Monitoring Your Website’s Performance – Check This out or Miss Out

The Internet is an alternate universe where people’s attention spans are shorter than in the physical realm.  It is a world populated by citizens who are used to instant gratification.  And why not, considering that the next possible greatest experience is a click away?  And for an online business, that back click means loss of opportunity and possible sales.

Why does this happen? 

For the most part, viewers click the back button when they do not find what they are looking for, or the website does not contain what is promised. But the most unfortunate instance 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.

Monitoring website performance

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.       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.

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

5.       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.

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

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

There are other more technical aspects of monitoring website performance and the list above is just a small portion. If you think you need help in monitoring your website, visit Site-Monitor, you may be missing out because of issues that may be easily fixed if you know where to start.  

What Is Web Maintenance?

In a nutshell, website maintenance is what you do after you are done with the initial development and launching of the website.  It is a broad term that involves website upkeep. It is also about ensuring the sustainability of the website as a marketing platform.

The tasks vary as websites are multi-faceted and each facet requires different fields of expertise, some are technical while others are more on the creative side.  But all these various fields are closely related to each other to keep the website running smoothly. It is the website owner’s responsibility to know how to monitor or maintain the website.

Fortunately, some of the tasks needed for web maintenance may be outsourced. For example your web designer or developer would have most likely used a content management system or CMS, which updates and manages the newly launched website. Learning how CMS works takes time and patience and if you have both then it should not be problem. But most website owners are usually not adept to technicalities and would rather spend time managing the business itself. This is where web maintenance services come in.

Here’s an overview of the types of web maintenance services being offered.

Site Availability and Functionality

The most fundamental aspect of web maintenance is monitoring, this is to guarantee that the website is fully operational and available. Part of what needs to be done is to make sure all links are functional, whether they are within the internal structure, inbound or outbound.  Plug-ins, widgets, flash players, online forms must all be checked daily if they are all working as intended.

Content Updates

Web maintenance also involves updating the content regularly. Updates would sometimes mean you just need to upload images or edit and add more content.  Or make more visual changes from lay out to adding pages and links. Page views are more likely to increase for websites that are constantly updated.

Blog entries are a form of updates that keep a website interesting and interactive especially if comments are monitored and replied to. For SEO, it is a creative way to introduce new keywords that are trending.

Website Maintenance Services

            As mentioned, website maintenance may be outsourced to a company that offers the services.  Companies that offer these services are equipped with professionals and experts that can efficiently keep your website well maintained not to mention free from hackers with ill intentions.