Website monitoring is the process of testing or and logging the uptime performance of one or more websites. Site monitoring is often used by businesses to ensure that their customers are able to access their websites and perform actions such as searching, online shopping, checking an account balance, or simply researching.
Website monitoring can be done locally (inside the datacenter firewall) or globally (multiple test sites globally positioned). Traditional network monitoring focuses on local, or inside the datacenter firewall. However, global site monitoring will test and monitor site uptime and identify issues across the internet backbone. Global website monitoring is also known as end-user monitoring or end-to-end uptime monitoring. Real user monitoring measures the performance and availability experienced by actual users, diagnoses individual incidents, and tracks the impact of a change.
Website monitoring services usually have multiple servers strategically positioned around the globe – USA, Europe, Asia, etc. By having multiple site monitoring test stations in different geographic locations, the monitoring service can determine if a web server is available across different networks globally. By offering global site monitoring stations, you are much less likely to receive a false downtime alert due to a local internet outage.
When a monitored website is found to be down, the site owner or site administrators need to be immediately notified of its condition. Communication services such as email, sms(text message), phone calls or faxes are used to notify one or more persons or departments that a site has failed to respond.
Any Webmaster knows how irritating it feels to be notified at 2 AM that their website is not accessible. Home pages being too slow or irate users who are unable to complete their web transactions are detrimental to business. What Webmasters need are tools that help them monitor critical parameters of their websites and help ease their day-to-day activities. In this paper you can find out what you need to look for in a website monitoring tool.
Website Monitoring: 6 Critical Aspects To Monitor
Web Page Availability
The basic need for every Webmaster is to ensure that their website is up and running. Downtimes could result in lost customers and eventually lost revenues. Webmasters need tools that will alert them in real time when their websites are down. The ability to check for the presence of specific keywords in web pages would also add to their comfort level.
Web Page Response Time
Slow web pages tend to drive users to your competitors. As far as many are concerned, their Internet experience is the ‘world wide wait’. Therefore if your website is not responsive enough, you are going to lose potential customers. With Web 2.0 web applications driving the next wave of user expectations, in terms of web page responsiveness, website administrators cannot compromise with slow web pages
Web Page Correctness
Are your pages rendered completely? You need to monitor whether your web pages show the full content. Some web pages may be accessing data from a database. If the database connectivity is lost, the content may not get fully rendered. This could
be easily monitored if you are able to check the percentage change in page size every time the web page is requested. There is an additional benefit if the percentage change is regularly monitored: Webmasters are warned when important web pages are modified by internal or external factors.
Ability to Simulate Transactions
Many website administrators would love to do a trial run of their shopping cart every hour. This would help ensure that customers can buy their products online anytime. What you need in this case is a tool that can record a web transaction and then replay the same at regular intervals of time. With this automation you are not only going to see a productivity boost but also higher availability for the most critical part of your website.
Monitor Custom Elements
Being a Webmaster, you need to proactively monitor your websites and also be informed of degrading performances, as and when they occur. You need to know how your website is performing over a period of time. This will help you decide whether you need to have better infrastructure in place and take other proactive actions.
Website Monitoring Conclusion
Web monitoring is good for business. The Internet as a productivity tool has wide acceptance but recent changes have brought new distractions costing business some of those productivity gains. The Internet can be controlled but needs to be done in a way that allows for employee buy-in, self monitoring and self enforcement to be successful