The standard of website performance monitoring is evolving because it is synonymous with business. The monitoring tools measure your business website’s capability to efficiently serve the end-users. Besides, market demand for underlying technologies, risks, issues, and use cases drive the growth.
The website performance issue is inevitable. It can pop up anytime, especially on websites with the most dynamically distributed content characteristics. Therefore website performance monitoring needs to be understood and applied.
The simple theory of web performance monitoring involves collecting data to enhance website speed. Ultimately, this data helps in improving customer satisfaction and retention. It ultimately decreases the bounce rates.
There are arrays of monitoring applications available, which can make you feel overwhelmed. Different solutions offer to monitor granularity on distinct levels like passive and active monitoring.
Different web performance monitoring types
Synthetic performance monitoring
Routine performance audits are conducted actively. There is no need for user interaction. The synthetic web performance monitoring tool sends a request to a web app or website at a programmed time called checkpoints. It offers an insight report of 3rd party plugins and response time extent during performance checking.
Basic performance monitoring
There are basic to advanced tools available to choose from. Select one based on your business needs. The basic monitoring process does not check internal configurations like speed issues associated with image download.
So, it will not alert about image file size dilemmas. Nevertheless, a basic performance tool can detect some backend issues like uptime monitoring. It is not as efficient as the advanced performance monitoring tools.
Mid-level performance monitoring
With mid-level performance monitoring system website owners can use Google Chrome to start requests, navigate features, execute scripts, and load pages. It resembles the actual user experience.
The browser’s performance must match the user’s expectations. You receive a more accurate result of your website’s responsiveness. It does not offer element-to-element reports like an advanced performance monitoring solution.
Advanced performance monitoring
Advanced web performance monitoring tools offer the most realistic performance results. The tool is a blend of synthetic and mid-level monitoring concepts. It performs HTTPS monitoring and resolves TCP connections. It sends, pauses, and collects loading time details for every webpage element.
Developers receive reports displayed on a chart for easy page load progression monitoring. Developers can find unresponsive features, system bottlenecks, sluggish 3rd party plugins, failing content, and infrastructure glitches. Several tools feature error snapshots, which simplifies the troubleshooting process.
Essential website performance indicators
After determining the suitable web performance monitoring tool type, you need to consider the essential indicators.
- Uptime monitoring is essential to ensure online visibility up to nearly 100%. Website outages can impact business reputation and revenue.
- Time to First Byte measures the server’s responsiveness from the moment user’s make a request to the first byte of the webpage user’s browser receives. It is essential to avoid the loss of sales opportunities because 40% of online users are impatient if the page does not load within 3 sec.
- Full-page load time allows the user to interact with the entire page. The metric measures the time taken to download the source code of specific page. You can enhance load time and enhance conversions.
Broken links, database performance, user journey, geographic performance, etc. are some of the must have indicators to monitor for web performance and best user experience.