Web Site Performance Monitoring

Your web site performance and availability depends on a complex infrastructure of the web server that hosts your site. A good web master always monitors the most important aspects of a web server to make sure that the web site as available 24x7 from around the globe. What exactly must be monitored?

Firstly, web server availability. Almost all the web hosts maintain that they guarantee 99.9% uptime. But is it true? What technology did they employ to monitor their servers? In accordance with one estimate, 75% of inaccessibility is not on the hosting server, but surprisingly on the Internet's backbone network and/or in global routing. An external web site monitoring service with servers situated around the globe can help identify the nature of the problem, so that you can work with your web host to fix the cause of the problems. Obviously this will help avoid losses and keep your customers satisfied.

Secondly, web site performance. Are there problems with your server speed? Maybe not where you are, but on another continent. Global web site monitoring can alert you to transatlantic connection troubles, so you can take it up with your web hosting service.

Thirdly, electronic forms. Are all of them functioning? An advanced web site monitoring service can keep tabs on them for you. The last thing you want is to have lost hundreds of subscribers because a sign-up form stopped functioning properly.

Fourthly, shopping carts. Slow and complicated shopping carts are responsible for an estimated $35 billion yearly in lost sales. Make sure yours is functioning! A good web site monitoring service can check this for you, too.

And fifthly, download speed. Spend half an hour and test your pages. Maybe those images are a bit large. Are all of them necessary? Try and compress them into JPEG or PNG format. You may be surprised, but many people have slower connection than you are. Use also other web site performance optimization techniques: remove redirections, combine all your background images into one CSS sprite, merge JS and CSS files, and add GZIP HTTP compression. Your web host can help you with the latter.

Web site performance is too important not to keep an eye on it. Use external web site monitoring services; don't let your customers alert you to the site downtime.