Many businesses today are actively monitoring their web applications in order to deliver the best possible product to its customers. Not only do businesses need to generate substantial revenue through their web applications, but they also need to deliver a quality service to those using their product.
No one wants to use a slow and inconsistent web service. Because so much of today’s business is conducted within a digital space, it’s essential to ensure that your customers are satisfied every step of the way. It is no longer good enough to have low downtime. You must constantly test, upgrade, and optimize your web applications on a regular basis. Failing to sufficiently maintain your web application can have detrimental effects, such as slow page load time and sinking in search engine rankings.
What Is Web Monitoring?
Web application monitoring is a synthetic monitoring strategy that tests and verifies that a website is sufficiently responsive to user behaviors, such as logging into a page or making a purchase. The majority of web application monitoring tools check for site uptime and track crucial indicators such as broken links, performance of database, and time to first byte, among others.
The advantage to monitoring your web applications is that you will be able to locate and identify any lingering or repeating issues that crop up. You will also be equipped to resolve issues that have to do with sudden user spikes, which can happen unexpectedly. Web monitoring tools can also help you figure out why your web pages appear to load faster than they really do, which can prove detrimental to users who are hoping for a seamless online experience.
One example of a web application appearing to load faster than it really does is a concept known as lazy loading. The idea behind lazy loading is loading only the portion of a web application that the user needs at a given time. Lazy loading is often used on image-heavy web pages, where the site loads the images as the user scrolls down the page. However, if a user rapidly scrolls down the page, the images may not be able to keep up. This glitch can see your web application’s users leaving the page and searching elsewhere.
Web Page Load Speed
An important element in your web application is the page load speed, which can greatly influence the user’s experience. It was reported in 2018 that the time it takes to fully load a web page on a mobile device has dropped by seven seconds. This data suggests that page loads on mobile devices have become a priority.
A more recent report analyzed more than five million mobile and desktop pages to get a better sense of what elements affected page speed, and the findings suggest that it takes far longer for a web page to fully load on a mobile device than it does on desktop.
Consider the following data gathered:
- In our analysis of 5.2 million pages, the average desktop Time to First Byte (TTFB) speed is 1.286 seconds on desktop and 2.594 seconds on mobile.
- The average time it takes to fully load a webpage is 10.3 seconds on desktop and 27.3 seconds on mobile.
- The average web page takes 87.84% longer to load on mobile vs. desktop.
It is also important to understand that overall page size can greatly affect the time it takes to load. Therefore, it can be beneficial to compress text and images using a compression tool in order to increase load speed. Users are more impatient than ever, and they will look for any excuse to find a web page that loads faster.
Factors Affecting Web Page Performance
Page Size
High-speed internet and 4G mobile networks have become the norm all around the world, which means that businesses are able to make the user’s experience on their web application more seamless and immersive. One key element that contributes to the upgrade in the user’s experience is the inclusion of high-resolution images that can break up text and other information.
However, this comes at a cost. Because images now play a major role in web applications, the general size of websites have gone up. This means that it takes longer for web pages to load. A balance must be struck between making your web page attractive to users while now taxing their patience due to load time. Though compressing images and text is a possible solution to potentially long loading times, you can also place your video content on streaming services such as YouTube and Streamable.
Performance of Server
The general performance of a web server can also affect how well your website runs. Every time a user lands on your website, the browser is requesting that the server load or transfer some kind of data to the site. If the server is not optimized, these requests can take longer than it should.
Generally, you are not responsible for maintaining these servers. This is the job of your hosting provider. However, you may have to consider upgrading your central processing unit (CPU) or random access memory (RAM) if your site is experiencing resource problems.
Location of Server
Another element of performance monitoring that you must consider is whether your website’s performance is affected by location. Businesses must ensure that their website’s performance is consistent across different regions around the world. If your website is hosted in Texas and receives traffic in Europe, the user experience across the region will be affected. It could take longer for the web page to load for those in Europe than those in Texas.
If server location is something you believe could realistically affect your web page, a content delivery network (CDN) is one solution. A CDN implements additional server nodes across the world to ensure that no matter where a potential user is, they will have a similar user experience. These nodes will usually cache content from your website, such as cascading style sheets (CSS), images, and even Javascript data.
CMS Plugins
The major benefit in deploying content management systems (CMS) is that they offer a number of plugins, which means that development teams don’t have to come up with original material. While plugins do require significant amounts of time when it comes to coding, they can also pose performance-related issues.
Plugins must be kept up to date. Plugins built with outdated technology and insufficient database queries can lead to much higher load times. Free plugins are generally not updated, and they can have certain vulnerabilities that could cost you in the long run.The number of plugins should be limited, considering the time it takes and the vulnerabilities that come with them.
Issues With Script or Code
Virtually every big website is built using thousands of lines of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code. As websites continue to improve, they will also become more complex and code density will increase. Some of these codes are running simultaneously, which can lead to a high number of server calls. This can lead to what is known as a “race condition,” which can expose your website to various security threats.
“Race condition in software is an undesirable event that can happen when multiple entities access or modify shared resources in a system. The system behaves correctly when these entities use the shared resources as expected. But sometimes due to uncontrollable delays, the sequence of operations may change due to relative timing of events. …The ‘race’ happens because this type of failure is dependent on which entity gains access to the shared resource first.”
– Devopedia
Third-party scripts are also a faulty solution because the time it takes to call the remote server to run a given script could affect your website’s performance. It is important to continue using the best possible practices in application development, which means that your scripts are appropriately optimized for security and speed.
Web Application Monitoring
Web Application Monitoring offers a host of web monitoring tools that will ensure your website is performing at the highest level. Here is a list of just a few of the services offered:
- Optimize web application functionality and performance
- Track uptime/downtime of web application
- Resolve bottlenecks and plan capacity upgrades
- Optimize troubleshooting, diagnostics, and provide accurate error readings
As more businesses begin to rely on high-speed internet and 4G mobile networks to provide their services to users, it is imperative that web applications are speedy, smooth, and immersive. Users are looking for every way to look elsewhere, and the surest way to retain customers is to give them the best online experience possible.
To pass up on having your website’s health monitored could mean seeing your web pages slow down to a crawl, crash, or even be exposed to software vulnerabilities. These issues could result in thousands of dollars in lost revenue due to downtime and repair costs.
The importance of web application monitoring has become even more pronounced over the past few years, as more people are shifting to remote work. There are now greater opportunities for businesses that operate online, which means optimizing the performance of web applications is more essential than ever. Finally, we recommend Dotcom-Monitor for serious web application monitoring.
