CASE STUDY: How Website Monitoring Saved an Online Auto Parts Retailer Released by: Vadim Mazo Web Site: http://dotcom-monitor.com External monitoring helps to find out what causes website outages and slow shopping-cart performance Email: submit@dotcom-monitor.com Keywords: shopping cart, website monitoring, traceroute, web hosting, database, servers Update Date: 10/17/2005 10:05:56 AM Hits: 622 Descrption:  Dotcom-Monitor.com, an external website monitoring company, specializes in ensuring performance and uptime in online transaction processes, including shopping carts, sign-ins, and form submission. By simulating end-use actions, Dotcom-Monitor.com verifies each step within a transaction, not only for proper content, but also for requested performance. If any test parameters fall outside of the specified range, responsible personnel are immediately notified. One of Dotcom-Monitor’s recent customers, a large online auto parts retailer, approached Dotcom-Monitor with concern about site performance issues. Even after aggressive marketing campaigns, this retailer of name brand parts was still noticing a decline in their online business. Customers persistently complained about site outages and slow site response times. Despite repeated complaints by the IT department to the ASP provider and reassurances from the hosting company that the problems had been resolved, customers remained dissatisfied. Realizing a potential disaster for their online business, the IT department sought a third-party external monitoring service provider to monitor their e-commerce site 24/7 and identify the issues and dependencies that were causing website outages. After one-minute monitoring each day for 7 days, the following issues were identified: 1. Slow Website Response Dotcom-Monitor’s “report by hour” feature discovered quickly the issues causing poor performance. The collected one-minute performance data was aggregated on an hourly basis into a single weekly report. This report provided summary statistics about transaction by hour. Using Dotcom Monitor’s proprietary algorithm, it was possible to calculate the site’s slow response periods. Dotcom-Monitor found that, although the e﷓commerce site was hosted on a dedicated shared server, during certain times in a day, other applications on the server consumed most of its resources. This led to slow site response. This happened only during certain hours, as the conflicting application was run only a few times a day. 2. Slow Web Page Response The retailer’s IT department also discovered that several pages within a transaction, such as shipping history and “Invoice printout” were extremely slow. They took a long time to load, causing shoppers to abandon the site and instead call customer service. Dotcom-Monitor identified the specific online pages that were slow and traced the problem to the database table that those pages were accessing. Once proper indexing was performed, the issue was resolved. In today’s highly competitive environment, customer expectations about website availability and performance grow daily. What was once acceptable a few years back is no longer the case today. Website monitoring features, such as immediate alerts, detailed reports, and aggregated statistics, help clients find and address issues, and thus enhance the customer experience.