|
|
| Webmaster Articles |
|
|
|
|
Web Site Monitoring Is A Global NecessityDavid 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. "Its 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...
| | | | RELATED ARTICLES Mysterious Tel Aviv Lifestyle 2004 Israel. What do you think when your first hear this word Right, like most people you imagine what you probably saw on CNN or NBC. Blown up buses, Suicide Bombers, Military Operations, Outright Violence – all over the place. Are You Driving Away Potential Customers When a prospect lands on your website will he or she understand what you are presenting Do your ordering/sign up instructions make sense Can prospects easily find the information they are searching for If you don’t know the answers to these questions you may be driving away potential customers. 10 Things You Should Be Monitoring On Your Website Every business needs to know how it is doing. Thats the idea behind exit surveys, customer feedback forms, suggestion boxes and other devices. Without feedback from the customer, monitoring inventory, expenses, revenue and other benchmarks, a business can take a quick slide down a slippery slope, without the owner ever seeing it coming – or being able to stop the slide. Website Checklist 10 Basic Things Your Website Should Have ... Unlimited Wealth Creation Through Reseller Hosting Web hosting can be an exciting business start up for aspiring entrepreneurs. All you have to do to set up your business is become a hosting reseller, i.e., provide hosting facilities to website owners. Here as a business owner, you are buying space from a big hosting company, and redistributing the hosting space to other website owners. Using "Title Tags" With Your Web Links & Images Using "Title Tags" for your web links & images is an arsenal manycompanies fail to utilize when planning out their web site optimization. Web Site Monitoring Is A Global Necessity 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. 5 Simple Steps to Protect your Digital Downloads A couple of days ago, I was searching for a popular eBook online. Manchester United: Top of the web accessibility league A while ago Manchester United launched a separate accessible version of their website, manutd.com/access. Theres been lots of publicity surrounding this accessible website and it even picked up an award. This accessible version doesnt offer as much content as the main website but it has all the accessibility features you could dream of: resizable text, ALT tags, screen reader optimisation etc. The Benefits Of Having a Country Top Level Domain TLD Name Most new websites tend to look for a domain name with a .com or .net tld Top Level Domain. They feel this gives the site a more professional appearance and will appeal to a more international audience and in many cases this is true. However, it can also be beneficial to look at purchasing a domain name with a country specific tld. Score BIG With The Search Engines - Maximising Your Sites Potential I often get asked, "How do I improve my sites performance in the search engines." or "I have a small budget, how can I compete with the larger sites." It can seem daunting when you type in your key search term and you see Google returning 200,000 results! Over the course of this article I am going to teach you some techniques that you can use to improve your sites ranking in the major search engines. These are not in any particular order but you should try and cover all of these if you want to perform well. Choosing the Right Website Designer Youve made up your mind. You want to have a website to represent your business. The next decision to be made . . . who should you hire to develop your site Are your SEO efforts going to waste Search engine optimization SEO is a long and complicated process that can be highly rewarding if done correctly. SEO is not a waste of time, but can be if your site doesn’t appeal to visitors or function properly. Your potential customer will be turned off if your site lacks trustworthiness, an eye pleasing color scheme and easy to use navigation. Why lose visitors and possible sales because of a small design flaw or unappealing color scheme Those visitors could have resulted in sales if those small imperfections were fixed. The Secret Benefit Of Search Engine Optimisation: Increased Usability A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they dont realise is that by optimising their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimise it for their site visitors. How to Boost Your Chances at Having a Successful Web Site New Web sites are springing up online by the millions. However, when they don’t reach a level of success, the Web site owners assume that they can’t make money off the Internet. Color Psychology for webpages Colour is an aspect of a website that is often picked haphazardly and without any thought from a beginner web designer. The lesser known quality of the colour of a website is that it can greatly affect the mood of your visitors. It is because of this that a websites colours need to be picked carefully. Learn the Language of the World Wide Web If you are already on the web or thinking about it then you must know the terminology used on the web. Here is a Glossary of a few must know Web Terms. The Disability Discrimination Act DDA & Web Accessibility Theres been widespread speculation about the new legislation being introduced under the DDA Disability Discrimination Act, which will ensure that websites are accessible to blind and disabled users. Try to find specific information about it on the Internet and chances are youll come up empty handed. Keywords: The First Step To Recognition Open Wordtracker [ http://www.wordtracker.com/ ] and youll see following proclamation by Brent Winters, President, FirstPlace Software, Inc., the makers of award-winning web promotion software, WebPosition Gold [ http://www.webposition.com/ ]: Track Your Visitors, Using PHP There are many different traffic analysis tools, ranging from simple counters to complete traffic analyzers. Although there are some free ones, most of them come with a price tag. Why not do it yourself With PHP, you can easily create a log file within minutes. In this article I will show you how! |
| home | site map |
|
|