Nedstat and WatchMouse start partnership (2008-04-14)
Online marketing and technical performance in one dashboard
Amsterdam, 14 April 2008 – Nedstat and WatchMouse announce a strategic partnership that brings together online marketing intelligence and technical performance. The new integration allows marketeers and technical managers to always have the same real-time view of the technical status of their online business activities. This makes it possible to react instantly when for instance decreasing online business has a technical cause.
The performance reports of WatchMouse have been seamlessly integrated in Sitestat and can be added easily to any online marketing dashboard. Marketeers now view the same technical site performance data as their technical colleagues, making communication between these disciplines within organisations much more efficient.
Michael Kinsbergen, CEO Nedstat. “The website is principally a marketing and communication channel and therefore the domain of marketeers. But it is also a technical channel so technical management plays an essential role as well. The Sitestat-WatchMouse connection has made the communication between both stakeholders much more direct and easy.”
Stan van de Burgt, WatchMouse CEO, says: “By measuring from different locations on the Internet, we can give a clear view of how the performance of a website is experienced by the visitor. Research has shown that visitors already leave after a waiting period of 4 seconds. The Nedstat and WatchMouse measurements are perfectly complementary in giving insight in the relationship between performance and visitor behaviour.”
The Sitestat-WatchMouse integration is directly available to all joint customers of Sitestat and WatchMouse.
About Nedstat
Nedstat is European leader in website analytics.
The products and services enable companies to improve the effectiveness and profitability of their online communication and business.
Nedstat makes website analytics straightforward and accessible for users of all levels and disciplines. Products are easy to use, reports are clear and fast to access, customization is easy and services and support are personal and high quality.
Nedstat employs 180 people in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The client list includes many renowned and internationally operating organizations like ASICS Europe, Electrabel, Ernst & Young, KarstadtQuelle, Renault, Panasonic and Wolters Kluwer. Also, numerous government and not-for-profit organizations have benefited from Nedstat's expertise in delivering reports on users’ behaviour online.
Key accreditations by Europe’s leading independent web-standards organizations, such as ABC electronic and OJD, ensure that customers’ metrics are in full compliance with leading industry standards.
About WatchMouse
Accurate and independent monitoring of website performance enables businesses to address load time and many other potential user experience issues which might not be apparent when conducting in-house or single point monitoring.
WatchMouse's global infrastructure provides its customers with peace of mind that their site has been tested from the user's perspective, and external to the organization. As industry leaders in website performance monitoring, WatchMouse offers customers a web-based service with features such as SMS/email alerting and extensive reporting.
Many of the world's lead brands depend on WatchMouse to monitor their sites, providing independent confirmation of both in-house and suppliers' website performance.
For more information about Nedstat or WatchMouse, please visit www.nedstat.com or www.watchmouse.com.
Online shops, speed and downtime, getting the facts. (2009-12-07)
These days your website plays an important role in informing potential customers, converting them into customers who want to do business with you, and possibly also conducting the transactions with these customers. In other words: Your business relies ever more on the digital economy, and increasingly on the transactional part of it, the online shop.
These online shops should obviously provide satisfactory performance. Here, both the speed at which they serve pages and their uptime are important. If potential customers cannot reach the online shop, or the online shop is too slow, they are less likely to do business with you now, and in the future. Studies have revealed that half of the people who experience downtime on a website go to its competitor. A majority of online shoppers say performance and uptime influences their choice of online shop.
The amount of revenue that is lost when your website or online shop does not behave properly is hard to quantify. If your website is slow your customers may select a distribution channel that is more costly for you, or they may go to your competitor. Even worse, they may complain about your company to other potential customers. All of this boils down to lost revenue.
A good website is up for at least 99.9% of the time, even though this still represents more than 8 hours in a full year. In a recent survey we found that many websites do not even achieve 99% availability, which corresponds to more than 3 days of downtime a year. As regards speed, if a web page does not load in less than 4 seconds, people start to leave the site, sometimes forever.
How do you make your online shop an efficient experience for your customers? The site must be designed with a strong focus on the customer task. The technology must be no more complex than is relevant. People get annoyed by slow loading Flash intros and complex and slow Flash-based navigation. Take a look at the Google home page; it is one of the fastest websites in the world. On the other hand, you can still use a video clip of a product, if that is relevant to the customer at a particular point in the transaction. You can also use advanced Web 2.0 technology if it makes the user interface more resilient and user-friendly. To experience this, look at Google maps using a dial-up internet connection. It is a really complex user interface, but everything possible has been done to create a positive user experience.
Technology is also important; make sure that you have good service level agreements with all your technology providers. You also want to stress test the site, to see what happens if a lot of people start using it simultaneously. Finally, you should independently monitor the site. When it is time to talk to your hosting company, IT department or website maintainer, it is very helpful to have hard data that reports on the speed and uptime of your online shop.
Peter van Eijk
dr Peter van Eijk is an independent management consultant associated with WatchMouse, the site monitoring experts www.watchmouse.com. He is experienced in setup, management and audits of digital infrastructures. His blog is "Peter's Griddle".
