Performance of Australian Emergency Services' sites

To provide an indication of the website performance of sites belonging to Australia's Emergency Services, WatchMouse monitored 26 sites. These sites were monitored over the period 25 January - 26 February 2008, during which the availability, load time and speed were measured every 5 minutes. These figures were then used in a formula that represents the user's perception.

Availability

The uptime of each of the 26 sites is presented below. In accordance with industry standards, availability of ≥99.9% is regarded as 'good' while anything below 99% is regarded as 'poor' site uptime. (99% uptime equals over 80 hours downtime per year, or about 1 business day per month).

A press release with observations and analyses of the WatchMouse Australian Emergency Services website monitoring can be viewed at:watchmouse.com/en/press/In-times-of-crisis-the-sites-of-Australia-s-Emerge...

Site Performance Index

Combining a site's availability with measurement of speed and load time, WatchMouse gives each monitored site a Site Performance Index (SPI). The SPI represents the relative website performance. An SPI below 1000 indicates a site that performs 'well' and has a good user experience. An SPI between 1000 and 2000 represents an 'acceptable' user experience while an SPI of more than 2000 represents a site with serious user experience issues.

A press release with observations and analyses of the WatchMouse Australian Emergency Services website monitoring can be viewed at:watchmouse.com/en/press/In-times-of-crisis-the-sites-of-Australia-s-Emerge...

99% Uptime Is Not Good

An uptime of 99.99% or higher is extremely desirable for high-profile companies and those that achieve high turnovers through their sites. Many companies stipulate an uptime of 99.9% as a minimum requirement in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with their IT department or provider, even though this allows for 8 hours of downtime on a yearly basis. An uptime below 99% is usually regarded as unacceptable as this allows approx. 1 business day per month of downtime.

Definition of the WatchMouse SPI

The WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI) was developed by Dr. Peter van Eijk and his team, and is based on many years of practical experience and research into the performance and availability of computer systems. The SPI quantifies the user's perception of speed and availability of a site into a single number. The SPI is computed by taking the time needed to load the main page and adding a penalty for each failed request. The higher the number, the lower the customer experience of the site. Sites with an SPI of <1000 perform well, whereas an index of 2000 or higher is an indication of a site with a seriously negative user experience.

WatchMouse conducts SPI research in 28 business sectors and 5 countries. For each sector in each country, the main web sites of a set of representative organisations are tracked. The WatchMouse SPI gives a quick overview of trends in relative performance and availability across sectors and countries.

WatchMouse SPI Monitoring Methods

WatchMouse monitored the websites of 26 of Australian Emergency Services during the period 25 January - 26 February 2008. During this period, WatchMouse tested the websites every 5 minutes, using one of the monitoring stations. The monitoring station retrieves the homepage without images, frames, etc. This HTML page is expected to download within 4 seconds, without any errors. If this time is exceeded, or if an error occurs, this is verified by one of the other monitoring stations. This check is called the '2nd opinion check'. If this check also establishes an error, it is counted as 'poor availability or not available'. All 2nd opinion checks, and all successful checks, are taken into account. All the connect and download times of all successful checks are added. For each failed (2nd opinion) check, a 10 second penalty is added. The SPI is the sum of these, expressed as an average over 1000 checks.

WatchMouse has a global network of 25+ monitoring stations but for this research only Australia based monitoring stations were used.

The Four Second Monitor?

Even if a web site is up and running it is still possible that not all visitors experience a good performance. The longer it takes for a page to load, the smaller the chance that users will have the patience to view it. Some years ago 8 seconds was considered an acceptable time for a page to load. Now that internet users have become more experienced and broadband internet has become the norm, load time tolerance has diminished.

Recent research shows that website users will not wait longer than 4 seconds for a website to load. After 4 seconds, customers will leave the site and seek an alternative site. Alarmingly, the research also shows that if a site fails to load within 4 seconds, users will be left with a negative brand perception.

WatchMouse's FAQs relating to the SPI can be viewed here. General WatchMouse Q&As can be found here.

This website performance monitoring research covers the websites of the following organisations:ACT Fire-Rural, SA Ambulance, VIC Fire-Rural, VIC Ambulance, WA Police, ACT Ambulance, ACT Fire-Metropolitan, VIC ESTA, QLD Fire-Rural, QLD Fire-Metropolitan, SA Fire-Metropolitan, NSW Fire-Metropolitan, WA Fire-Metropolitan, QLD Ambulance, NT Fire and Emergency Services, ACT Police, NSW Fire-Rural, NSW Police, QLD Police, NT Police, VIC Police, Federal police, VIC Fire-Metropolitan, SA Police, NSW Ambulance, WA Ambulance.

You can read more about WatchMouse at www.watchmouse.com