Measure Site Performance
Author: admin
Optimize Your End User Experience With Web Performance !
The framework for Web 2.0 sites is being created from technologies like Flash, Silverlight, and AJAX and with services like Content Delivery Networks, outsourced Web services, and personalization and publishing engines.
Site owners can no longer rely on simplistic data center measurements of Uptime or server performance to understand their end users’ experience.
The infrastructure for providing services to the end user can be divided into:
• First mile
• Middle mile
• Last mile
First mile – Infrastructure (data center, point of presence) that houses the content of a Web site/Web applications. Web Site Performance measurement of the first mile is important for understanding the effectiveness of the data center infrastructure. However, this measurement is not at all indicative of the end-user experience.
Middle mile – Collection of high-bandwidth backbone providers, sometimes known as the Internet “core,” which together form the central delivery mechanism for the entire Internet. Broadly termed the Internet, the middle mile is a good place to test sites and Web applications for performance and availability. The middle mile is very stable, and measuring middle-mile performance is a good way to determine the user experience without introducing extra “noise” or variables that are harder to control for.
Last mile – Link between the middle mile (or core) and the end customer via services such as DSL, cable, dial-up, and 3G. This is the final linkage between the Internet and the customer’s home. Unlike the middle mile, where quality has improved consistently over the years, last-mile performance problems continue to affect the end-user experience.
The Online Consumer
An IDC study on consumer online behavior revealed that out of the total time spent per week by consumers on media consumption, the majority of the time (32.7 hours/week) is spent on the Internet.1 This is twice the time spent on watching television (16.4 hours).
Online retailers in the U.S. saw a 21% increase in sales to $175 billion in 2007. This amount is expected to cross the $300 billion mark to $334.7 billion by 2011 according to Forrester Research.
Broadband Video
User-generated video or UGV is online video content contributed exclusively by the users. According to Accustream Media Research,7 a total of 22.7 billion UGVs were viewed in 2007—an estimated 70% increase. The market is expected to grow at 52% and reach 34 billion views by the end of 2008. Sites like Metacafe and Youtube are prominent hosts for UGV content.
AJAX and Rich Internet Applications
These richer user experiences are being implemented using “client-engine” technologies
like Flash, AJAX, and Java using standard Internet and Web protocols. For example, AJAX-based RIAs let customers measure and report on logical pages that are entirely different from the underlying physical page or pages, leading to a better customer experience.
Social Networking
According to a Forrester Research report,8 one in five online young adults in the U.S. use social networking sites daily. According to another Forrester report,9 86% of online European youth are engaged in social networking. Most of these sites produce revenue through advertising, but they’re also creating new business models.
Business Impact
The challenge in the Web 2.0 world is to keep meeting or exceeding consumer expectations and deliver growth in a complex technology environment.
For brand marketer sites, a poor experience online translates to lost leads and poor brand perception. Not only does a technical issue (poor performance, outages, and errors) impact the direct customer or user, it can also have ripple effects. Technical quality can no longer be an afterthought, because so much is riding on providing a technically sound performance experience online. Loss of revenue, lower customer satisfaction, negative brand impact, and higher costs can be tied directly to poor technical quality.
Last Mile
Three main access mechanisms are used in the last mile. They are Broadband, 3G, and dialup. Performance characteristics vary across geographic locations, and Internet traffic congestion and last-mile latency can degrade Web site performance significantly. However, reliable performance Site Monitoring and traffic analysis across geographically spread locations can provide vital information to ensure a site’s success. A best-in-class solution provides a streamlined process to measure and Monitor Web Sites and mission-critical Web Application Monitoring across the globe, while providing real actionable insight into the end-user experience.
About the Author
Keynote Systems – Web Performance Testing & website Monitoring Services
Quickly diagnose performance problems at the application, transaction, and infrastructure levels in real-time.
Analyze & Optimize: Measuring your SEO performance
|
|
NETGEAR FVS318 ProSafe VPN Firewall 8 with 8-Port 10/100 Switch $50.00 .caption { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica neue, Arial, serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; } ul.indent { list-style: inside disc; text-indent: 20px; } table.callout { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, serif; margin: 10px; width: 250; } td.callout { height: 100 percent; background: #9DC4D8 url(http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/call… |
|
|
Even Faster Web Sites: Performance Best Practices for Web Developers $18.97 Performance is critical to the success of any web site, and yet today’s web applications push browsers to their limits with increasing amounts of rich content and heavy use of Ajax. In this book, Steve Souders, web performance evangelist at Google and former Chief Performance Yahoo!, provides valuable techniques to help you optimize your site’s performance. Souders’ previous book, the bestselling… |
|
|
The Art of Capacity Planning: Scaling Web Resources $34.46 Success on the web is measured by usage and growth. Web-based companies live or die by the ability to scale their infrastructure to accommodate increasing demand. This book is a hands-on and practical guide to planning for such growth, with many techniques and considerations to help you plan, deploy, and manage web application infrastructure.The Art of Capacity Planning is written by the manager o… |
|
|
Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success $8.75 There now exists a wealth of tools and techniques that can determine if and how a Web site is providing business value to its owners. This book is a survey of those metrics and is as important to IT executives as it is to marketing professionals.Jim Sterne is recognized worldwide as a leading Internet business expert and is the author of several Wiley books, including WWW Marketing, Third Edition … |
|
|
Bushnell Trophy TRS-25 1xRed Dot Sight Riflescope $147.95 There’s nothing like a red dot for fast target acquisition and accuracy in dim conditions, and no one makes red dots like Bushnell. The TRS-25 1×25 red dot riflescope boasts Bushnell’s Zoom Dot feature, which gives you the ability to fine tune the size of your aiming point down to one MOA for precision shooting and all the way up to 10 MOA for close quarters. The scope is also engineered with Ambe… |
Tags: measure site performance
