the error versus the domain average at each stage of the purchase journey.
[user-funnel-impact] - How does the error affect conversion rates? For each stage of the purchase journey, review conversion variances–places where the error's presence results in a significant drop in conversion. If an error impacts a significant percentage of your website's total sessions and, in turn, prevents users from progressing through the checkout at a significant rate, the error is highly impactful.
- Does the error have high Annualized Revenue Loss? Review the Annualized Revenue Loss chart on the Overview tab for a prediction of how much money you stand to lose if the error goes unaddressed for a whole year and its impact remains consistent. You can also look to the Revenue Loss chart to see how much money your company has lost so far due to the error's presence.
[issue-annualized-revenue-loss]
Once you determine an error is high priority, move on to Stage 2: Investigation.
Stage 2: Investigation
Unlike JavaScript errors, most HTTP issues do not collect a Stacktrace to point to the specific line(s) of code causing the error. The objective of Stage 2: Investigation is to collect as much information as possible before diving into your store's server logs to hunt for the error.
- Determine when and where the error is happening.
- Open the Technical Details tab and check the HTTP Error Details section. Here you'll find the error's type, code, message, URL, last seen date, and request and response headers. By capturing the headers, Noibu allows an engineer to build a precise case with customer data without turning on verbose logging, a resource-intensive process.
[http-error-details] - Review the Last Reproduction Steps section on the Overview tab. This section keeps a tally of the last step a customer took before the error occurred in each session.
[last-reproduction-steps]
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Scroll down to the Top URLs section to see a list of URLs where the error has occurred at the highest frequency.
[developer-top-urls]
- Open the Technical Details tab and check the HTTP Error Details section. Here you'll find the error's type, code, message, URL, last seen date, and request and response headers. By capturing the headers, Noibu allows an engineer to build a precise case with customer data without turning on verbose logging, a resource-intensive process.
- Find a session video that shows the error in action. Focus your search on session videos on the proper URLs that showcase the most problematic reproduction steps.
- Ensure you check Show HTTP Events so the timeline lists all requests made throughout the user's session, especially those made before the error occurred.
[session-timeline-settings]
- Ensure you check Show HTTP Events so the timeline lists all requests made throughout the user's session, especially those made before the error occurred.
- Take note of the date the session was recorded, and note the timestamp of when the HTTP error happened. In the screenshot above, the error occurred on May 22nd at 1:00PM +786ms.
Repeat this process until you have several timestamps collected, and then proceed to Stage 3: Resolution.
Stage 3: Resolution
Resolving an HTTP error happens largely outside of Noibu. Compare the timestamps collected from session videos in Stage 2: Investigation, and compare these to your store server logs. From here, identify the problem and make updates to your server to prevent the error.
To validate the fix, monitor the issue in Noibu for a few days or weeks. If the fix was successful, the error's occurrences should drop off shortly after the fix was implemented.
Visit our guides on How to Resolve HTTP 0 Errors and How to Action Third-Party Errors.