CASE STUDY: How Website Monitoring Saved an Online Auto Parts Retailer by David Leonhardt
PROBLEM: Customers complaining about site outages and
slow site response times. Hosting company claiming that the
problems had been resolved. Customers remaining dissatisfied.
METHODOLOGY: External website monitoring on a page-by-
page basis at one-minute intervals pinpointed the problems.
SOLUTIONS: Realigning shared hosting, fixing database
indexing, DNS server upgrade, altering the web host's BGP
configuration and regular website monitoring.
THE STORY:
Once seen as an alternative marketing channel, online shopping
has carved its own niche in the marketplace. The online shopping
sector has grown rapidly, outstripping other sectors and opening
new business prospects. The factors contributing to the
continuous growth of online shopping include wider product
ranges, convenience, lower prices, and availability of clear
product information. Recent large investments in e-commerce by
companies large and small have further energized the sector and
strengthened its roots.
This growth has not come easy. Although most shopping sites feel
that they have rid themselves of persistent growing pains, some
remain. A recent Andersen Consulting Services survey reveals that more
than 25 percent of online shopping experiences fail during
holiday seasons due to site outages. Another
survey by the NDP Group reveals that up to 23 percent of
online shoppers still experience temporary website outages, late
shipments, and customer service issues.
Dotcom-Monitor website
monitoring network specializes in ensuring performance and
uptime in online transaction processes, including shopping carts,
sign-ins, and form submission. By simulating end-use actions,
Dotcom-Monitor.com verifies each step within a transaction, not
only for proper content, but also for requested performance. If
any test parameters fall outside of the specified range,
responsible personnel are immediately notified.
One of Dotcom-Monitor's recent customers, a large online auto
parts retailer, approached Dotcom-Monitor with concern about
website performance issues. Even after aggressive marketing
campaigns, this retailer of name brand parts was still noticing a
decline in their online business. Customers persistently
complained about site outages and slow site response
times.
Despite repeated complaints by the IT department to the ASP
provider and reassurances from the hosting company that the
problems had been resolved, customers remained dissatisfied.
Realizing a potential disaster for their online business, the IT
department sought a third-party external monitoring service
provider to monitor their e-commerce site 24/7 and identify the
issues and dependencies that were causing website outages.
After one-minute monitoring each day for 7 days, the following
issues were identified:
1. Slow Website Response
Dotcom-Monitor's "report by hour" feature discovered quickly the
issues causing poor performance. The collected one-minute
performance data was aggregated on an hourly basis into a single
weekly report. This report provided summary statistics about
transaction by hour. Information such as average response time
(in seconds), required time to access the website, and the number
of successes and failures, provided a clear picture about site
performance during different daily intervals. Using Dotcom
Monitor's proprietary algorithm, it was possible to calculate the
site's slow response periods. Dotcom-Monitor found that, although
the e commerce site was hosted on a dedicated shared server,
during certain times in a day, other applications on the server
consumed most of its resources. This led to slow site response.
This happened only during certain hours, as the conflicting
application was run only a few times a day.
2. Slow Web Page Response
The retailer's IT department also discovered that several pages
within a transaction, such as shipping history and "Invoice
printout" were extremely slow. They took a long time to load,
causing shoppers to abandon the site and instead call customer
service. Unfortunately, the other pages within the same
transaction were extremely fast to load. Dues to this discrepancy
within the network, Dotcom-Monitor was able to identify the
specific online pages that were slow and traced the problem to
the database table that those pages were accessing. Once proper
indexing was performed, the issue was resolved.
3. Problem in Accessing the Website
During certain intervals in a day, the retailer's site became
inaccessible altogether. A number of services, such as mail
servers, websites, and proxy servers, would become unavailable to
the online world. To make matters worse, the ISP could not find
any issues, but customers were still complaining. After a ping
pong game" to determine the problems between the ISP and
customers, Dotcom Monitor enables its "DNS Monitoring." Dotcom-
Monitor tested the retailer's DNS servers by querying specified
servers performing Every minute, website monitoring showed that
one DNS server was occasionally unable to resolve the address.
This implied that the DNS server supporting the organization was
not working consistently. The retailer upgraded the DNS server
and the problem was resolved.
4. Varying Website Response from Different Geographical
Locations
Persistent monitoring showed that this retailer's shopping cart
website responded at varying speeds from different locations.
Some customers complained that the site took too long to open,
while others had no issues. Using Dotcom-Monitor's "Report by
Location" feature, which gathers data from multiple remote agents
at different locations, a traceroute snapshot was recorded. This
report was accompanied by the error message from every location
where slowdown was detected. After analyzing the data, it was
found that the ISP hosting the site used several providers that
did not peer properly with certain networks. This network peering
problem was identified and brought to the ISP. They took the
necessary actions to resolve the problem by altering their BGP
configuration.
5. Website Downtime required frequent monitoring
The retailer's website occasionally suffered downtime, which led
to customer dissatisfaction. The outages were mostly related to
software glitches that the customer was unable to fix in a short
period of time. These glitches usually required manual
intervention. Enter Dotcom-Monitor. The goal to reduce downtime
was to alert key personnel of any issue immediately. Once website
monitoring detected any problems with the web server, immediate
alert by phone and SMS would be sent to on-call personnel. This
decreased downtime periods from an average of 25 minutes to less
than 5 minutes.
In today's highly competitive environment, customer expectations
about website availability and performance grow daily. What was
once acceptable a few years back is no longer the case today.
Website monitoring features, such as immediate alerts, detailed
reports, and aggregated statistics, help clients find and address
issues, and thus enhance the customer experience.
External website monitoring services offered by companies
like Dotcom-Monitor have helped customers explore issues and
discover otherwise elusive data required to take corrective
actions well before receiving customer complaints. Dotcom-
Monitor.com services extend into all industries. It is important
to note that website monitoring services are a must for all
mission-critical services, and are not just limited to the
current example of shopping cart customers. In industries such as
finance, insurance, medical, and manufacturing, or any industry
that requires high website uptimes and excellent website
response, it is becoming essential to employ external website
monitoring services.
ABOUT THE SOURCE:
Dotcom-Monitor provides external website
monitoring services and remote network monitoring
services from agents positioned around the globe, providing
clients with 24/7 monitoring and instant alerts, as well as
useful data to weed out server and connection problems.
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