01/12/2012

Basic Functions of Website Monitoring Services

Once a website is live on the web, there are many aspects which the website owner has to take care of. The performance of the website is crucial among them, because inconsistent and inappropriate performance of the website significantly impacts its traffic. However, many website owners will either be too busy or not so technically savvy to monitor their websites continuously. This is where website monitoring services help website owners.

The main function of website monitoring services is to check that your site is working perfectly and report on any flaws in performance. As per the feedback from these reports, website owners can rectify the issues immediately, and thus avoid any negative impact on their website’s traffic.

In this article, we will discuss a few basic functions of website monitoring services to help you understand the need of website monitoring for your business websites.

Global site monitoring. If the website is meant for global use, it is crucial to make sure that it is accessible from any location across the globe. Global website monitoring tracks the performance of the website through multiple servers positioned globally in major locations such as America, Europe, Asia, etc. These test monitoring stations determine the availability of the web server across various networks. They measure the performance, uptime and downtime experienced by real users.

Track problems in web servers and routers. The response time from web servers also depends on routers and firewalls, behind which they are configured. Sometimes a misconfiguration of the router might block Internet access to IP addresses of certain regions. Website monitoring also tracks issues related to the web servers or routers in any part of the world. The problem along with its root cause is sent to the website owner immediately.

Immediate error notification. Website monitoring companies study the performance of the website and submit a report to the respective company. Moreover, these companies also send an immediate notification through an e-mail or SMS, whenever their page goes down or encounters any problem that makes it unavailable. This service helps companies in quickly resolving the issue.

Measures website performance trends. The performance of any website is not necessarily similar in every region. The uptime, downtime and specific problems of a website at different locations are detected by the website monitoring services and a report on the overall performance and problems of the website is created. This report helps in identifying performance trends and patterns of the website in different geographical locations and helps companies take necessary corrective measures.

Provides public uptime statistics. Uptime statistics are the history of the uptime of a particular website at different intervals. This kind of service is optional and is provided by most of the reputed service providers. By enabling this service, the uptime statistics of that site are displayed to the public. Uptime statistics, including check period, number of total checks, number of outages and average response time on a single page, are displayed using this service.

Showing uptime statistics to the public indicates the openness and honesty of a business. This increases trust and the user will not mind waiting even when the site is down for some time.

Detects defacement due to hacking. Website defacement, by hacking, has become a common threat for many website owners. Thousands of website owners face this issue each year. Constant monitoring helps in detecting such kinds of activities and enables the companies to regain access to their websites.

Website monitoring services help website owners by offering a clear picture of their website's performance and by helping them to optimize them according to the user needs. Hiring a reliable company that can provide all the above mentioned services helps you to make your online businesses more successful and profitable.