* Gomez lays out best practices for maintaining stellar Web site performance
It’s easy to forget that performance is not simply an issue of network speeds and feeds. There are a lot of factors that contribute to the experience of end users who are trying to access Web applications to execute a transaction, download a file, or browse enterprise content.
Gomez, which provides Internet performance monitoring services, recently published a report on performance management in the e-commerce world that lays out some best practices for ensuring the end user’s experience is a good one.
The report reminds enterprises with Web applications that they need to be concerned with not only the familiar performance criteria — availability and response time — but also the less obvious site attributes if they want to be an Internet performance leader.
Matt Poepsel, who heads Gomez’s performance strategies practice and authored the report, put forth the notion of establishing a “performance management culture” to make sure all bases are covered.
“Simply put, it’s a state of mind — a way of doing business that’s all about vigilant monitoring of your site’s performance to ensure a consistently positive user experience, whether the user is logging on from Paris or San Francisco,” Poepsel wrote in the report. “It’s about always measuring your site’s performance against your competitors’. It’s about continual learning to safeguard customers, brand reputation and the bottom line.”
Following is a summary of three recommendations put forth in the Gomez report, “10 Performance Management Best Practices.”
* Monitor what matters. It’s not enough to keep tabs on the buying process. Companies need to test every important business function on a Web site, Gomez says. For example, performance leaders confirm multi-step business processes are working for all end-users on every connection speed, the firm says.
* Seek internal alignment. With a complex Web application, the differing priorities of those involved — IT staff, marketing, Web masters, operations executives and others — can take a toll on a company’s ability to provide the best possible customer experience. “Performance leaders create shared performance metrics that align every group around end-user goals and considerations throughout the application delivery lifecycle,” Poepsel wrote.
* Link application performance to business performance. It’s pretty easy to imagine a slow, inaccessible site is not good for business. But just how bad is it? It’s critical to connect the dots to determine how poor performance can slow sales, drive higher volumes in a call center and erode margins in other areas of a business, for example, Gomez points out.
For more details on these and the other seven best practices, check out the report on Gomez’s Web site.
