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Web Site Monitoring Is A Global Necessity
by: David Leonhardt
Bill Huang
sits down at his computer. As he connects to
the Internet, he glances out at the sun
poking its nose above the Hong Kong skyline.
It will be another busy day, and he has to
order those slippers for his wife before
rushing off to a meeting.
He types in
his search terms and Google faithfully
reports: "Results 1 - 100 of about
1,760,000. Search took 0.34 seconds."
Bill clicks on
a the Big Soft Slipper web site and waits
for the page to load. "Site unavailable,"
Bill reads. He hits the "back" button. Then
he clicks on another of the 1,760,000 pages
Google offered him.
High above
Cleveland, USA, the executives at Big Soft
Slipper are clinking their glasses and
patting themselves on the back. "We sure did
it," the CEO crows. "Look at that beautiful
home page. Look at the easy navigation. Look
at how fast it loads."
Somebody
please tell them about Bill Huang.
"Very few
people realize how the web site that loads
so zippy in their office, flows like
molasses on their customers' computers – and
may not even be accessible at all," says
Vadim Mazo, CEO of Dotcom-Monitor (
http://www.dotcom-monitor.com ), a web
site monitoring company. "While they
celebrate, they could be losing customers."
Even in the
United States, the most developed Internet
market in the world, one out of five
Internet users still operate on 56K
connections. Smart companies have gotten
wise, and test their web sites on slow
connections – usually 56K. That leaves 13
million Americans with even slower
connections – along with hordes of customers
in India, China, Australia, Russia, South
Africa and elsewhere around the world.
Who is
monitoring your web site from Europe and
Asia?
"We just
opened up a new web site monitoring station
in Hong Kong, because there is a growing
demand for monitoring web site performance
from Asia," Mr. Mazo adds. "While nobody can
monitor individual connections, we can
monitor sever side connection speeds and web
site accessibility – both of which are
affected by transatlantic transfers."
In fact,
bottlenecks can develop in several spots
along the transatlantic connections –
bottlenecks that could slow down or even
block a web site completely. If a webmaster
is not monitoring the performance of his web
site overseas as well as at home, he will
not be aware of the bottleneck and unable to
contact his provider about it.
The fact is
that a web site will load slower on the
opposite side of the world, regardless of
the type of connection the surfer has. But
that is compounded when the transatlantic
connections, or other local connections,
block up.
Is connection
speed a problem worth monitoring?
In May 2001,
Zona Research reported that slow loading web
sites accounted for $25 billion in lost
sales each year (
http://www.marketresearch.com/map/prod/483429.html
) As Internet usage continues to climb
around the world, that figure might be
closer to $40 billion by now.
Another study,
by BizRate.com (
http://www.bizrate.com ) in 2000,
revealed that most people abandon purchases
on the Internet while already in the
shopping cart section – 21 percent due to
slow-loading pages. In other words, even
when the home page and the sales pages
operate at a satisfactory speed, customers
get frustrated by slow loading or failed
shopping carts.
"It's one
thing to know that your web site is
accessible. It is another to know that all
your forms and your shopping carts are
performing to your customers' satisfaction,"
Mr. Mazo says. He adds that web site
monitoring avoids the embarrassing moment
when the customer lets a company know its
site is not accessible. "The only thing
worse is if nobody lets you know and you
just keep losing sales."
This suggests
there is value in monitoring your web site
from overseas -- and in monitoring the forms
and shopping carts and anything other server
requests and user transactions
Stella Huang
loves her new slippers. They are just
perfect. She really does not care where they
come from. The executives at Big Soft
Slipper were not monitoring their web site
performance, so they have no idea that they
just lost a customer. And another customer.
And another...
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