Kolkata Stocks：Website monitoring 101： definition, benefits, and types
Below, we explore the types of website monitoring and website monitoring best practices you can implement to drive business growth and create an excellent user experience on your site.
Use our suggestions to inform your website monitoring checklist, and pick the ones specific to your business and customer goals.
Monitoring your website’s uptime and downtime (or how available and operational it is to users) is crucial—regardless of whether you’re running a SaaS product, web service, or ecommerce site.
Users typically won’t wait around for pages to load, especially if they’re ready to purchase a solution. To effectively convert visitors, you need to make sure they can access your site or service. Uptime monitoring lets you spot website availability issues before they negatively impact the user experience.
So, how do you track your website’s uptime or downtime? Use website monitoring tools like Uptrends or Better Uptime to check your service-level agreement (SLA) compliance, and set your SLA definitions to monitor important uptime KPIs and metrics. These metrics might include:
Uptime percentage/high availability: the average amount of time your website is available to visitors. Use this metric to identify which parts of your website regularly become inaccessible or unavailable.
Operator response time: or the length of time an error can go unattended before an operator acts to resolve it
Time to first byte: the elapsed time it takes your web server to deliver data to users. Determine how long it takes visitors to access and experience certain website elements.
Search query response time: or the time it takes a user to get a response to their search requests
Track downtime using automated downtime monitoring tools like Datadog that learn from a downtime history database to prevent additional outages, and immediately alert you to issues like expiration notices
A breach of personal data and user trust can make customers totally abandon a product or brand. Security monitoring helps you prevent cyberattacks, maintain your brand’s reputation, and keep your customer data safe.
How to monitor your website’s security and prevent hacks or hijacks:
Outsource to a professional cybersecurity monitoring company for in-depth expertise in cyber threat detection (in addition to your devs department)
Hire a pen-testing team to simulate a real website hack to expose any unknown security vulnerabilities or threats
Use website security software like GoDaddy or SolarWinds, or static analysis tools like Synk that continuously monitor threats like malware, blacklisting, or hacking
Use KPI tracking tools like UpGuard to follow security-based website monitoring metrics like:
Level of preparedness: the number of devices that are fully up to date in your network
Unidentified devices on internal networks: the number of potentially harmful devices within your network. Employees can unintentionally bring malware into your system— simply by connecting to your network.
Security incidents: the number of times an attacker breaches your network or information assets
Intrusion attempts: the number of times an attacker attempts to gain unauthorized access
Mean time to detect and resolve: the average time it takes to detect and resolve a cyber attack
Average vendor security rating: your organization’s threat landscape
Your website’s performance determines a user’s likelihood of staying to explore your website—especially since website speed and page-load times impact 70% of consumers’ chances of converting.
Website performance monitoring makes sure you’re providing an intuitive, optimized experience for your users that lets them complete their tasks and accomplish their goalsKolkata Stocks. Focus on website speed, content organization, and optimized web design to positively influence conversion rate optimization and elevate the user experience.
Let’s explore some ways to monitor your site’s performance:
Use Google PageSpeed Insights to test and monitor your website’s overall loading speed and see if your website’s actively meeting user needs. Test My Site lets you check your mobile responsiveness and speed.
Place feedback widgets on key areas of your site, including home, landing, checkout, and product pages, and ask users if you’re creating an intuitive user experience and what you could improve
A/B test crucial conversion pages and web design elements—like CTA or search bar placement—to see which design variant resonates with users. If you’re using Hotjar for synthetic monitoring, you can integrate the platform with tools like Optimizely and Google Optimize—and watch recordings of different user types exploring your variations.
Use website performance monitoring software, like GTmetrix or Pingdom, to see exactly how your site is performing and what to improve. Key performance monitoring metrics might include:
Page load time: the time it takes a page to fully load
Resolve time: the time it takes to form a TCP/IP connection or resolve a domain name to an IP address
TCP Connect: the amount of time it takes to form an initial IP connection to the server
Send time: the time it takes (after forming a connection) for a user to request or ‘get’ contentSimla Investment
Wait time: the time it takes from sending a request to getting the server to respond
Receive time: the time it takes the first data byte and last data byte to reach a browser
Watch recordings of user sessions on your website to observe how users experience your site and whether your web design, content layout, and navigation elements make sense throughout their journeyNew Delhi Investment. Session recordings are a type of real user monitoring (RUM) approach, as they let you access replays of user sessions in the wild. Hotjar Recordings also help you with transaction testing by letting you see how users search, type, and fill out forms on your website.
Tracking user behavior on your website gives you key insights into the user experience—and how their behavior impacts product or website success.
For example, after updating your product pricing plans, your SaaS business might track user retention rates to determine if your new prices align with user or market demand. Or, if you’re an ecommerce company, you might track cart abandonment rates to determine how customers react to a new checkout process.
So, how do you monitor user behavior on your website?
Analyze heatmaps of user activity on your web pages to see where users click and how far they scroll to determine if you’re creating an engaging, intuitive user and product experienceJaipur Wealth Management
Administer timed surveys throughout the customer journey and ask about their experience directly to determine what’s driving their behavior and what you could improve
Refer to your CRM platform for insights into persona-based purchasing history, past interactions, and sales figures. Use your data to draw connections between spikes in website activity and conversion.
Use web analytics tools like Google Analytics to spot trends in user behavior. Analytics-based monitoring is essential to understand the performance of your website and helps you track key metrics like:
Bounce rate: the percentage of visitors who leave a web page without performing an action
Average session duration: the average time a visitor spends on your website
Retention rate: the percentage of users who keep using your product or return to your website over a given period of time
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