The last minute Essentials for Black Friday - Get Prepared!

One week to go for Black Friday and we don’t want you to face any deadlocks on such a crucial day. Earlier we asked you How Prepared are you for Black Friday, today let us take you through the essentials of website monitoring, so as to ensure the website runs smoothly and your customers are happy at the end.

If you want to feel relaxed on such a hectic day like Black Friday, try following these measures. These will help you avoid the unnecessary stress.

Keep a check on Basic Response

Start with the basics. You’ll be keen to know that online visitors can access your site, pages are loading, and that everything is presentable. So set up some basic monitors that show:

  • Page initial response
  • Full page load
  • Broken links & 404s

Remember that a slow or inaccessible site translates directly into lost business.

Track Response Times for Key Transactions

Definitely page response times are important, but you should know your users aren’t simply visiting pages – they are conducting transactions. Use synthetic user monitoring to simulate the transactions your visitors are actually implementing:

  • Login
  • Search
  • Compare
  • Checkout

Know the locations accurately

It is not a right approach to guess that all the people visiting the website share the same experience. Differences in internet access, available bandwidth, and network infrastructure play a big role in what users actually see, especially across different locations on the globe. You can use synthetic monitoring in conjunction with geographically distributed clouds to know exactly what users across geographic regions are experiencing when they taste your website.

Track Mobiles

Devices are a trend and are booming consistently. This year, 31% of digital sales made via a smart phone or a tablet, compared to 21% last year, according to research by Adobe. That’s an enormous variation – so you’ll want to be more inclined towards mobile shoppers. Have tests set up to keep tabs on different carriers and different devices. Also be sure to track the visual experience as there are so many different screen sizes available in the market.

End-Users enhance Business – Track their behaviour

Although the sales & marketing team will be all over these metrics, it’s a really smart idea to keep them above yourself, as a load tester. It helps you put the web operation into the context of the business, making you a more effective partner in your organization.

User behavior metrics

  • Time on site
  • Pages visited
  • Page duration
  • Page bounces

Business metrics

  • Order values
  • Products per order
  • Conversion rate
  • Abandonment rate

Variance in these key performance metrics could actually indicate a technology issue, so don’t miss to keep a vigil on them. This will make you aware of the issues, if any, as soon as possible.

Why these Measures matter?

As you prepare to monitor your website, set up these metrics and any others you have in dashboards that you can access from any web browser or mobile device. Configure alerts that go off if certain thresholds are passed. Make yourself available to attend any detected issue. It’s critical for your website.

With your dashboards set up, get the right people on a single platform from your relevant teams: performance engineering, development, operations, marketing, and the business. Indulge in a conversation through the metrics you are monitoring and most importantly, educate what will be remedies if any issues occur.

At last, when the big day is off, think and acknowledge the pitfalls and rises, learn from your experience and strive to be better the next year. Though, we hope you face no deadlocks. All the best!

Also read: Software Testing Enterprises in Awe of Black Friday

Referral: neotys.com