News
WatchMouse widget 1.1 released (download widget) (2005-12-17)
WatchMouse releases version 1.1 of their Apple Dashboard site monitoring widget.
NETHERLANDS, 2005-12-16. By means of the WatchMouse widget Apple users get direct insight into the accessibility of their own Internet site. The widget can be downloaded for free from the Apple website.
At regular intervals the dashboard widget checks one or more sites from the users own computer. Also, the availability of the site during the last 72 hours is registered. A problem is followed by an alert, which is then verified by all WatchMouse control stations.
Features
- Checks your website from your own computer every 1, 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes (new in this release).
- Displays the uptime over the last 72 hours.
- Alerts you in case of an error and...
- Verifies errors from all the WatchMouse worldwide monitoring stations
The new version also fixes some minor bugs.
The free WatchMouse site monitoring widget can be downloaded from the Apple website , and requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/networking_security/watchmousesitemonitor.html
New functionality: Site Performance Index graph (2007-08-17)
A new graph type has been added to the monitoring graphs: Site Performance Index.
The new graph is available for all WatchMouse users as of now, and can be found on the graphs page. Select "Site Performance Index" from the first drop-down menu (Display).
This graph shows the WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI) for the selected rule(s).
Note: Only rules of the type http and https are included in this graph.
The SPI graph enables you to compare the performance of your web servers. In order to make a fair comparison, the time-out for all rules should be the same.
The WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI) contains information on both the availability (or uptime) and the speed of a website. That makes the SPI an accurate representation of the average "waiting time" for a visitor: the higher the SPI, the longer visitors have to wait, on average, for the site to load. A low SPI is good, i.e. the shortest bar in this graph represents the site with the fastest response time and shortest waiting time.
The SPI values in the graph indicate only a relative SPI of your own web sites. If you want to compare your sites to those of your competitors use the WatchMouse SPI performance benchmarking.
BadBoy Software updates scripting recorder to improve WatchMouse's Functional testing service (2009-01-07)
The WatchMouse Functional testing service allows you to define multi-step tests through a website and replay them periodically from the WatchMouse monitoring stations. This goes beyond just monitoring site performance and uptime, it allows you to verify that your web applications and back end systems really work.
More information on this service can be found on the Transaction Monitoring & Web Application Testing page.
In a co-operation with BadBoy software, who provide a tailored version of their recoder software which allows you to upload the resulting script directly into your WatchMouse dashboard.
Feedback from our "Functional testing" customers has lead to several essential improvements to the BadBoy recorder. This improved version has now been released and we recommend all our customers to upgrade to this version.
The new - WatchMouse specific - version can be downloaded here:
http://www.badboy.com.au/versions/BadboyInstaller-2.0-latest_wm.exe
The most important changes are:
CHANGES IN BADBOY 2.0.7
#1097: Multipart Forms Incorrectly export Parameters to JMeter Encoded causing Double Encoding
#1087: Use Follow-Redirect Option in JMeter for More Reliable Export Playback
#1086: Export Referer and Other Default Headers to JMeter
#1085: Assertions placed as Children of Requests not Exported to JMeter
CHANGES IN BADBOY 2.0.6.1
#1075: Security Update (MS08-052 - Critical)
The full release notes can be found here:
http://badboy.com.au/versions/ReleaseNotes-2.0.7.txt
Press releases
WatchMouse finds poor site performance for many CAC40 listed companies - Surprisingly, Air France-KLM and France Telecom amongst the worst (2008-05-23)
Utrecht, the Netherlands, 20 May 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to France’s CAC40 listed companies for errors, availability and performance. Five of the 40 monitored sites were found to have ‘serious user issues’. These sites belong to L’Oreal, France Telecom, Air France-KLM, Lagardere and Danone. Air France-KLM, Lagardere and Danone's sites were also found to have an uptime score, well below the accepted industry standards.
During the two month monitoring period, one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of the sites every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Performance Index 'SPI' for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable’, while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’.
The poor SPI results of L’Oreal and France Telecom’s sites were due to very long load times while Air France-KLM, Lagardere and Donone’s sites were all found to have a significant number of errors, in-addition to very long load times.
WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors said, “As a telecommunications company, we’d expect France Telecom to have all the knowledge, facilities and desire to build a fast and reliable site. We’re therefore very surprised that this research found the France Telecom site operating well below industry standards.”
