Monitoring Website Transactions for E-commerce Sites

One of the common reasons for websites to have performance issues is the complexity in site design and functionality. Websites that have simple architecture are less vulnerable to performance problems when compared to sites that use database queries, third party plug-ins and applications. Particularly, performance issues are more predominant in online businesses that have login forms, shopping cart, checkout processes and other account validations in their websites. For instance, an e-commerce website may involve multiple interactive steps in its purchase transaction, from login page to the final purchase order form. The transactions must be continuous through proper navigation of webpages without any break or discontinuity in the process. Unfortunately, if webpage takes too long to load or if error occurs in the middle of the transaction, the customers will no longer be interested to continue or do business with the website. One appropriate method to improve online experience of the customers is to monitor site transactions using website monitoring service.

Why Monitoring of Web Transactions is Important?

To ensure better website performance for end-users it is critical to have complete monitoring of website such as uptime monitoring, web transactions monitoring, server monitoring, API monitoring etc. There could be numerous reasons for failures in transactions including a network problem, an error in database connectivity or a server based issue etc. Sometimes, even a small mistake in programming code or an error in database query can degrade the performance of the website, negatively impacting end-user experience. In such cases, the site will be up, but the page components may take longer to respond or experience malfunctioning or breakdown of a specific transaction or functionality. Any interruption or error in site transaction can damage customer experience with the website because the customers feel irritated as the purchase process did not get completed. Hence it is important to test the working of each step in website transaction using a website monitoring service and identify the bottlenecks that is hindering the overall performance of the site.

Step-by-Step Transaction Monitoring Using Website Monitoring Service

Not all monitoring services can support this advanced feature of multi-step transaction monitoring for website applications. If the website has complex design and functionality, then it needs more than a simple service that just pings the site to check its response. Only a quality service will pinpoint the source of transient problems in website applications by step-by-step monitoring the transactions. Since e-commerce websites have series of user interactions for login and other transactions, it is important for them to have a comprehensive monitoring solution that includes the performance monitoring of different site components along with the basic functionality of checking the website uptime. The service should track the real end user website transactions and alert the site owners if there is any failure or possibility of performance issues in the website.