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. |
