Some good background on Web Performance Monitoring (WPM)
I am not one to spruik third party products and I promise I am not.
Though this eBook (I know, I know, just as bad as a webinar) on Web Performance Monitoring (WPM) is actually not a bad read. It is from a company called AlertBear, a company that provides website monitoring services.
I haven’t dealt with them, though I have worked with a bunch of other, similar technologies.
There are no revelations in the document, though it is a well-constructed journey through:
- The commercial impacts of slowing, slow or unresponsive websites; i.e. your sales tank.
- Some high-profile examples where websites have failed under inordinate load and the ramifications of this.
- The thinking behind Facebook delaying video advertising as a result of not wishing to deliver anything but an optimal (speed) experience to its users.
- What Web Performance Monitoring is.
- Some good ground-rules for establishing, benchmarking and maintaining your website in good shape.
The document is impartial and a good, grounding read.
Clients often ask me why their websites should slow down and for that, there are many, many reasons. Many of these are out of the control of the web developer and although one should notice a website slowdown via a slowdown in sales, this is not a great approach or answer for all the obvious reasons.
It generally only takes a client being burnt once for the investment in some WPM technology. You do get what you pay for and cheaper ‘ping’ technologies can be entirely useless when it is a third-party piece of code slowing you down; though even if you start there, it is a good start.
