Website Measurement

WatchMouse introduces Site Performance Index (2009-05-14)

new industry gauge offers complete overview of website performance

WatchMouse, the website monitoring company, has launched the WatchMouse Site Performance Index (SPI). The index acts as a gauge for measuring the performance of websites. It gives a complete overview of visitors’ experiences when using a website in terms of both the speed and availability.

WatchMouse measures the SPIs of the major players in 30 different industry sectors including banking, travel, insurance and logistics. The resulting reports are published monthly on www.watchmouse.com/SPI

The SPI measures the waiting times experienced by visitors accessing a site. The longer the loading time or the worse the availability of a web page, the higher the final score and the lower the level of visitor satisfaction. Sites with an SPI of 1,000 or less are performing well whilst those companies that score above 1,500 have work to do.

WatchMouse’s SPI site currently contains reports from 30 different sectors across five countries. Summaries of the reports can be accessed free of charge from the WatchMouse website and full reports can be ordered on the site.

The reports are refreshed every quarter and offer extensive trend analysis, background information and complete score tables with measurement results for the companies monitored in each sector, and by country. Companies can also, for a fee, order benchmark reports which clearly show how their own corporate site is scoring in relation to those of their competitors. In addition, tailor-made reports can be ordered, in which companies can specify their own lists of ‘peers’.

“Good website performance is crucial as recent research by Jupiter Research demonstrates that customers can give up after waiting for just four seconds,” said Mark Pors, chief technology officer at WatchMouse. “We are also seeing a shift taking place whereby, alongside availability, loading speeds are also being included in service level agreements (SLAs).”

“The SPI reports enable companies to find out whether their SLAs are in fact being achieved, and compare this with the website performance of their competitors. In this way, they can easily assess whether there is room for improvement,” he explained.

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.

In times of crisis, the sites of Australia's Emergency Services aren't available (2008-03-04)

March 4 2008 – With Bushfires in WA’s Goldfields region & floods in Mackay, Australia’s emergency services are needed more than ever but many are unreachable.

WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to Australian Emergency Services organisations for errors, availability & performance. Only one of the 26 monitored sites was found to have ‘good’ uptime while seven sites had ‘serious user issues’. Another disturbing finding was that during the Mackay floods on the 15th of February, a time when residents needed information and support from their emergency services, Queensland’s Ambulance, Fire (Rural & Metropolitan) and Police sites all encountered serious errors and were unavailable for considerable periods of time.

After a month’s monitoring, WatchMouse combined the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements of a site to calculate its Site Performance Index (SPI). An SPI of ≤1000 represents a ‘well performing’ site, 1001 - 1999 is regarded as an ‘acceptable’ SPI while an SPI score of above ≥2000 represents a site with ‘serious user issues’. Of the 26 sites monitored sites, those with the worst SPI included that of the Australian Federal Police with an SPI 2,990, the Victorian Metropolitan Fire Brigade site with an SPI 2,756 and the Victorian Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority site which scored SPI 2,604. All of these poor SPI rankings were due to very slow load times.

In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as ‘good’ if it is ≥99.9%, ‘OK’ between 99.89% - 99.01% and ‘poor’ if it is ≤99%. Alarmingly, only the site of ACT Rural Fire Brigade had a ‘good’ uptime result. The majority of sites ranked as ‘OK’ while three Emergency Services’ sites ranked as ‘poor’. The site with the lowest uptime was that of WA’s Ambulance Service with 92.44%.

WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors said “99% uptime sounds great but when you actually calculate it, this means 80+ hours of downtime a year. That’s one working day per month! The Emergency Services phone lines could not be down for a day each month so why is it acceptable for the site?. Mackay represents a small proportion (approx. 4%) of Queensland's total population but given that the sites of Queensland Emergency Services struggled during the Mackay floods, we can only imagine what will happen to those sites in the case of a disaster on a greater scale, when 100s of thousands of people attempt to visit."

To view the results of the monitoring, including an SPI graph and information about the WatchMouse monitoring methodology visit: www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_australian_emergency_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

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 Finds Poor Site Performance for UK gambling site - Tote’s site the worst (2008-04-09)

Utrecht, the Netherlands, 9 April 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to the UK’s online gambling companies for errors, availability and performance. The testing was conducted on the Grand National race day and for the 10 days prior. WatchMouse anticipated that the sites of gambling companies would perform well to facilitate their customers placing bets on this important event. Surprisingly, WatchMouse found that Tote’s site had serious user issues with a Site Performance Index (SPI) of 2,854 while the sites belonging to Stan James, William Hill and Blue Square only scraped acceptable SPI scores. Additionally, the sites of SkyBet and Jennings Bet were found to have uptime scores well below accepted industry standards.   

Monitoring was conducted from 26 March - 5 April 2008. During, this 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 Availability Index (SPI) for each of the sites. An SPI of less than 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’.

