What is website monitoring for?
You’ve created a business website, launched it and are waiting for the orders or comms to come rolling in. That’s it, right? Well, not quite. A website is almost like a living organism, it needs to be nurtured, evolve and grow as the systems that comprise it are updated, improved or retired. So, when you get an agency like ours to manage your website support and maintenance, what part does monitoring play? What is website monitoring for and should you prioritise dev firms that offer it as a core service? We’ll share the lowdown in this quick, 5-minute read.
What is website monitoring?
Hotjar explains, “Website monitoring is the process of checking your website’s performance, function, security, usability, and availability. It ensures your website is up and running and visitors can enter and use it to complete their various tasks, like getting information or making a purchase. Monitoring your website’s performance typically involves automated testing, as there are too many influences on a website’s performance, availability, and function for accurate manual testing.” There are four main types of website monitoring: uptime, performance, security and user experience. Across these areas, development agencies use different tools to support receiving notifications of issues and plan updates.
What is being tracked?
You’ll have tools that track availability and send alerts during downtimes. They will be looking at how page speed influences user satisfaction and conversions, all while ensuring that transactions, checkouts and forms are completed. Next, the programs will look at the CPU, memory usage and bandwidth monitoring; tracking and resolving errors and crashes, sometimes on its own with ML and AI. For anything website monitoring tools can’t fix, you have human IT support and developer teams who are notified and spring to action, sorting any issues.
Popular website monitoring tools
The CTO Club recommends Dynatrace for AI-driven analytics, Sematext for integrating server and website metrics, Datadog for real-time dashboards, Raygun for real user experience insights and the classic- Uptrends for monitoring web applications. But no matter what monitoring tools you use, the key is what you do with those insights. Without expert support to migrate your domain or repair broken pages, you’re just getting information from these tools – no action. You may need developer support to take drastic actions like changing your website host altogether.
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What’s the benefit of website monitoring?
There are a range of benefits related to monitoring your website. The first is just making sure it’s live and working. These tools will look for breaks, bugs and breaches to ensure you’re giving a good customer experience at all times. Next, it’s about protecting your SERP. Having issues on your website can cause Google and other search engines to flag it as providing poor content. Since these search engines want to always show users the best results, they’re going to derank your website until it’s fixed. That can have a very damaging impact on your bottom line. Lastly, it’s protecting your customer data and business IP from bad actors. Monitoring for security breaches, DDoS attacks and malware is important for maintaining customer trust and loyalty.
There are many other benefits; on top of those listed above, around competitive advantage and volume management as well. So, if you want some expert support with your website, reach out today.