Monitoring Host Responsiveness

In today’s environment, consumers expect an instant response as they visit various web sites. Read posts, purchase various items, and browse web site looking for information. Monitoring host responsiveness can pay dividends if you speed up response time.

Studies have shown that many consumers will wait at most 10 seconds before they will move onto another website. Even 10 seconds seems to be a very long time.

In this environment, it is even more important to spend some time monitoring host responsiveness.  Response time can be impacted by a number of different factors. There are a number of areas that can be monitored and improved.

Monitoring Host Responsiveness

Apps and Widgets – all of the apps and widgets that have been installed on your server will take milliseconds of time. Some have more overhead than others. WordPress is a popular content system with many widgets that can be added. It is a good idea to conduct a study after every new widget or app is added to determine the impact that it may be having on load time.

Latest Operating System – will ensure that your server is running with the latest software which should be optimized for the server as well as the overall system.

Network Connectivity – Once the server has prepared the page to be sent, the data must travel through many routers and networks. As many as 20 network elements could be involved in order to be received by the client. Most web site managers have little control over the network. You can run tests from time to time. Evaluate how much time is consumed by the network in transmitting your content.

Complex pages with Images – The more complex the page and the larger the images etc. are, the longer it will take to compile the page and send it. Evaluate your content. Make sure that files and images are kept to as small a size as possible to limit total response time.