By a significant margin, the site of Jennings Bet was found to have the highest number of errors but when combined with a fast load time, resulted in an acceptable overall SPI score of 1,279 and recorded no errors on race day. By contrast, Tote’s site scored a dismal SPI of 2,854 due largely to very long load times. Slow load times were also the main cause of Stan James, William Hill and Blue Square sites’ scoring barely acceptable SPIs of 1,792, 1,655 and 1,615 respectively.

WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors, said, “As one in three British adults bets on the Grand National*, we anticipated that the UK’s gambling companies would strive to provide their customers with a fast, error free sites. I am therefore surprised that in the lead up to this important betting event, our testing found the sites of some major gambling companies to be operating well below accepted industry standards.”

In line with industry standards, WatchMouse ranks a site’s uptime as good if it is greater than 99.9%, OK if it between 99.89% - 99.01% and poor if it is less than 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.”

The sites ranking as poor are those belonging to SkyBet and Jennings Bet who scored 98.52% and 95.57% respectively; meaning the Jennings Bet site was unreachable for more than 32 hours, during the 10 days of monitoring.

A complete overview of the SPI monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_UKbetting_sites.php

*BBC News, 4 April 2008

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 poor site performance for some SMI listed companies - Richemont & Zurich Financial found to be the worst. (2008-05-23)

Utrecht, the Netherlands, 20 May 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, tested the sites belonging to Switzerland’s SMI listed companies for errors, availability and performance. Three of the 20 monitored sites were found to have ‘serious user issues’. These sites belong to Baloise, Zurich Financial and Richemont. Zurich Financial and Richemont’s sites were also amongst six SMI sites found to have an uptime well below the accepted industry standard.

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 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’.

The poor SPI results of Richemont and Baloise sites were largely due to very long load times while the SPI result of Zurich Financial’s site was due to both long load times and a considerable number of errors.

Mark Pors said, “I would have anticipated Switzerland’s largest luxury goods and financial services companies to strive to provide their customers and investors with a fast, error free sites as an important channel through which they promote their products, services and build brand awareness. I am therefore, very surprised that this research found these major companies’ sites operating well below accepted 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%. 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.”

Of the 20 monitored SIM sites, those with the worst uptime results belong to: Nobel Biocare, Richemont, Zurich Financial, Nestle, Adecco and Synthes. Synthes’s site scored 95% meaning it was unavailable for more than a day during monitoring.

A complete overview of the SMI monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_SMI_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

Ranking of EURO 2008 nations' sports sites - France the online winner! (2008-06-23)

Utrecht, the Netherlands, 19th June 2008 - WatchMouse, a leader in website performance monitoring, monitored the most popular sports sites, belonging to each of the Euro 2008 nations. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a Site Performance Index (SPI) for each of the sites, to reveal that the nations with the best sports sites are France, Spain and the Netherlands. Sports enthusiasts in Turkey may be disappointed by confirmation that their nation’s favorite sports site ranks as the worst, largely due to long load times.

WatchMouse’s monitoring stations tried to access the homepage of each nations' favorite sports site every five minutes. With no errors, 100% availability and a load time of less than 4 seconds, France's www.lequipe.fr ranked as the best sports site with an enviably low SPI of 203, while Spain's www.marca.com narrowly took second place over the Dutch www.vi.nl. Of the 16 monitored sites, only Turkey’s spor.ekolay.net and Austrian’s www.krone.at/sport were found to have 'serious user issues'.

WatchMouse CTO, Mark Pors said, “We're very pleased to find that many of the Euro 2008 nations have sports sites that function really well. We hope that as we continue monitoring, we'll see Turkey's national sports site improve as dramatically as their game did on Sunday!"

    Euro 2008 Sport Sites League Table:

    Rank              Country Site                              SPI

    1. France          http://www.lequipe.fr                    203

    2. Spain           http://www.marca.com                     478

    3. Netherlands     http://www.vi.nl                         488

    4. Croatia         http://sportskenovosti.hr                653

    5. Germany         http://www.sportbild.de                  657

    6. Italy           http://www.gazzetta.it                   767

    7. Switzerland     http://www.blink.ch/sport                785

    8. Czech Republic  http://www.sportovninoviny.cz            838

    9. Greece          http://www.sport24.gr                   1000

    10. Sweden         http://www.aftonbladet.se/sportbladet   1051

    11. Poland         http://www.sport.pl                     1169

    12. Russia         http://www.russiatoday.ru/sports        1275

    13. Portugal       http://www.abola.pt                     1214

    14. Romania        http://www.gsp.ro                       1486

    15. Austria        http://www.krone.at/sport               2041

    16. Turkey         http://spor.ekolay.net                  2796

Since monitoring started on 11 June 2008, one of WatchMouse’s monitoring stations has tried to access the homepage of each of the 16 sites, every five minutes. Sites are expected to download within 4 seconds without any errors. Combining the errors, speed (load time) and availability measurements, WatchMouse calculated a SPI for each of the sites. An SPI of less than 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’.

A complete overview of the Euro2008 monitoring results can be found at: http://www.watchmouse.com/SPI/2008/performance_EURO08_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