WatchMouse also reports on site uptime. In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ if it between 99.89% - 99.01% and ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. Mark Pors points out that “99% uptime sounds great but when you calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month.”
Of the CAC40 monitored sites, those with poor uptime results belong to: Air Liquide, Carrefour, Schneider Electric, Veolia Environnement, Danone, Air France-KLM and Lagardere. Lagardere’s site scored 89% uptime meaning it was unavailable for more than three days during the period of monitoring.
A complete overview of the CAC40 monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_CAC40_sites.php
About WatchMouse
Companies can easily monitor the performance of their web sites using WatchMouse's monitoring service. WatchMouse has thousands of customers in over 70 countries and checks from 25+ locations and networks worldwide (see www.watchmouse.com).
Contact: Mark Pors, mark@watchmouse.com +31302522400
WatchMouse finds some poor site performance for DAX30 listed companies - Deutsche Telekom’s site the worst (2008-03-19)
Utrecht, the Netherlands, 18 March 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to German’s largest listed companies for errors, availability and performance. Of the 30 monitored sites, 40% were found to have ‘good’ uptime, 43% ranked as ‘OK’ while the remaining 17% ranked as ‘poor’. The most concerning inclusion in the list of ‘poor’ performers is that of Germany’s leading telco provider, Deutsche Telekom with only 97.89% uptime. Thyssenkrupp’s site recorded the worst uptime score of 71.87% meaning the site was unreachable for more than 8 days during the month of monitoring.
In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ if it between 99.89% - 99.01% & ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors points out that “99% uptime sounds great but when you calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month.”
WatchMouse monitored the sites between 11 February - 13 March 2008 during which one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of the sites every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable’, while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’.
Three of the 30 sites were found to have ‘serious user issues’ with SPI scores of above 2,000. These sites belong to Allianz which scored an SPI of 2,336, Hypo Real Estate Holding which scored an SPI of 2,647 and Deutsche Telekom which scored the worst SPI of 3,248. Deutsche Telekom and Hypo Real Estate Holding’s sites both had very long load times and many errors.
Mark Pors said, “We’re very surprised by these results. We’d expect a large telco like Deutsche Telekom to have the knowledge, facilities and desire to build a fast and reliable site, instead we found the Deutsche Telekom site operating well below industry standards.”
A complete overview of the DAX30 monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_DAX30_sites.php
WatchMouse research finds poor site performance for ASX listed companies - Telstra scores the worst (2008-03-19)
Utrecht, the Netherlands, 19 March 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to Australian’s largest listed companies for errors, availability and performance. Of the 51 monitored sites, 63% were found to have ‘good’ or ‘OK’ uptime while an alarming 37% ranked as ‘poor’. The most concerning inclusion in the list of ‘poor’ performers is that of Australia’s leading telco provider, Telstra with 98.1% uptime. Newscrest and Alumina sites recorded the worst uptime with 89.7% and 88.5% respectively which equates to both sites being unavailable for more than 3 days during the month of monitoring.
In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ if it is between 99.89% - 99.01% and ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors points out that “99% uptime sounds great but when you calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month.”
WatchMouse monitored the sites between 11 February - 13 March 2008 during which one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations attempted to access the homepage of each site every five minutes. Sites were expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites. An SPI of ≤1,000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1,001 - 1,999 is regarded as ‘acceptable’, while a score of above 2,000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’.
Of the 51 monitored sites, a whooping 26 scored an SPI of above 2,000; the vast majority as a result of very long load times. Mark Pors said, “We’re very surprised by these results. We’d expect Australia’s largest listed companies to place a great deal of importance on having a well performing site; as a company’s site is a tool to providing investors with information and to project a professional corporate image. Instead we’ve found 50% had serious user issues. WatchMouse has been monitoring sites belonging to companies listed on some of the world’s largest stock exchanges for many years and never before found such a poor overall result.”
WatchMouse expected a very large telco like Telstra to have the knowledge, facilities and desire to build a fast and reliable site. Shockingly, Telstra’s main site www.telstra.com.au was found to have the worst SPI with a score of 8,018. Other sites with very poor SPIs belong to AGL Energy with 5,129 and Westfarmer with 4,207.
A complete overview of the ASX monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_ASX50_sites.php
Columns
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".
