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The Value of Application Monitoring

When a site visitor experiences slow load times on a website or internet-based application, chances are they will not convert from a site visitor to a site customer. In today's fast-paced online business environment, a business has only seconds to make a positive impression on a site visitor. If the company's website does not load quickly, the site visitor will navigate away and search for another site to meet their needs and make their purchases. This will mean lost customers, and ultimately lost revenue, for the business. A way to avoid this type of issue is through application monitoring.

What is Application Monitoring?

Websites today are incredibly complex and utilize a variety of technologies, such as Flash, Java and large and intricate product-filled databases. This wide variety of technologies can lead to slow load times and overall frustration for the site visitor. There are, however, a variety of tools available to help IT professionals both identify pain points as well as help to resolve the identified issues.

Today, there are two very different ways to approach product environment problem solving. The most efficient is through data collection through the use of application monitoring that can provide up-to-date performance information as well as monitor the health and status of supporting hardware and software. The other, less efficient way, is through trial and error by analyzing log data. While log data was the only option years ago, data analysis through the use of application monitoring makes much more sense today, which will allow for immediate resolutions to issues as they arise; often before a site visitor even realizes a problem is potentially on the horizon.

Application monitoring goes beyond how an application is performing on a technical level. For example, reports can be generated from the collected raw data that can provide technical insights regarding the total number of users that pass through an application, including time to pass through the application and any errors that were returned. Application monitoring tools offer the ability to collect and add data quickly so the user experience can remain a positive one, which will keep that site visitor coming back as a site customer.