Keeping It Real: Avoiding Pitfalls When Load Testing Websites Using A CDN

Posted on May 3, 2012 by admin

There was a time when doing a Website Load Test for a client using a Content Distribution Network (CDN) was an infrequent activity, but these days it’s a common occurrence.  There are more CDN suppliers of course, the newer ones such as MaxCDN,  the traditional big names like Akamai and LimeLight, and some Datacentres such as UKFast offer CDN services directly to clients themselves.

Over the years of testing websites using Clouds and Content Distribution Networks there are a number of pitfalls that we’ve seen organisations struggle with, so it’s nice now to be able to provide some tips to help people get the best from this sort of load test.

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Canterbury Tales: BarCamp Canterbury 2

Posted on April 30, 2012 by admin

Bar Camp Canterbury 2012 happened over the weekend (28th and 29th April), and was an interesting chance to network with local (and not so local) folks, across a range of topics reaching from deep Java OO themes through to bows and arrows (in case you’re wondering, that was the session about surviving in an apocalyptic future)!

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How Changing Suppliers For Website Monitoring Can Improve Communication Immediately For eCommerce And Operations Teams.

Posted on April 16, 2012 by admin

We’ve seen a steady stream of projects over the last six months, where eCommerce teams have moved sufficiently down the e-Commerce Maturity Curve and wanted to upgrade their current, rather static website monitoring tools. Very often this move has been made in order to both gain more realistic metrics of genuine user experience, and to provide greater reporting intelligence as to the root cause of each problem. Both of these are vital for organisations looking to reduce low level trouble-shooting and firefighting time for the Opps and Support teams, allowing them instead to focus on meaningful analysis of performance and development .

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Posted in Application Performance Monitoring, Do what the Customer Does, Online Mystery Shopper, Uncategorized, Unrealistic Monitoring, User Journey Monitoring, User Journey Testing, Website Monitoring, Website Performance Monitoring | Comments Off

e-Commerce maturity curve – how to really reduce Customer Struggle part 1

Posted on March 30, 2012 by deri

An article at eConsultancy caught my eye, Digital B2B marketers struggle to overcome internal cultural challenges,  and reminded me of the varying stages of evolution down the e-Commerce maturity curve that I see on projects.

It’s just my anecdotal evidence, but the further down that maturity curve organisations are, the better they are able to reduce Customer Struggle. It’s all about Marketing teams getting the ROI they want -and how they work with other teams to really make that happen, even when often they know it isn’t happening yet.  Let me explain how it works.

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Posted in Application Performance Monitoring, Browser monitoring, Common Language, eCommerce, Inventory Monitoring, Lost Sales monitoring, Marketing, Online Mystery Shopper, Single point of truth, Uncategorized, Unrealistic Monitoring, User Journey Monitoring, User Journey Testing, Website Capacity Planning | Comments Off

Last Mile monitoring your website – what to avoid and why

Posted on March 9, 2012 by deri

Some phrases and concepts cause a lot of confusion and take up so much time, when planning website performance management projects.

Website ‘Last Mile’ monitoring is one – there are several limitations in practise, and we are finding fewer clients  getting value from it within their overall end-user experience monitoring. Continue reading →

Posted in Application Performance Monitoring, Browser monitoring, Unrealistic Monitoring, User Journey Monitoring, Website Monitoring, Website Performance Monitoring | Comments Off

The Best Retail Website – how to build it and measure it

Posted on January 20, 2012 by deri

As retailers make up a good part of the projects we’re busy with the question of to “how to build the best retail website” sometimes comes up.

Which is a great question, and one that everyone in eCommerce should be asking, but even more interesting is when a  Director level person poses the question:

“How do I build and manage a TEAM, to build the Best Retail Website ?”

Because it shows a much deeper, more sophisticated, understanding of the evoloution of online retail: technology can do great things – but it needs great people to achieve that.

Some retailers I meet are engaged on a fast track growth in their online operations:  either newer companies for whom online has always been the greater part of the business, or household names who are ramping up online strategically. Continue reading →

Posted in Do what the Customer Does, Lost Sales monitoring, Missing Product Monitoring | Comments Off

Google Page Speed doesn’t make your website faster for users!

Posted on January 20, 2012 by deri

Following on from my last blog on the The Fallacy Of One-Page Website Performance Optimisation   I just wanted to add a quick note in answer to the question: “My web tech team are using lots of cool page speed performance tools to make our pages faster, isn’t that enough?”

I wrote earlier this week how thinking ‘page’ is not as effective as thinking ‘Journey’ – but putting that to one side  – in particular I was asked about Google’s Page Speed tool.

It’s a useful tool, I’m not knocking it, but I am saying that it’s scope and limitations need to be understood. You can entirely waste precious tech team resources if you don’t. Continue reading →

Posted in Application Performance Monitoring, Browser monitoring, Do what the Customer Does, Uncategorized, User Journey Monitoring, Website Monitoring, WPO | Comments Off

The Fallacy Of One-Page Website Performance Optimisation

Posted on January 16, 2012 by deri

I get to sit in on a lot of meetings with clients, who are looking to improve the ROI of their websites.

The most interesting ones are with organisations that have evolved far enough along the eCommerce evolutionary path to realise that it’s no good IT and Business teams sitting in separate silos. Those that understand that all teams need to pull together to achieve better online sales for their company, that their functions are interdependent and that it is through focusing on continually improving the technology underpinning the user experience that they will achieve their biggest success.

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Posted in Ajax Monitoring, Application Performance Monitoring, Do what the Customer Does, Online Mystery Shopper, User Journey Monitoring, Website Monitoring, Website Performance Monitoring, WPM, WPO | Comments Off

Load Testing MCR Retail websites – Realism and accuracy

Posted on December 15, 2011 by deri

The team here have been very busy the last quarter, as always, a lot of retailers want to load test their websites in advance of the seasonal shopping rush, and this year it seems that the benefit of this preperation is being recognised more widely than ever.

I’ve been very impressed with the team here, how they’ve been able to juggle such a busy period whilst at the same continue development of our testing systems, to allow us to model even better realism for our multi-channel retail projects.

There’s been some fascinating graphics of realism too, as we’ve evolved our approaches.

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Posted in Application Performance Monitoring, Cloud Website Testing, Website Capacity Planning, Website Load Testing, WPO | Comments Off

Give your customers some love, website monitoring TLC

Posted on November 28, 2011 by deri

A major milestone was reached for SciVisum today.

A B2C website client, Inghams Travel, has been so impressed with our Dynamic User Journey monitor service over the last year and more, that they decided to put up our logo on their website footer, to let their customers know their experience online is important. Continue reading →

Posted in Inventory Monitoring, Missing Product Monitoring, User Journey Monitoring, Website Monitoring | Comments Off