Monitoring Website Performance: Why

it’s As Important As Monitoring Website

Downtime

We all hear about it when a website goes down. We all know

that website downtime equates to lost profits and even headlines

that hurt a company’s reputation. That’s why the majority of

serious online ecommerce players put website monitoring

service into place. Profitable companies know that website

downtime equates to lost profits and website monitoring can

help reduce the amount of profits that are lost each year due to

downtime. But what about website performance? Is it as

important as website uptime? Before you assume knowing

about website downtime is enough, there are some things you

should consider.

Website Downtime vs. Website Performance

When website goes down, your site can’t bring in sales. That’s

just common sense. But what about when your website isn’t

performing up to par? Your site may still be able to make sales,

but the question is, are your customers going to actually hang

around long enough to complete a sale? When a website goes

down, the customer knows it’s down and may decide to come

back and try again later. When a website is performing poorly,

that customer may get fed up with the site, assuming it’s just the

way your site operates, and leave without ever coming back for

that sale. This is why it is important that any website monitoring

service that you put into place monitors website performance as

well as website downtime.

How Poor Performance Affects Your Website

While website downtime can be measured in lost sales for each

minute your site was down, it can be a bit harder to measure

losses due to poor site performance. The fact of the matter is, if

it takes your site’s pages more than three seconds to load, your

visitors are going to start getting frustrated. If your page load

times exceed five seconds, chances are you are going to lose

them to a competitor site. Poor website performance affects a

number of factors that are crucial to the success of your business

including your conversion rates, your revenue, your user

satisfaction, customer retention, bounce rate, brand perception,

and more. Again, it becomes very clear why website monitoring

that offers performance monitoring in addition to downtime

monitoring is crucial to the success of your online business.

Looking at the Numbers

So exactly how much does poor performance cost your website?

This can be a bit harder to estimate than the cost of downtime.

First, let’s assume your site experiences a one second delay in

page load times. On average, you can expect that one second

delay to result in a 7 percent decrease in conversions. In addition,

you can expect to have 11 percent fewer page views per visitor. In

addition to decreased customer satisfaction, your site will

experience a decrease in profits. If your site averages $50,000 a

day in sales, these estimates would equate to a loss of $1.25

million in sales a year. That may actually be more sales lost due to

performance than you would ever lose due to downtime, which is

why your website monitoring service needs to employ practices

that monitor your site’s performance in addition to your site’s

uptime.

Working with the Right Website Monitoring Service

If you work with a website monitoring service that monitors

your site’s performance in addition to your site’s uptime, you

will know if your site is experiencing page performance issues.

This means that when your site’s performance starts to lag,

you’ll be notified and can take proper action to get your site

running seamlessly again. Lost profits are lost profits, regardless

of whether they occur from downtime or performance issues.

The right website monitoring service can help you avoid both.

Alertra is a leading website monitoring and alerting service

provider. Uptime monitoring by Alertra is performed around the

clock. We provide our clients alerts via phone calls, sms alerts as

well as email. If you are looking for a quality website monitor

for your site, Alertra website uptime monitor is the right option.