Website Monitoring – Performance Check and Maintenance

 

We are faced with a generation of netizens whose attention spans are measured in seconds rather than minutes.  It is a world populated people with instant gratification syndrome.  Why? It’s because in this world, next greatest experience possible is a click away.  And if you own a website that caters to the needs of this market, a back click means opportunity lost. By opportunity that means a loss in sales and profits. This is why webmasters and business owners must be diligent in website monitoring.

One of the reasons why visitors click the back button when they do not find what they are looking for, or the website does not contain what is promised. However, the most disastrous example for a webmaster is to lose sales because the site is experiencing system failures or communication failures that result in major downtime.  Even a well-built site experiences these glitches and the more elements you have on your site, the more difficult it is to monitor your website’s performance and its availability 24 hours a day.  It is a time consuming yet extremely necessary part of maintaining and owning a website.

There are several reasons why websites fail to function properly from simple bugs to script errors or network connectivity issues.  The bottom line is to know what happens so that necessary adjustments are made in real time, minimizing your site’s downtime and maximizing viewer traffic.  Monitoring website performance involves quite a number of things that an application needs for it to function properly and there are metrics that are most commonly measured as performance indicators such as response time and availability or uptime.  Here a list of the essentials.

1.       Website availability or Uptime – Monitoring your website’s uptime should be the first and foremost concern.  You are online because you want to be visible and visible you must be at all times.  It is essential for websites that are intended to reach global audience, uptime of key pages should be checked from different locations.

2.       Full Page Loading – Monitoring the functionality of each element should also be monitored, from images to videos to flash files, etc.  For viewers, the visuals matter.

3.       Broken Links – It is frustrating for viewers to find that certain links do not take them further.

4.       Sign Ups and Log-ins - Let your viewers feel that they are important, welcome them and answer their queries promptly.

5.       Page Loading Speed – As mentioned, the internet is fast paced and the loading speed determines whether your viewer would decide to explore your site further and stay longer.

6.       Query Forms and Shopping Carts – These applications should always be working well.  One keeps clients interested and the other one is of course income generating.

7.       Your site has been hacked and is flagged by search engines and anti-virus softwares.

Remember that if a website’s monitoring processes are overlooked, you may be missing out because of issues that may be easily addressed if you only you know what they are.