The importance of website performance monitoring has become even more apparent in recent years. Thanks to repeated studies showing that even subtle slowdowns in website response time. Including delays as short as a split second – can lead to increased bounce rates and decreased sales on large e-commerce websites. Add to that the rise of smartphones and mobile-optimized websites that allow people to communicate, read, watch and shop online while busy and on the go. And Internet speed has never been more important.
What is uptime and how to monitor it?
For technical reasons, no website can be online 100% of the time for a long period. Sometimes web hosting administrators need to reboot or update servers, or even replace server hardware. Thus each hosting company declares a certain value of stable accessibility. This value is uptime. It shows what downtime is acceptable when hosting is providing its services. Hosting companies measure this value in percentages. And if the actual behavior of the website does not meet the requirements declared in the SLA, you can make a request for compensation for improper provision of services and, of course, to demand better service.
Various approaches to website monitoring
Passive monitoring works thanks to a specific code that must be enabled on the website. Every time a web page is loading, it executes this specific code. It sends certain information to a data collection server and can help analyze website visitor behavior and incoming traffic.
Internal monitoring involves installing certain software within the monitored network. This helps to monitor network errors, overall system behavior. And it helps to prevent or immediately notice hardware problems and load peaks.
External monitoring is performed by resources from outside the network. Its purpose is to verify the operation of the system from the perspective of an independent third party.
Real user monitoring is external monitoring, which simulates the visit of an ordinary visitor to the website. Depending on its complexity, this monitoring can analyze the loading of the page, the presence of certain content on it, sometimes even notice design errors.
The most effective way to monitor websites
One of the most advanced automated monitoring services, HostTracker, can handle all of the above in a few clicks. It frees webmasters from routine work. This service supports various protocols. This allows you to check not only websites. This allows you to check a lot of other infrastructure nodes. Depending on the type of task, the monitoring interval can range from a few seconds to a day.
To facilitate the process of monitoring websites, HostTracker team has developed an effective tool for maintaining data changes – Snapshot. It is very easy to use and does not require any additional settings for its operation. In short, it instantly takes a snapshot of the web page every time when the system detects an error. And the service stores it in the form of code or in the format of the web page. Thanks to this, it becomes easy to understand what is not displayed on the website. And you can quickly fix these deficiencies without first exposing the web resource to additional diagnostics.
