One of the dilemmas I often discuss with clients is how they can protect their brand and deliver a great customer experience whilst pushing their websites to the limits.
The digital revolution has transformed the way consumers use the web, presenting a whole host of new website performance challenges to eCommerce managers and brand managers alike.
As eCommerce managers need to update their sites more regularly, they also face technologies that are in constant flux; solutions are moving to the cloud, websites are more dynamic, personalised content and pricing is becoming commonplace, use of hosted services is growing and not least, there’s the explosion of mobile users to support. And with raised consumer expectations, multi device browsing and Google incorporating performance into their ranking algorithm, web performance is an increasingly important issue for those responsible for managing the brand.
Internet savvy managers understand that they need to measure website performance and undertake some level of monitoring or testing. But with rapidly developing markets, advances in technology and higher end-user expectations, I find some don’t have a monitoring programme that delivers realistic enough results, a strategy that is holistic enough to meet today’s challenges or a proactive test partner to hold their hand along the way.
Website monitoring strategies are developing all the time. In essence, it’s all about getting closer to your users, so that you can experience exactly what they experience; its about improving business outcomes by uniting technical and business teams; and its about ensuring the speed and performance of your site can serve your growing population of mobile users.
The key to effective monitoring is to test a website as a whole and to adopt monitoring approaches that foster a shared understanding across the entire business about how web performance impacts user experience.
It’s becoming almost impossible to juggle all this whilst ensuring consistent performance across all users and devices. To help our clients we take a proactive approach, keeping an eye on their journeys to identify any performance issues they may have missed and pointing them in the right direction to resolve them.
If you found this blog useful, you may also like to download a our latest eBook– an overview of the latest advances in testing practices and advice to ensure your website achieves its objectives in today’s challenging environment.