FT. Feb 2001. Website Performance Measurement and Monitoring
There's nothing like an unexpectedly high
level of demand to bring a website crashing down, as several companies
involved in embarrassing and high-profile online failures can
testify. And faced with the realisation that with the competition
only a click away, poor website performance means more than just
bad publicity, website operators are turning to companies which
can help them monitor the performance of their websites and quickly
diagnose faults, in an effort to protect both the integrity of
their brand and their sales.
"The competition between e-commerce websites has grown so
fierce that price isn't a differentiator any more" says Eric
Nataf, director of marketing for Europe at e-commerce performance
benchmarking company Keynote Systems. "But navigability and
ease of use remain a differentiator. If a user experiences bad
performance or a bad quality of experience on your website and
goes to the competition as a result and buys from them, it's not
likely he will come back to your website, unless your competitor
experiences the same problems."
Website performance monitoring aims to give website operators
a greater understanding of how their site is performing, not in
terms of attracting visitors, but rather, in terms of response
times when a user calls up a page, and in terms of site availability
via different ISPs (Internet Service Providers), from different
parts of the world, and over different types of connection.
Website performance monitoring falls broadly into two camps. In
one camp are companies like Keynote Systems and Mercury Interactive
which, in order to give their clients this end-user performance
perspective, simulate user demand by installing banks of computers
at strategic points around the globe to "ping" their
customers' sites, carrying out several million measurements each
day to identify problems, either with the site itself, or with
the network.
In the other camp are software companies such as Segue Software,
Rational and Radview, which offer website load and functionality
testing software for deployment in-house.
The outsourcing approach shifts the onus onto the performance
measurement company, but leaves the website operator to identify
the cause of the problems diagnosed by the monitoring company,
and to solve them. The software solution can offer more detailed
analysis of problems, but is initially more expensive to deploy
and requires more in-house expertise to install and use.
Some software companies, such as Segue, offer the choice of deploying
their software either in an on-site or a hosted environment, while
the UK start-up, Attenda, has developed another model, in which
internet applications monitoring and management is combined with
the provision of server space and network connections to create
what it calls "Total Managed Hosting".
According to Attenda vice-president of marketing & strategy,
David Godwin, this approach goes much further than pinging. It
can also include monitoring the performance of the database serving
the pages, and running dummy transactions throughout the day to
check that all parts of the chain are functioning correctly.
"Pinging checks the availability of a network card within
a server, and most hosters would use that mechanism as a measure
of site availability, but it isn't" says Godwin. "Pinging
represents less than 10% of the monitoring that needs to happen
to ensure that things are performing the way they should."
Website performance measurement is still a relatively new industry,
and awareness of its value still seems relatively low, particularly
in Europe. Last November, for example, the US performance measurement
company, Mercury Interactive, commissioned Benchmark Research
to conduct a survey of more than 200 UK organisations, each with
more than 200 employees. It found that only a quarter of managers
responsible for e-business applications were using an automated
testing solution on their websites and internet operations.
A similar number were not familiar with the concept, or benefit,
of automated testing, even when prompted, and of those not using
automated testing, 61% said they had no plans to do so in the
future. This despite the fact that when Mercury carried out in
excess of 1,000 load tests using its ActiveTest hosted, web-based
load testing service last year, it found that 98 percent of the
websites surveyed had a critical problem with scalability and
that, on average, websites scaled to only 15 percent of expected
capacity during initial load tests.
Mercury Interactive chief operating officer Ken Klein believes,
however, that attitudes are changing fast.
"There's an increasing recognition that web performance management
is not a nice-to-have but a must-have" he says. "Also,
where there was previously a real focus on e-commerce sites generating
top-line revenue, now the value proposition is shifting towards
squeezing costs out of the system. These solutions not only ensure
revenue, but also generate tremendous cost savings."
The scaling problem identified by the Mercury tests is a key website
performance issue, but it's not the only one. Segue Software chief
executive officer Steve Butler says that a site's ability to provide
a consistent and reliable customer service, however and from wherever
the site is accessed, is equally important.
"Dotcoms and bricks and mortar companies are still failing
to think seriously about their e-business from the consumer's
perspective. The problem is that no one can really know exactly
how many customers will go to a site, what they will do when they
get there, and therefore what strain the IT infrastructure will
be put under" says Butler. "e-businesses should test
and monitor their entire internet infrastructure before going
live to see how it will cope and scale to vast customer demand.
They should be continually monitored, especially when marketing
initiatives, website extensions or known seasonal variations,
such as Christmas, will drive huge surges in traffic and add massive
strain."
Website performance measurement may seem primarily focused on
fault-finding, but there is a more constructive side to it too.
The reports which the measurement process delivers can help website
operators shape and improve their online offering.
"We do use it to look back and see what the performance was
like, but to be honest, if there are problems, we get to know
about it pretty quickly from someone ringing our call centre and
having a go at us" says Toby Strauss, managing director of
the online mortgage broker, Charcol Online, whose website performance
is monitored by Attenda. "For us, the most powerful thing
is to use it to help shape the content of the site, try out new
ideas and see how popular they are."
Whether website operators use a measurement and monitoring system
as a defensive, or offensive mechanism, however, the message from
the companies offering these services is clear: use it.
"We would urge website owners to test early, test often,
and then once they deploy their websites, make sure that they're
implementing a monitoring solution 24 hours a day, seven days
a week" says Mercury Interactive's Mr. Klein. "If it's
critical enough to build, then they ought to be testing and monitoring
it."
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