Successful Transactions Depend on Active Web Monitoring

The proliferation of online transactionsThe essential components of successful monitoring
Businesses use the Web, a central component ofA well-designed online transaction monitoring solution
sales, marketing, communications, and product supportshould be based on four principles:
strategies to reinforce their brand, attract clients,1. Adopt the user's perspective
communicate with customers and partners, provideMonitoring the performance of your Web site solely
assistance, and bring in revenue.from within your enterprise will never provide a true
What constitutes a transaction varies widely accordingpicture of how your users experience the site. A
to a company's market and industry. For an onlineuser's experience depends on a complex system of
bookstore, a transaction might be defined as ainterconnecting Internet communications providers,
customer buying a book. But transactions do not needthird-party advertising and content providers, content
to involve the exchange of goods or money.distribution networks, and much more-and all of those
Transactions can also be defined as the process ofelements lie beyond your company's firewall. To
searching for flight or hotel information, checking amonitor a user's experience, you must include all of
bank account balance, or selecting a healthcarethose elements-they all affect the user's experience.
provider from an insurer's Web site.For a truly accurate picture of how a user
The number of online transactions has multipliedexperiences your site, you need to monitor
significantly over the past decade with the increasingperformance wherever users are across the globe.
use of dynamic pages, secure Web sites, integratedDifferences in access speeds and networking
search capabilities, and multimedia content.technologies can result in significant differences in user
The increasing use of online transactions can deliverexperiences. The only way to capture how users
important benefits to both users and businesses ifexperience a transaction is to monitor transaction
those transactions perform as they should. But in theperformance from where they live. To capture the
real world, problems arise. Those problems are easilywidest range of user experiences, you need a
compounded by the growing complexity ofbroad-based measurement service with a
transactions.comprehensive selection of well-chosen,
No transaction is flawlessrepresentative, and stable locations across the globe.
For a business to be successful, online transactions2. Monitor the entire transaction
must go smoothly for the end user. No matter whereFew online transactions are completed on a single
and when users perform online transactions, theyWeb page. Even simple transactions, such assubmitting
should have a consistent experience. Consistency is ata request for product support, can involve clicking
the heart of loyalty and branding for many businesses.through two or three pages. Morecomplex
Transactions should have the same look and feel andtransactions, such as buying merchandise, can require
functionality from any browser on any platform, anda user to click through a much larger number of pages.
the time it takes to go from one step to anotherAnd each page might perform a number of
should not vary from user to user.transactions, such as dynamically loading content or
Unfortunately, no transaction is flawless. Transactionsimages or building the page based on stored personal
can break down at multiple points throughout thepreferences. Knowing that a transaction failed
process. Search engines can fail to find what the usersomewhere in the process is not good enough. You
is looking for, items can be out of stock, credit cardneed end-to-end details so you can pinpoint problems
numbers can fail to be validated, and account pagesand repair them quickly. Transaction monitoring must
can fail to load. Transactions can also break down ininclude every step of the process.
less obvious ways. The costs of failed transactions3. Reduce complexity
are great-competitors are only a click away. Users areA transaction monitoring solution must be easy to
quick to turn to other sites when transactions fail themdeploy and use. Managing a Web site with multiple
in any way.transactions is difficult enough. The solution that
Successful transactions depend on active monitoringmonitors those transactions should simplify IT tasks,
The only thing worse than a failed transaction is thenot make them more complex. You need to be able to
failure of the business to recognize the problem.get up and running fast and have intuitive,
Because companies rely more heavily on the Webstraight-forward ways to monitor transactions on an
than ever before and customer expectations haveongoing basis. Ease of use is especially crucial in
risen with respect to online performance, every minutepressure situations. If the monitoring solution is too
of downtime is more painful than it was even a fewdifficult to use, it will not be used at all.
years ago. Waiting for an internet service provider-or4. Instill credibility
worse yet, a customer-to notify you of a problem canA transaction monitoring solution must be accurate and
be deadly for your company.credible. You have to be able to rely on the monitoring
What are the risks? At the very least, loss ofsolution to help you determine whether a problem
customer confidence and the degradation of yourexists, where it exists, and whether you should spend
brand. As customers and clients gain Internet savvy,valuable time and money to fix it. You need to know
they will have less and less patience for problems onthat measurements are due to real problems, not due
your site, and they will be less likely to do business withto a fault or variability in the monitoring solution itself.
you.Transaction monitoring services-credible, easy-to-use,
As a result, transaction problems can lead to lostend-to-endservices that capture the user's experience
revenue. Your customers will notice the time ittakes toThese services adopt the user's perspective and
load a page or process an order, and they will notprovide broad-based measurementsfrom
hesitate to try your competitor's site if yours is downrepresentative, stable locations outside of
for even a moment.organizations. They offer an end-to-end view of online
Organizations must take an active role in monitoringtransactions to identify potential problems anywhere in
the performance of all sorts of online transactions-the process. This approach gives you the most
from making purchases to downloading forms. Yet thecomprehensive view of how users experience
task of pinpointing problems has become moretransactions and where processes can break down.
challenging as transactions have increased inRealistically measuring multi-protocol transactions that
complexity. The performance of Web sites and theincorporate the mostsophisticated Web transaction
success of online transactions depend on a wideprogramming in use today, including Web services,
range of interconnected technologies. Monitoring theWebDAV, ActiveX, dynamic date/time support, file
performance of all of those technologies can beupload, XML, Flash 6.0 plug-ins, and digital certificates.
overwhelming for many organizations. For manyTransaction monitoring services help organizations
organizations, the best monitoring solution is one thatidentify problems quickly by providing detailed,
can capture the complexity of online transactions whileend-to-end transaction information.
making it easy to identify problems.