Category: Page Load Speed

IRWD: Online Retail and the Speed and Beauty of Performance Monitoring

On February 15, 2012 I had the privilege of presenting a talk on website performance monitoring to 800+ of the world’s top online retail IT experts at the renowned Internet Retailer – Website Design and Usability Conference (IRWD) in Orlando, Florida alongside Matt Hoenck, the IT Director at Thymes.com. Competition is fierce in online retail and the stakes are high as more and more shoppers switch from bricks-and-mortar to online buying. Online retailers must remain informed of new technologies that improve website uptime and performance, (such as the new UserView Monitoring – Video Capture) and strike the right balance with user experience expectations involving website design and usability.

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Website Performance Monitoring, Site Speed and SEO

The suspicion that site speed might be a ranking factor for Google was just a suspicion; that is, until April of last year. Google plainly stated site speed as a factor in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking. What does this mean? Website performance monitoring needs to become part of your SEO process – if it isn’t already.

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Interactive Agencies: CDN Monitoring to enhance “Client Experience”

CDN Monitoring to enhance “Client Experience”: The use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) allows interactive agencies to position online media, such that client website and web applications load faster for a better user experience, and improved website “results”, such as – impressions, conversions, and online sales. However, use of CDNs is not without risk for both interactive agencies and their clients. By using a CDN, the interactive agency is also losing some insight into the performance of/and direct control over the online content. In fact, several issues can develop within a CDN that adversely affects online content and the websites that interactive agency’s produce for clients. As a result of these issues, the interactive agency’s relationship with its clients can suffer. However, when external CDN monitoring is in place the interactive agency maintains insights into performance issues that occur to online content positioned on a CDN network and therefore can better serve its clients.

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Website Monitoring, Waterfall Charts, & Webpages of the Lycra-clad

An icon in the Twin Cities triathlon community, Jerry Bous, has a website problem that’s good to have. He has been able to parlay his love for the sport of triathlon into an occupation as THE triathlon race announcer as well as owner of the very popular and respected website www.MinnesotaTriNews.com.

But, the problem — similar to a triathlete who plateaus in their swim/bike/run speed at this point in the racing season — is that Jerry’s website may have recently “plateaued” in response time and in order to continue to improve is likely in need of some ongoing response time and performance monitoring.

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IRCE: Online Retail – Monitoring the Cost of Things Great and Small

As many of the online retailers we spoke with at Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) noted, putting together all of the pieces for a successful online presence is difficult. Many of the online retailers at the show were at IRCE to out-source pieces of their business since it is more effective and cost-effective to do so. In many cases. Dotcom-Monitor’s suite of Application monitoring, website monitoring, and other network monitoring tools make it easier for the online retailer s to focus on what they’re best at – serving customers.

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Surf’s up in Ecommerce – Can External Monitoring be far behind?

With tentative, but palpable discussions about the “end of the recession” permeating the ecommerce gestalt, we’re expecting online retailers to brush off their platforms and hit the ground running at the 2010 IRCE show. With the combination of the bruising 2009 shopping year behind them and broad market acceptance of browser-based “user experience” monitoring online retailers will be looking for the “best bang for the buck from that technology from established vendors.

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Google Speed Ranking Factor | Dealing With Google Site Speed Factor

Pondering the New Google Speed Ranking Factor’s Ambiguity

No one is exactly sure about how Google’s site speed factor will exactly affect a specific website’s search rankings, nor is anyone sure about how Google’s site speed factoring will change in the future. There is some speculation that Google’s recent move is part of bigger plan to “warm-up” website owners to further prioritize faster site speeds. It’s difficult to speculate as currently Google will even recommend getting rid of its own Google Analytics to improve site speed on a page!

Dotcom-Monitor.com was quoted in a Dec. 4, 2009 article on CBSnews.com that in some instances especially large e-tailers may find themselves punished if Google added site speed to the search result algorithm. That remains to be seen, however, what is clear is that e-tailers and everyone else involved in maintaining search relevance is paying more attention to site speed relative to search rankings and monitoring for site speed.

Even with the unclear effects of Google’s site speed factor, there are things you can do to learn more about your site’s performance and to keep one step ahead of the Google site speed issue.

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Google Adds Site Speed as a Search Rank Factor

On Friday, April 9, 2010 Google officially announced that it was adding website speed as measured by how a page responds to a Googlebot and page load time as measured by Google Toolbar.

Dotcom-Monitor had an early heads-up that this might be coming while we were at the 2009 Pubcon Conference in Las Vegas with Google’s Guru of Algorithmic Spin Matt Cutts. It was there that Google’s Matt Cutts first noted that there was “heavy lobbying” at Google to add page load times to the Google search algorithm.

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